Rosa Jardine pulled her arms tightly around Hanyo Soon’s waist and so pulled herself closer to the young man on the back of the racing motorcycle, resting her head on the shoulder of his black leather jacket, with the wind tugging at her pinned up hair and whipping the long sleeves of her yukata around her. They sped down the empty desert highway, followed by the silver Datsun 280Z and another motorcycle. She looked back at the car following them, seeing only it’s headlights in the dark night surrounding them. She peeked over Hanyo’s shoulder, looking ahead of them into the highway stretching out through the Morongo Valley.

Rosa shouted, “Where are we going?” but the rushing wind stole her words as they left her mouth and she instead ducked down behind Hanyo’s broad shoulders and clasped her hands on his stomach. In a moment of panic, she thought she heard the thumping of helicopter blades coming from the night sky above them, but she only saw the crescent moon and it’s twinkling companions of stars. She again looked back at the car following them, and tried to see past its headlights for another set of headlights behind it, possibly with red and blue flashing lights. She saw a single light of another motorcycle close behind the car, and could barely make out the hulking figure of Skoaler, in his cowboy hat and long black her flying freely, his figure almost dwarfing the bike he was riding.

“Hold on tight, hard left turn!” Hanyo shouted back to her, and the motorcycle decelerated suddenly and banked as he turned off the highway onto a dirt road that banked into a row of rocky hills. The rear wheel of the motorbike spun on the loose gravel and kicked up dust and sand onto the highway pavement, just as the Datsun came up behind them, slowing down and moving onto the curb. Hanyo and Rosa zipped past dry bushes and boulders hugging the edges of the twisting dirt road, not waiting for the Datsun to turn off the highway and follow them. Skoaler brought up the rear soon after, almost spinning out as he slid off the highway. Rosa squeezed Hanyo’s stomach when she looked back to make sure the silver car was still following them, but couldn’t see it clearly through the dust the motorcycle was kicking up in the dim light. Hanyo slowed down a bit and Rosa relaxed her embrace on him, seeing the headlights close in on them again. She tightened her grip again on hearing the sound of sirens in the distance.

They rounded a sharp turn that followed the base of a tall pile of rocks, and raced across an open plain clear of bushes and boulders. They pulled up to a low, rectangular building with double doors, and Hanyo slowed the motorcycle to a stop around the side to a locked door. Hanyo hopped off the bike and helped Rosa get off, and hurried over to the door to unlock it with a key he found in his leather jacket’s pocket. He opened the door in time for the silver Datsun to pull up beside the motorcycle, and Kenji Nobu jumped out, putting on his square wooden sandals and pulling forward his seat to let a young boy and a Husky dog climb out and stand by the low building. Skoaler’s motorcycle roared up and parked it beside Hanyo’s, stepping off it immediately and hurrying through the opened door into the dark interior past Hanyo.

Rosa rushed over to the young boy and embraced him, saying, “Theo! Are you OK?” The Husky jumped up on Rosa, licking her face enthusiastically. “Yes, I’m fine, thanks for asking, Arfie!” She pushed down the white dog with grey and black markings, and looked up to see a slim young woman in the white jumpsuit, step up to her, carrying a large black, square-edged suitcase. “Oh! I wasn’t expecting to see you again!”

The young woman shyly laughed and pulled back her long straight dirty-blonde hair to one side. “No, and nothing tonight was what I expected! I’m Jola. Jola Winters,” she said putting out her hand to Rosa, smiling openly. 

Rosa took the hand to shake it, and then awkwardly let go of it, saying, “Oh right. You have an artificial arm. And legs. I, um…” 

Jola laughed, smacking her arm against the wall of the building next to them. “Right, my stage limbs, as I call them. I don’t wear these all the time, just for the show, they’re really primitive. What I usually wear-“

“Ladies, we must get going,” Kenji interrupted them, putting his hand up to his ear to hear for the siren in the distance. “Sheriff Haught is only a few minutes away from catching up with us.”

“Yeah, c’mon everyone, quickly get in!” Hanyo said loudly, pulling each of them by them inside through the door of the building, lit only by door opening. He ran out over to the double doors and starting pulling them open. “Kenji! Come help me slide these hanger doors open!”

Kenji quickly obliged, and as the men slid open the hangar doors, the dim moonlight spilled into the building, lighting up the interior and revealing a beat-up looking, yellow and orange twin-prop plane. Skoaler was preparing the plane, loading boxes into an opened cabin door on it’s side under the over-fuselage wings.

“This is what will bring us to Ojai? What a piece of junk!” Rosa said angrily, noting the flecked paint and random patterns of patches on the body of the craft.

“Mom, it’s a DeHavilland Canada Twin-Otter,” Theo said, squinting at it in the moonlight. “A DHC-6-300?”

“Close, kid. It’s a 1969 DHC-6-200. Mostly,” Hanyo said proudly, “It’ll take off and land just about anywhere, and has the range to bring us south of the border and back up the coast again.” 

Kenji started crowding everyone together, the siren getting louder and louder, and the flashing blue and red lights could be seen down the road they just rode in on. “Enough chit-chat! Everyone get on the plane now!” Kenji said excitedly, “The Sheriff is almost here, and I have a bad feeling that Dante Valderez is not far behind, too!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***