The Lost Chapters
Part 5

The Motel turned out to be a 6, but I was grateful for a bed that wasn't concrete. After I paid for the room, I found him rifling through the trash bag. The drugs he collected in his hands and upended into a drain. He caught my surprise - rightly so. He'd just ditched what looked to me like a few grand's worth of Grade-A narcotics without batting an eyelid.

'Just the money and guns. Drugs are always a pain in the ass.'

He pulled away his bandana and sunglasses and smiled. He had a lot of small scars, all over his face, cutting up his eyebrows and lips with little nicks and cuts. Still, it was a little charismatic - for a disfiguring facial wound, he carried it well.

'Plus, it keeps the cops off' my back. A few gang-bangers get killed, no problem, but if a few k's of heroin resurface after I hit a dealer?' He waved his hands. 'Ooh, do they ever get pissed.'

I found myself cracking a smile of my own. Mass murderer, thief and mutilated though he may be, you couldn't help but like the bastard.

I took my bags up to my room. Not much point in unpacking, I'd only paid for the night. Sitting back on the bed, trying to avoid thinking about the smell the sheets were giving off, I tried to break the ice.

'Thanks. For back there.'

'Don't,' he shook his head, 'I'd been trailing them all day. I was going to jump them tonight, but when they started on you, I couldn't wait.'

He gestured to my jacket.

'Not a smart move, wearing that around here. Not any more.'

I could begin to imagine, what with the clubhouse, but I was still missing most of the jigsaw.

'There was a lot of shit about a month ago. The Liberty City Chapter pretty much collapsed on itself. Politics, that sort of thing. Now the A.O.D. have just about locked down the whole city, apart from the Uptown Riders, but that's not saying much.' He left a beat, then, '...you're not Lost. Not full chat, anyway.'

'I flew in this morning. From England.' I explained. He didn't need to know everything.

He just nodded, then looked closer at me. 'You're not into anything serious, maybe boosting...not drugs. Let me guess - you work for a motor shop with a sideline in custom parts, right?'

Motherfucker.

'How the hell did you know that?'

'It's a gift. I can read people pretty well. Plus, you look like a girl who wasn't into all the pink stuff as a kid. Your dad take you to his workshop on weekends?'

I flinched - immediately, he pulled it back.

'Ah. Okay.' Smoothly switching to another track, he offered his hand. 'We didn't get introduced. It's Scott.'

I just waved a hand. Not spiteful, but I didn't feel like touching. Bad memories can do that to you - just make you want to curl up.

'Emily.'

Tucking the hand back in his pocket, Scott nodded. 'Okay. Well, Emily, I'm going to keep an eye on you for today, in case any A.O.D. brothers try and get some payback. You won't see me, you won't have to talk to me again. But you go straight to the airport, get on a plane and fly back home. This isn't a good place for a girl on her own with affiliations like the ones you've got.'

'No!' Didn't mean to shout it. 'No. I can't go back yet.'

'...looking for family?'

That was it. The fucker was reading my bloody mind.

'Just go away! I mean, thanks, really, but leave me alone! I don't need protecting!'

Someone in the room next door thumped on the wall. Without thinking I thumped it in reply, then got up and gestured to the door.

'Go. Please.'

'Okay.' Scott slipped his sunglasses back on and stepped outside. He put his hands on the railing, looking out across the cityscape. 'If you need-'

I slammed the door.

The next few hours were devoted to damage control. Shower, check for cuts and bruises, change into fresh clothes, sort hair. The clubhouse had fucked everything sideways - and now the other gang in town was out for my guts. The jacket went in a bag. After a little thought, I switched my top for something tight and cropped. Try not to look like a biker girl.

By the time I was finished, my stomach was grumbling about the treatment it had gone through. One quick phone call to a pizza place and it decided to call it quits.

TV reception was worse than what I was used to, but still serviceable. The news was all over the shooting - 'Latest Alderny Bloodbath' probably said more about the area than my luck in particular. There were no names, but plenty of gory crime scene photographs. When the anchorman warned that 'Some viewers may find the following images distressing.' I laughed through a mouthful of crust and Texas BBQ sauce.

Distressing? I'd show them fucking distressing. Try wearing two different kinds of someone else's bodily fluids in a ten-minute period, then come and ask me about distressing. Christ.

The rest of the day just crawled by. I couldn't think of what to do next. Cops were out of the question, so was trawling the bars, I'd just get more A.O.D. attention. And I'd just turfed out the one person I'd come across that had given a fuck about me, even if he was some gun-toting vigilante Scarface tribute act.

Way to go, Emily. Good to see those Critical Thinking classes paid off. Fuck.

Night came and went as unobtrusively as a considerate date-rapist, only without the funny aftertaste in the morning. By the time I got up, it was 11AM, a few hours shy of when I'd wanted to get up, get proactive, get motivated.

Bollocks.

It was getting close to 2PM by the time I got out of bed. Mainly because I'd run out of leftover pizza. I clomped down to the reception desk and asked when I was due to check out. The guy behind the desk had me registered and fully paid for two weeks. I damn near shat myself in surprise.

Then, he goes and pulls out a brown paper back from under the counter, neatly sealed with scotch tape. He explained that the guy who'd paid for the room left it for me. Grabbing a can of Coke from the machine, I ran up to my room like it was Christmas with a suspicious relative.

Carefully, I tore away the taped top and opened it up.

About $2,000 in mixed notes wrapped with a rubber band, a piece of paper with a landline and a mobile number on it and, inside a roll of chamois leather, a Glock 17 with a zip-lock baggie of 9mm rounds.

Scott - you're a true fucking gent.