Free 13 - The Rainbow Affair by David McDaniel

another car coming.
    It was several minutes before he did, and then it didn't sound quite like a car. It was loud, like a racing car, but had a peculiar deep-throated sound it took him a moment to identify. A motorcycle - and a big one, too.
    There were still no signs of pursuit as he stepped onto the road. The cycle was approaching from his left, and he hurried across the pavement to meet it. The sound of the engine dropped a few notes as the bike slowed for the curve, then came booming into sight. Napoleon stepped out in front of it and waved his arms.
    The bike slowed as it approached, and stopped with its engine muttering beside him. It was a big Royal Enfield - a quarter-ton of perfectly disciplined power. But the rider, resting lightly in the saddle like a sparrow on the back of a percheron, was a slender slip of a girl in white leathers. Her chestnut hair escaped from under her white helmet, and her eyes were hiding behind heavy goggles, but her smile was quick and bright.
    "Need a ride?" she said.
    "Just as far as the next town," said Napoleon. "Or the nearest telephone."
    "That's where I'm going. Hop on."
    He did, although with some caution. His thigh muscles objected to being swung over the rear half of the seat, and it took him a second or so to convince them of the necessity of cooperation. As he wriggled into a comfortable position, the girl spoke again.
    "I don't know how familiar you are with motorcycles, so let me ask that you stay relaxed and let me do the steering. Don't try to lean into a curve when I do; just hold on to me and relax. Got that?"
    "Right. I'll just be part of the bike."
    "Fine. Set?"
    "Set."
    The engine roared up and the gearshift clicked into place, and the bike suddenly tried to leap out from under them. But Napoleon's arms were locked around the girl's waist, and her grip on the handlebars was firm, and in a moment they were flying down the road. The thunder of the exhaust climbed the scale and then dropped as they shifted gears, then climbed and dropped again, and once more. Now, though the engine was muttering easily under them, they were whipping along the road with the trees flashing by on either side like fence-pickets. The afternoon sun slickered between the trees to their right, and the big machine purred along the narrow road like a racing cheetah, canting easily around corners and whirling up hills and down grades while Napoleon felt the tails of his coat trying to tear them selves loose in the windstream. He kept his head ducked behind the girl's as much as possible, letting her break the wind for him, but it was hard to hide all of himself behind her slender body.
    The slipstream tore at his hair and his trousers slapped at his legs until they stung. The wind poured like jets of ice water into his dissolving eyes. They seemed to be outracing time itself as they flashed along the tree-bordered road, and the whole world was lost around them. Nothing existed outside the vibration of the machine gripped between his thighs, and the slim body his arms surrounded. His vision swam with tears, and his ears were filled with the roar of the wind, and there was nothing but himself and the girl, the cycle, and speed.
     
    Chapter 7
    How Napoleon Lay Low, and a Little Old Lady Made Discreet inquiries.
     
    CONVERSATION WAS practically impossible for the next few minutes, but eventually there were houses around them and the cycle slowed to a careful twenty miles per hour. Napoleon blinked his eyes several times to clear them, and looked around at the small village they were in the midst of.
    "Where are we?" he asked the girl.
    "Baycombe," she said.
    "I mean generally. What county?"
    She half turned her head in surprise. "You were lost! Devonshire."
    "Not lost, exactly. I'll explain after I get to a phone." She didn't answer this time, but instead made a left and a right, and braked gently to a stop in front of a small cottage set a short way back from the side-street on which they found