She swallowed hard, tears finally spilling over her eyelashes.
“My little brother, Leo. He’s inside.”
Rooster’s head snapped toward the shattered diner doors.
He remembered the wheezing little boy sleeping in the booth.
“Stay here,” Rooster commanded.
He pulled out a heavy, blocky cell phone and dialed a number.
“Yeah, it’s Rooster. I’m at the diner on Highway 99. Send a prospect down here with a truck to watch my bike. Now.”
He hung up, scooped Rebecca up into his arms as effortlessly as if she were a child, and carried her back into the diner.
He set her down gently in a booth, then walked over to the back corner.
Little Leo, miraculously undisturbed by the shouting and breaking glass, was still sleeping under his pile of winter coats, his breathing ragged and labored.
When the paramedics arrived ten minutes later, they found a bizarre scene: a badly bleeding teenage waitress, a shattered storefront, and a terrifying, legendary outlaw biker sitting in a booth, carefully holding a sleeping six-year-old boy wrapped in a pink blanket so his older sister could get her arm bandaged.
As they loaded Rebecca onto the gurney, she panicked, reaching out for her brother.
“I can’t afford an ambulance. Please, I can’t pay for this.”
“I’m riding in the back with the kid,” Rooster told the lady EMT, his tone leaving absolutely no room for debate.
He looked down at Rebecca, his scarred face impassive.
“Don’t worry about the bill, kid. Just keep breathing.”
Five days later, the reality of Rebecca’s life came crashing down with absolute, merciless precision.
Her left arm was stitched up and bound in thick white gauze. The diner’s owner, terrified of the violence and the broken glass, had let her go over the phone, offering nothing but a half-hearted apology.
The eviction notice taped to her apartment door had officially expired at 8:00 a.m.
It was noon now.
The sky over Bakersfield was a bruised, heavy gray.
Rebecca sat on a taped-up cardboard box in the middle of her empty, dingy living room. Leo was sitting on a deflated air mattress beside her, playing quietly with a broken plastic fire truck.
She had two suitcases, thirty-eight dollars, and nowhere to go.
The homeless shelter downtown had a three-week waiting list.