The Lost Chapters
Part 7

'Dude, easy.' Sale snapped his fingers in front of my face, breaking my silent reverie. 'I've got your back on this - you won't need to go in guns blazing or anything. You won't even need to go near the A.O.D. apart from for the really high-end stuff.'

'I-I'm not sure if I made the right choice...' I began.

'What are you talking about? This is one of the sweetest boosting jobs in the city - only a few bikes a week, and you get a cut out of all the sales. Okay, you may get shot, stabbed, burned or blown up, but it's only an outside chance.'

'I don't need the fucking money!' Hold it - reel in the temper. 'I'm looking for someone, I thought this'd be a good place to start.'

Sale looked me dead in the eye for a few moments, his fingers gently caressing the keyboard. Eventually, he hit a few keys, bringing up five side-profile shots of bikes. Three of them he highlighted in red and shrunk, bringing the other three to the foreground.

'You'll start with these first. One's in the police impound up in Broker, the other two are privately owned - no gang affiliations.'

A printer started hissing and clattering in the mess of hardware.

'Who?'

I wasn't ready for the jumping between topics. Opening up both mental gears in case he jumped ship again, I gave him the short truth. 'I'm looking for my dad. He's...was with the Lost.'

The printer finished, Sale tearing the paper from the machine by the edges, neatly slipping it into my hands.

'Name, Address, Make, Rap Sheet if they've got one, Job, the whole nine yards. The Hellfury's behind a keypad lock - the code's there too.'

Wait for it...

'You know about what happened with the Liberty Chapter?'

Smooth. 'I got a pretty formal introduction. I just want to find him. That's all.' I folded up the paper and stuffed it in my pocket. 'Thanks.'

'Don't mention it.'

As I left, he called out to me, 'You know - Gus may not wanna know your name, but I'm still curious.'

'Ask me in a week, slim.'

-

A word to the uninitiated, there are two mindsets for boosting, the hyped-up, adrenaline fuelled smash and grab mindset and the slow, cool, careful mindset.

Okay, there was a third one, which I was going through. The desperately trying not to make any noise as your entire body seems to be making twenty times as much noise as it should mindset.

I was going for the Hellfury, the one in the North Alderny suburbs with all the security. Well, it was a fence and a keypad, hardly Alcatraz. I was wearing a pair of surgical gloves, so prints weren't an issue, but I didn't pack much black stuff that wasn't leather, so I had to make do with some jeans and a grey t-shirt I'd packed. I always preferred black when I was boosting professionally, made me feel like a real thief.

The keypad was a cinch, the fence rolled back automatically, for a moment my heart leapt into my mouth, it was loud as fuck, clattering to a halt, but not a hint of life from the house.

It was a sexy beast, I had to admit, dark burgundy paint job, polished chrome all over the place, but none of the tassels or stupid little extras that the average rich cunt would stick on a perfectly good bike. I could almost taste it - the feeling of thrumming full-blooded horsepower between my legs.

Some girls had their first 'experiences' at pony club. Mine was at an easy one-fifty down the M4 on a Suzuki Hayabusa. Stuff like that leaves an impression.

Wrangling the ignition with a skeleton key Sale had loaned me, I deactivated the hard brakes, popped the kickstand and wheeled it out into the street. Sneaking a look behind me, still nothing from the house. Fucking slick.

'Hey! Hey! Drop the damn bike!'

I froze. The hell was that?

I looked around and saw, a little old lady, had to be pushing her late 80's, pink dressing gown and curlers in her hair. In fact, the only non-concession to stereotype was the hand cannon tucked into her sash, a massive high-calibre revolver.

What was with this country? Did you get a free gun with each hip replacement or something?

'Drop the bike, missy, or I'll drop your ass.'

Ooooh...shit...

'Okay, okay. Easy.'

I popped out the kickstand. All of a sudden, I was staring down the barrel of the gun.

'It was the fucking kickstand! Jesus! Calm the hell down!' I tried to shout as quietly as I could. I had to talk her down - if she fired that thing, the police in Mexico would hear it.

'Don't use that tone with me, little miss! Get on the floor before I blow your kneecaps off!'

My god. Dementia and heavy firepower - what a sublime mix. I got down on one knee, my eyes darting from the gun to her expression of almost incandescent rage. The gun was shaking like crazy.

I felt the adrenaline roll up my spine like an old friend. With my back foot, I kicked forward, launching myself laterally at her, trying to swat the gun away with one hand. Oh God, please don't break anything.

The cannon went off like a thunderbolt, the echo kept rippling through the air around us. Within seconds, lights were blinking on all around.

Underneath me, the geriatric gunslinger was screaming bloody murder, trying to grab something inside her robe. I didn't know what she was going for, for all I knew it could have been her heart medication or a hand grenade. I just got on my feet and ran to the bike, gutted the engine and peeled out South.

From then on, it was a blur - the lights just streamed into a dream state, sound ebbed away until I was just gliding in a void, navigating through instinct.

It took about an hour to get back to the workshop. No-one was up, so I parked it around the back, draped a tarp over it and headed back out to the street. At this time of night, the only traffic was taxis and pimps and curb crawlers. I flagged one down, a taxi, not a pimp or a curb crawler and got in the back.

'Hospital?'

'What?'

'Dude, you need to go to the hospital.'

I checked myself, I seemed fine.

Oh no.

I patted myself down, then realised I'd left little red spots all down my right hand side. I looked at my hand. Half my ring finger was missing. There was just a partially charred, bloody stump at the end of the second knuckle.

'Just drop me at an all-night pharmacy.'

Great...