There was really no good argument to that, so I took a deep breath to push back my anxiety, and climbed on the bike behind him, pausing for a long second before letting myself slide forward.
I'd been close to Che many times in the past. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, bent over the engine of my car, we'd almost constantly been brushing against one another. And back then, I'd been all-too aware of the way his skin felt, the way it made me feel when it touched me. Even though he seemed wholly unaffected.
That was forever ago, though, I reminded myself. It wasn't like I was that same, silly girl with a crush on her older male friend.
I was a grown-ass woman. I wasn't going to get little tingles of electricity if my thighs went around his legs, if my arms went around his midsection.
Though as I slid into place, there was no denying there was a tiny spark at each contact, just a flicker of a flame that quickly blew out when Che started the bike and sped off.
I shouldn't have been nervous.
Of course Che would learn to handle his bike the way he'd learned to handle his car. With a sort of effortless precision, never taking any turns too fast or braking too hard.
Within a few minutes, we were in a small town on the edge of Golden Glades, climbing off the bike on a corner near a pizza place, its neon circle sign on even in the broad daylight.
"You still like pizza, right?" he asked, hesitating when I didn't immediately move to follow him.
"I would eat the bark off a tree right now," I admitted, putting the helmet on the seat since Che had left his as well. I guess when you were a local one-percent biker, you didn't have to worry about someone stealing it.
The inside of the pizza place was about what you expected with booth-style tables with ugly red laminate tops featuring shiny metal napkin holders and shakers full of oregano and parmesan.
Che went up to order, then came back, sliding a soda across the table toward me as he twisted the top off his water.
"Okay," he said, taking a deep breath. "You wanted to talk."
"Right," I agreed, suddenly nervous. I'd been running on pure adrenaline and desperation when I'd shown up at his clubhouse. Now, though, all I felt was tired and unsure. "God, where do I start?" I grumbled, raking a hand through my hair.
"You're in trouble," Che prompted.
"Yes," I agreed, even if admitting that left a sour taste in my mouth.
"What kind of trouble?"
"A bullet wound in my ass kind of trouble," I told him, watching as the words landed, making shock and then concern cross his too-handsome face.
"What?"
"It's nothing. It's just a graze."
"Sass, anything that involves a bullet and your skin is not nothing. Who shot you?"
"Yeah, that's the part that I need help with," I admitted. "I don't know."
"Who would you piss off enough to have taken a shot at you?" he asked. "What have you gotten into?"
"After a couple years, the racing thing got old. Cops are cracking down hard across the country. But especially in the bigger cities. And that's where the money is," I told him, grabbing a couple napkins just to keep myself busy, not wanting to watch him stare at me while I told him the story.
"So, what did you do?"
"I decided to put my skills to another use," I told him, looking over to watch as realization crossed those dark eyes of his.
"You became a wheelman."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "Yes."
"Why?"
"What else was I going to do?" I asked. "I'd spent my late teens and most of my twenties doing illegal street racing as a sort of profession. You don't go from that to answering phones at a dental office."
"You could."
"I couldn't," I said, shaking my head. "Any more than you could go from racing to anything other than chopping cars and running guns. We thrive too much on the chaos. Junkies through and through, that's what we are," I said, pausing when the server came over with a pizza on a metal stand, putting it between us, dropping some plates, and moving off.
"How long?"
"About four years. But it's not exactly steady work. But I've had some big payouts. Worth the risk kinds of payouts," I added. The cash was all sitting pretty in several safety deposit boxes up and down the eastern seaboard.
I kept expenses low, what with living on the road and all. There was no reason to keep an apartment somewhere that would be empty most of the time. So I just did short-term rentals wherever I was looking for work or helping plan a job. Food and cheap motel rooms, that was all my life had been for the past several years. It sounded sad when you thought of it that way, but I had enjoyed every minute of it.
"I'd finally started making a name for myself. Which led to bigger and bigger clients. Which was what brought me back down to Miami a few weeks back," I told him, watching as he pulled a slice of pizza off the tray, the cheese holding onto the pie for dear life before finally giving up the fight. Once he dropped it on a plate, he passed it to me.
"The deal was to eat and talk at the same time," he reminded me.
And, really, I didn't need any more prompting than that.
I didn't come up for air again until the first piece was nothing but a crust. Which Che pulled off of my plate and onto his own in an old, familiar way, before he passed me another slice.
"Who did you get involved with?" he asked, raising a brow when my gaze darted away, uncomfortable. "Hey, if you want my help, I need to know what I am getting into here, Sass."
"It was for the Triad," I told him, wincing a little.
"As in the Chinese mafia Triad?" he clarified.
"The one and the same," I agreed.
"So they are after you."
"Not exactly. I don't know who is after me, actually."
"Okay, explain it to me from the beginning," he demanded.
"Well, someone came up to me when I was at a gas station. Gave me a password I gave to clients so they could share it, and I would know people were approaching me for jobs. He gave me a time and place."
"You just walk into meetings with strange criminals, and no backup," he cut in, sounding frustrated.
"I've never had anyone," I reminded him, the words stinging more than they should have after living that way for so long. "Anyway. It was a good meeting. They laid out my part of the job. They asked if I was interested. When I agreed, they gave me half of the money upfront. And, ah, it was a lot of money," I told him. It was nestled in a safety deposit bank in Miami still, out of reach since it was too risky to be seen anywhere right then.
"Did you do the job?"
A bitter little laugh escaped me right then.
I'd played that night over and over in my head, trying to see where it could have gone wrong, if something might not have matched up to the plan exactly.
I couldn't find a single flaw. Nothing I had done was wrong.
Yet here I was, missing a little chunk of ass. And scared for my life. Begging for help from a man I hadn't seen in nearly a decade.
"Yeah."
"And?"
"And I don't know. I got the package. I was on my way to the drop. And then I was driven off the road."