Lose the Road

By – TempestRaces

Chapter 10 – Didn't Know My Own Strength

"Lost sight of my dream. Thought it would be the end of me. I thought I'd never make it through. I had no hope to hold on to, I thought I would break. I didn't know my own strength. And I crashed down, and I tumbled. But I did not crumble." ~ Whitney Houston

Bryce sat waiting in the parking lot of the bar, wondering what the fuck was up that Vince hadn't been in touch in days and Tempest was back in the country after all this time, using Vince's phone. To ring him! Because he didn't think if she was back in town, he would be her top priority to get back in touch with. He was worried, bordering on nervous. She hadn't sounded like herself. He was aware that who she was 2 years ago wasn't necessarily who she was today, but she'd sounded scared and that wasn't something he associated with a girl who showed up out of the blue to make transactions for stolen auto parts packing a borrowed hand gun.

Just thinking back to it put a smile on his face. Vince had been so gobsmacked when she walked around the nose of that truck, talked smack to them like she knew what she was doing. She'd been supremely confident in a situation she shouldn't have been confident in at all. She went toe to toe with Vince, despite how high into the heights of angry she'd driven him. Either wasn't smart enough or just didn't fear easily enough to know backing down was safer. She'd been so calm and brazen at the same time. So what was wrong to the extreme of wrong to put fear into her now?

He wondered where she was. It was five minutes past her estimate for when she'd meet him already. A big midnight blue truck on 24 inch chrome rims with blacked out windows pulled in but he didn't pay it too much mind. A Cadillac Escalade was a bit out of place in this neck of the woods, but who knew which bad ass had finally made it big time this time? It didn't matter to him. He was waiting for a car painted with storm clouds and ocean waves. Which meant it was his turn to be shocked when he watched her climb down out of the huge Cadillac. What the hell had convinced her to give up the rarity that Vince had pulled in some serious favours to have finished for her, even while he bitched and moaned about how his chick shouldn't have a faster ride than him? Even while he'd barely restrained himself from punching Bryce in the face every time he pointed out she was not his chick. Because of his own stupidity, to add insult to injury.

He got off his bike and started her way. She'd changed, and it wasn't just the stress marring her pretty face that made him think so. She'd filled in more, was a bit curvier while still being muscular to a point most women didn't achieve. Her hair was longer than he remembered, touching her ass where before it had been hitting just below her elbows. Her jeans were fitted to a point he didn't jive with her previous baggy style, when everything had clearly been bought at a time she was bigger. He was reassured she was still the girl he'd found so perfect by the fact she was wearing a black wife beater with the jeans, no make-up and sunglasses pushed up into the riot of curls.

"Hey Doll. How you been?" he asked as he walked across the parking lot to meet her. When she burst into tears at his simple question he knew the answer was 'not good'. He didn't even think before hugging her hard, his cheek to her curls. "I guess I knew if you came down here instead of stubborning it out and making him come to his senses and go get you, it's not good," he murmured into her hair. She shook her head no against his chest. "Let's go inside." He didn't wait for her answer, just kept his arm around her shoulders to guide her into the building. "Ok, spill it. What's wrong?"

She took a few minutes to compose herself after they were seated in the same dark corner booth so many people around the place regarded as Bryce's own personal seat. "Well, you know what the team was up to." She looked up and saw the confusion in his eyes, shook her head as a realization washed over her. "No you don't. Of course you don't. He knew it was stupid and you woulda tried to talk him outta it so he didn't tell you."

Bryce shook his head. "Gotta admit you lost me T. Who didn't tell me what?" He watched as she looked around the room nervously.

Tempest leaned in closer to Bryce and lowered her voice just a shade above a whisper. "The team was boosting transfer trucks. Transfer trucks being driven down interstate highways at the time." She cocked an eyebrow at the disbelieving look on his face. "It was stupid's idea." A roll of her eyes accentuated her statement.

Bryce felt the colour drain out of his face. Vince fucked up his life, Vince couldn't cope with just how bad, Vince couldn't see the right thing to do was just what Bryce had told the girl—go get her back in person—so he decided to fuck up everyone else's life right along with him. Figured. And now because however it had ended had brought Tempest back into his life, clearly against her will, he knew it had to have ended badly. "Has he killed himself?"

Tempest laughed sharply, felt the anger well up behind it, almost hysterical. "Tried to. Almost managed." She shook her head. "Dominic, wanting money for bigger, faster car parts and not able to make enough of it to buy them all. He knew Vince was into things that made better money than lube jobs and making sandwiches so he started bugging him to hook them up with something big time. Vince always said no, because he knew anything that big time was also going to be that dangerous that it wasn't worth it. And then the shit with me'n him went down and he decided to hook Dom up with something that would bring in the money but would allow most of the team to just sit in a car and drive, that would allow Vince to take on most of the danger. Because he says he fucked up his life so bad, nothing mattered. That and he hoped I'd get wind of it and come down here to kick his ass." She snorted in derision. "Like picking up the fucking phone wouldn't have worked too."

"Where is he?"

"Hospital, waiting to be well enough to walk, sit up, feed himself, all so they can take him to prison for 20 years because they can't find Dominic, Letty or Leo and we both know he's not going to give them up, even if he does know where they're holed up. Which we both know he does."

"Maybe you should tell me the whole story from the beginning?"

"Maybe. But maybe you wanna grab us a couple drinks first? This is gonna take a while." She watched as Bryce strode to the bar, ordered and returned, a Corona in one hand and a rum and Coke in the other. He put the mixed drink in front of her, and took a pull of his beer, watching her. Waiting. "Well, they had to get the cars ready for some big race show in the desert. Biggest event of the year and legal as well, from what Jesse tells me. Organized in the desert on abandoned land so it's fully sanctioned. But for the sake of his 'rep' Dom and the team had to do well. So he wanted a bunch of stuff he couldn't afford in the run up to Race Wars for the cars. He finally broke Vince into setting up a deal for them. Heisting shipments of electronics mid-delivery."

"Wait, wait. I heard about this in the news. They got the first so many without incident but then the truckers started to cotton onto it, and the fact the cops couldn't pull their heads out of their asses long enough to figure out what they were going to do about it. So they started arming themselves for some good old fashioned eye for an eye."

"Yeah, that was them. But even when they had enough made to bank roll ten teams to five different Race Wars they didn't stop. I guess Dom got greedy, Vince was still alive which meant to date he'd failed to attract my attention, and the rest of the team got off on the rush of it all. All Leon, Jesse and Letty had to do was drive a car to distract a trucker. They took a break from it to go to Race Wars. But Leon took his turn at being Mr Stupid and let my cousin bet the pink slip to his crazy ass dad's Jetta against some Asian pompinaio."

"I didn't grow up around baldie's house. Asian what now?"

Tempest looked mildly discomforted. "Cocksucker."

Bryce cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Well, I don't think I'm too far off considering what comes a bit later. So Jesse is terrified to hand over the car, seeing as it's not his and as I've said his dad is crazy, and takes off. And then when Tran confronts Dominic, Dom chooses to kick the shit out of him in front of oh, about ten thousand other racers. Which makes Tran look an idiot so he takes off to find Jesse. Then the fucking moron team without a brain between them figures rather than go find Jesse before Tran does or before he does something else stupid, we'll take off tonight and go do this big job we have lined up. We'll just do it without him and find him later. You know, if the insane Asian asshole known to carry around a Mac-10 doesn't blow him to bits first."

"So they headed out that night to do the job. But it turns out the guy Vince told them all was a cop and they all told him wasn't, was. And when Brian the pig realized that it was them doing the heists no matter how much he was enjoying doing Mia and wished it wasn't, he decided to chase after them and stop them, seems like. But he failed. By the time he found them, Letty had already flipped her car, Leon had already gone back to see if she was alive and Vince was already attached to a speeding transfer truck whose driver had a shot gun and used it to blow Dom's heater matrix and assorted other goodies under the hood and basically destroyed his car. Leaving Vince hanging off the side of the truck by his arm while the driver took pot shots at him with a 12 gauge."

"Ok, so then what? Since he's in the hospital he obviously got saved off the truck."

"Yeah, the cop got him off. Then had to send him to the hospital in a helicopter since this all happened miles outside Coachella in the middle of the bloody desert. Then Dominic decides he better go find Jesse before they all run off to Mexico or where ever the fuck, likely about 12 hours after Jesse took off. But Jess came home before Dom could find him, and Tran followed him home, and tried to shoot him to death. So I get the phone call from some random guy I met a few times at races telling me that my cousin is in the hospital all alone after taking three to the chest. That the rest of the team bailed. I only came down here because Hector said the whole team bailed. It was Jesse who told me that Vince was in the same ward, on the same floor, across the hall from him. After I heard the nurses talking about how the man in there was dying."

Bryce could see she was clearly in pain, not quite sure what to do and barely keeping it together.

"I wasn't ready to see him again yet. I woulda been someday but it wasn't now. But now here I am and there he is. And first he was going to die, and now that I am ready to fight it out, after already waiting two years for him and to be ready for this, he's going to jail for 10-20."

"He's a fucking idiot," Bryce growled. How many times had he told Vince to get out of his funk, get up off his fucking ass and go get the girl? And what did Vince choose to do? Fuck up everything and get caught for his friend's stupid idea while they all bailed. Fucking stupid!

"I knew something wasn't right. I came down under a fake name so no one would know I was here, which was why I cut you off on the cell line but I thought you'd wanna know."

He watched as she shrugged, took a pull of Coke, kicked back into the seat back of the booth all nonchalantly, like it wasn't no thing. Trying to pretend she wasn't bothered. "Since you barely knew me then, I'm betting there's more to this than you thinking I deserve to know."

"Yeah, well, I thought you might wanna help me smuggle him outta the hospital and into my truck where I planned to kidnap him across the Canadian border, but the longer I been sitting here the worse an idea that sounds."

Bryce barked out a quick laugh. It slipped out and surprised him, but she was just like he remembered her, sitting up in this bar saying things to shock the shit out of him. She was going to help Vince become a fugitive of the law, and she just sat there kicked back in a dingy booth in some jeans and a wifebeater, reclining with a rum and coke and announced it to him like she was telling him the weather. "Just like that?"

She sighed, pushed curls out of her face with a distracted air. "No, not just like that. He's fucked up B. Tubes and shit everywhere fucked up. They're fairly sure the cops won't try to move him out of the real hospital into the prison one for a week or two, but dependent on how much recovering he does in the mean time, there won't be anything just like that about it. Its gonna be fuckin' hard. How'm I supposed to get someone who practically doubles my weight and can't hardly walk down off the 14th floor alone and have no one notice?"

"Better start by drugging him unconscious because otherwise he's not going to go with you anyway. Do you know what'll happen to you if you do pull this off and then get caught not only aiding and abetting a fugitive, but also helping that fugitive cross state and international lines? You'll end up in jail right along with him!"

"That about summarizes his opinion of the whole idea, yeah. But maybe if he was free, there'd be a chance someone could come up with an idea to get the charges dropped. Besides, Jesse's right, who's gonna think to look for him in redneck Hicksville where I'm from?"

"Maybe no one, but how the fuck do you intend to get him there if he's that hurt?" Bryce was frantically trying to come up with a way he could see making it work. He didn't want Vince somewhere where he'd never see him again, but he wanted him in jail for the rest of his youth even less.

"I just don't know." Tempest shrugged, looking down into what was left of her drink. "I mean, in theory the back of the truck is big enough for him to lay stretched out with the rear seats down. It'd be dangerous, but it's that or jail." She pulled a face and finally met his eyes again. "I'm being selfish. I don't want him to go away when we've just gotten this second chance. I don't know if I could wait 20 years for him to get out."

Bryce shrugged back at her. "Well, realistically if they're saying 10-20 it's more likely gonna end up on the 10 end. They'll be tossing the 20 out there to try and intimidate him into turning in the team, which you already correctly realized he'll never do. But if he gets sentenced to 10 years, if he mostly behaves himself, he'll be out in 5."

"Yeah, if we find some really really awesome lawyer willing to take on his case for free. I can't afford to hire him some hotshot lawyer. And Vince, behave himself? You think there's a chance of that happening?"

"Yeah, he mostly keeps to himself so it comes across as good behaviour. And I can get him a lawyer but I don't think it's going to help much when we both know he's going to refuse to play ball and make a deal, give up the rest of his friends."

Tempest tipped her head back against the seat. "Yeah, that's what I thought. What am I meant to do here?" Bryce only shrugged so she continued. "I have Jesse begging and encouraging me to break the law and kidnap him, and I'm tempted. But he won't go, and there are cops everywhere, and I doubt a 35 hour car ride is going to be good for him in the state he's in. But under it all is the fact I don't want to leave him here again. I don't know if I can leave him here again. I told myself the next time I came back here would be when he came and made me, or when I came down to kill him because he didn't come make me."

Bryce looked at the woman he could love like a sister and thought of the man who was his brother, laying in the hospital and too ridiculously loyal to even get in contact with his own brother to let him know what was up, out of some misguided thoughts of protecting what was left of his family. He felt all his long held convictions start to crumble into dust. Vince was supposed to grow up enough to go get the girl. He wasn't supposed to end himself up in jail. The one woman he could imagine his brother settling down enough with to buy a house, get a real job and make a real life for himself over was going to end up out of his reach, because a woman like her wouldn't wait 10 or 15 years to have him. Would she?

It was a risk he wasn't willing to take. "How do you know they won't just trace you back to who you really are and find him?"

"I had a friend take care of it."

He got a feeling like he wasn't going to get anything else out of her. "How so?"

Tempest just stared at him after he asked his question. She didn't want to implicate Angelo. But when she took a step back to analyze the situation she realized she was asking Bryce to break the law on the strength of her position. Her plan. "Well, he's a bit of a super hacker. Cracker, whatever term they use for it these days. Black hat, Jesse tells me, which means he has no trouble doing what he does for profit and illegal purposes. I just, I dunno," she shook her head. "I knew that whatever saw Leon not call me about all this was that bad that I didn't want anyone to know who I was or why I was here, you know?"

"Back to Leon again, huh?"

Tempest felt herself getting defensive. Who was Bryce to question her relationship with Leon? "Yeah, Leon. Who's been a fucking way better friend to me lately than your boy. At least he called me every once in awhile, sent emails, made an effort. I haven't heard from Vince since the day I caught him with some random blonde whore in the basement and left."

"I just want you to be clear about what you're getting into here if you go through with it, Doll. If you actually make a break for it across country boarders with a fugitive with you, you're gonna be stuck with him for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever. There won't be any going back or moving on. He'll be with you and you and I both know, no matter what you think of him or whether or not you want him back as your boyfriend, he's never going to see you with another man. If you go through with this, it's you and him, likely forever unless one of you kills the other or he gets cleared and comes home. There will be no option for you to pick Leon if that's what you want, if you go through with this."

"If I wanted to pick Leon I could have done it at any point in the last two years," Tempest pointed out in a tone of voice which made it clear she was pissed at Bryce and thought he had the mental abilities of a small child.

"Fair enough. I'm still not sure what about this Angelo guy and whatever he's done for you makes you sure you won't be found out and busted."

"Well, Angelo gave me a fake identity which he added into the database of Social Security as Jesse's sister. So any checks they do on me will turn up real enough records of Jessica Adams. Real records of my company, my birth, identity, all of it. Plus he gave me fake registration papers and VIN numbers for the truck, fake credit cards. If anyone asks after the real Tempest, work thinks I've been with Angelo and Angelo will have no trouble lying for me, being my alibi and faking CCTV footage to prove I was at his if he has to. My car's been parked there for the whole time. I figure before anyone would suspect me they'd just figure that Vince broke out of the hospital and ran off to Mexico to find the rest of his friends."

"You're super good friends with a hacker who got into the US government computers? He's good enough that this is gonna hold water?"

"He got into the US government computers! You even need to ask how good he is when he faked me a life?"

"I don't know that much about computers," Bryce answered on a shrug.

"Well, he's been at it since he was 13 and has only been caught once, across two different countries on two continents. I think that says something about how good he really is. I'd actually appreciate it if you never told anyone else I even told you he's done this. He's not even supposed to own a computer anymore on fear of going back to jail. Some hack he did leaked some top secret military secret and caused them to lose some big contract to a subcontractor."

"Fair enough." Bryce looked at her sitting across from him. In a split second his mind was made up. Her friends were obviously fiercely loyal to her given one of them had executed a crime sure to send him back to jail if he was found out, and in his opinion that generally meant they thought enough of you that you deserved it. "Take me to my brother and I'll talk him into this. Then we'll figure out how we're going to pull it off."

Her head tipped to one side, studying the look on his face. It seemed she found whatever she was looking for there. "Salute," with a shrug, she held what was left of her drink up in mock toast, before draining it in one long drink. A thought occurred to Tempest before she moved to get up out of the booth. "How much trouble are you? There are cops all over the place around Jesse and Vince. Are they going to take one look at you and know we're up to something?"

"Shouldn't do. I've been pretty careful not to get caught. The few convictions I have aren't things every cop in L.A. is just going to know me on sight over."

"Ok. You riding in the truck with me or making your own way?"

"I'll ride with you." Bryce stood and held his hand down to the girl. He was surprised when she took it and accepted his help to stand. He was struck again by how exhausted she looked. "You trust me enough to let me drive? You look like the walking dead." She pulled a face his way, sticking her tongue out childishly.

"I feel like the walking dead." She handed over the keys with a sigh. "I just want this to go away. I want to wake up 4 days ago and head to work, and finish the car I was working on, get assigned to another, and find myself in my Altima at 5 o'clock on the way home like I always do. I want to go home, feed my dog, go for a run, and not think about him again all night until I'm so tired I finally pass out and get some sleep. I want this to all be a bad nightmare."