Hounds of Hell MC 3: Axel

Axel

It was a cold February morning. Alexander Harper had just sat down with his first cup of coffee when his phone hummed in his pocket. When he pulled it out and looked at the screen, he saw the call was from Cowboy Pete’s, a local gas station just off the interstate.

“This is Axel,” he said, using the road name he’d been given by Razor when he’d been a prospect.

“Hey, hon. How are you?” He recognized Elsie Damron’s voice. She’d worked at the gas station since he was a kid.

“Cold,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”

“A young lady stopped for gas a little while ago,” Elsie explained. “She filled it up but now her car won’t start.”

“You give her bad gas?” Axel asked, grinning.

“No,” Elsie said. “Well, I hope not. There’s smoke rolling out from under the hood. Looks like it’s overheating to me. Can you come take a look at it?”

“Yeah.” Axel knew the quiet morning was too good to be true. Putting the call on speaker, he placed his phone on his desk, grabbing a tie from his desk drawer to pull his hair back from his face. “Did you already call Tyler? I appreciate the business, but it would be a lot closer, and cheaper, to tow it to his place.”

“Yeah, I know,” Elsie said, her voice dropping to a loud stage whisper. “But I think you would be better for this particular situation.”

“Okay, I’ll head that way,” he told her. “What’s she driving?”

“He’s going to come get you,” Elsie said to someone there with her. To Axel, she said, “Yeah, it’s an older sedan. A Lincoln, I think. What model year is your car?”

Axel couldn’t make out what the other person said.

“It’s a 2002 model,” Elsie told him.

“Give me thirty minutes,” Axel said, ending the call.

Taking his coffee with him, Axel headed back into the shop. His twin brother Ryder was working on an SUV brought in yesterday. Ryder looked up when he saw Axel approach.

“Where you off to?” Ryder asked.

“Got to tow someone in,” Axel told him. “I’ll be back.”

When Axel reached Cowboy Pete’s with the tow truck, there were several cars there. They had a halfway decent grill inside the station, and it was a popular breakfast stop for town regulars and travelers alike. He pulled into the lot and parked, heading in to have Elsie point out the lady and her car.

Elsie grinned when she saw him at the counter. “Thanks for coming, hon. She’s a couple of spaces down from where you parked. The black Lincoln.”

“You bet,” he told her, seeing it in the window behind the counter where the older lady stood.

“Axel?” Elsie called as he headed for the door.

“Yeah?”

“If I can do anything for her, you let me know, okay?” And the kind older woman meant it.

“Will do,” he told her, curious now about what he was walking into.

Axel returned to the tow truck, spotting the black Lincoln that was just three spaces to the right of him with no cars parked in between. It looked like someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. Walking up to the car, Axel tapped on the driver’s window. The lady jumped in the seat, startled. Axel saw a flash of red curls before she peered up at him through the window.

Now Elsie’s words made sense. The young woman’s left eye was black and almost swollen shut. Her nose was swollen and bruised, her lip split. Someone had beat the fuck out of this little lady. Slowly, she opened the door and got out of her car. Her careful movements told him her face wasn’t the only thing that hurt her this morning. Axel stepped back to give her room as she closed the door and leaned back against it.

The way she wrapped her arms protectively around herself and the fear in her green-eyed gaze had him pausing. Now he knew why Elsie called their garage. Tyler wasn’t a bad guy, but he was gruff and lacking in most social niceties.

This young woman before him looked like she’d been through hell and was expecting more.

“Hi there,” Axel said. “Elsie called me to come look at your car. What’s going on?”

“It overheated I think,” she said quietly. “I was okay for a couple of hours. But then it would heat up and it would start smoking. I would stop and let it cool off. I stopped here to get gas and let it cool off again. When I tried to restart it this time, it wouldn’t.”

“Would you pop the hood for me?” Axel asked.

She scrambled back into the driver’s seat, searching for the lever to do that. Just when he was about to offer to do it for her, she found it.

Axel lifted the hood and removed the radiator cap. Walking back around to where she sat behind the wheel with the driver-side door open, he said, “Try starting it.”

It did start but looking into the radiator, he saw the coolant start to bubble up like a milkshake. Walking back toward her, he saw white smoke coming out of the tailpipe in the rear. Well, that wasn’t good news.

“Turn it off,” he told her.

She did as he said, climbing back out of the car.

“Yeah, that’s a blown head gasket,” Axel explained. “The smoke coming out of the back is coolant getting into your exhaust system. It’s not supposed to do that.”

“Can you fix it?” she asked. “H-how long will it take?”

“I can fix it,” he said. “How long it will take depends on a couple of things. I need to find a replacement for the head gasket and if there’s any damage to the engine, we might need parts for that too. Once we have the parts we need, I can have it fixed in two or three days.”

Axel could tell that wasn’t the answer she was hoping to get. It was probably a good idea to get all the bad news out at once.

“It’s also going to be expensive,” Axel told her. “You’re probably looking at two to three thousand dollars to fix it.”

Those big green eyes were getting shiny with tears and Axel felt a tiny bit of panic creeping in. He was no damn good with tears. Never had been. He had to find some way to make the situation the little lady was in less terrible.

“Where are you headed?” he asked. “Do you have any friends or family we can call that will come help you out?”

Dropping her gaze, she shook her head.

“Where are you heading?” Axel tried again.

She shrugged for an answer.

“Do you know if your insurance covers towing?” he asked. If nothing else, it looked like he was going to be towing her back to his garage.

She shook her head. Pretty red curls swung with her movements.

“Do you have your insurance information in the car? We could call,” he offered.

“I don’t have it,” she told him.

Didn’t have a destination. Didn’t have insurance information? What the hell was the situation here? When he gave her the cost of towing the car, she reached into the pocket of her coat, pulled out a credit card, and handed it to him. It was brand-new and shiny. Axel doubted it had ever been used.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m going to run this, and we’ll be on our way.”

She scrambled back into her car like a scared mouse. Axel shook his head as he headed back to his tow truck, reaching in to get the card reader they used for payments. The name on the card was Sadie Downing.

What the hell happened to Sadie?

He ran the card. The transaction went through which surprised him. He walked back to her car, tapping on the window to return her card. Again, she scrambled out of her car, looking around nervously.

Axel just had to ask. “Are you okay? The local hospital is on the way back to the garage.”

“I’m fine,” she said a little too quickly.

“Okay.” He would leave it at that. “Why don’t you go ahead and climb in the tow truck? I’ll get your car hooked up and we’ll get going.”

“Thank you,” she said quickly before making a beeline for the truck, hastily climbing into the cab.

It didn’t take Axel long to hook up her car and get them on the road. Sadie, if that was her name, huddled quietly in the far corner of the cabin with her head leaning on the window. While he normally appreciated the silence, just now it was awkward. He really wanted to ask her what happened. Who did that to her face?

One thing was pretty certain. She was on the run, and she was afraid. Looking at her, he understood why.