The thing sticks to my face like a surrender flag from hell.
I get it peeled off one eye, then the other, fighting wind and fabric while the bike wobbles under me. For one hot second, I figure it has to be the Depraved Sinners MC. Those dumb bastards have been circling our county line like buzzards with tattoos, still licking wounds after the last mess and too stupid to understand that the Kings of Anarchy don’t forget a slight, a threat, or a debt. I can already picture one of them bastards hiding in the trees with a slingshot and a death wish.
That thought almost makes me smile.
Almost.
Then the fabric slaps my mouth, and I taste fancy laundry soap.
I slow hard, gravel spitting under my tires as I pull onto the shoulder just past Dead Man’s Curve. My boots hit pavement. Widowmaker settles into a rough idle, shaking through my bones while I snatch the offensive weapon off my helmet and hold it out in the headlight.
A pair of panties dangles from my fist.
Big ones.
White ones.
The kind of drawers a woman wears when she’s either given up on men entirely or decided comfort matters more than seduction, which is a respectable choice in theory and a tragic waste in practice.
I stare at them.
They stare back, limp and innocent.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
A laugh comes out of me before I can stop it. Not a pleasant one. Not the sort that invites anyone close. It’s the rough bark of a man ready to commit violence who instead finds himself holding some woman’s drawers on the side of a cursed road.
I look around, half expecting phones pointed my way, club brothers hiding in the tree line, maybe Oaks wheezing himself stupid because somebody finally found a way to make me look foolish.
Nothing.
Just Hell Road.
Trees.
Fog low in the hollows.
My headlight painting the panties ghost-white.
For one second, the old Widow story crawls up the back of my neck.
Pale thing in the road.
Men see her too late.
I look toward the ditch.
Nothing moves except fog and weeds.
“Real funny,” I mutter to no one, because talking to a haunted road feels less stupid when you’ve just been assaulted by underwear.
Then I see the truck.
It sits thirty yards ahead, angled crooked on the shoulder with the front end dipped low. The right front tire is flat, shredded against the rim. Cardboard boxes lie scattered behind it like the vehicle coughed up somebody’s whole life. Clothes. A laundry basket. A busted lamp. A plastic tub tipped sideways with shoes spilling out. A cheap coffee maker cracked open in the gravel. A small blue sock. A stack of paper plates fanned across the blacktop like somebody tried to host a picnic during a breakdown.
A stuffed dinosaur lies face-down near the ditch, one plastic eye looking up at my headlight like it died with questions.
Someone’s moving.