“I thought they took it pretty damn good,” Itch tells Hunter, standing like a stranger between him and Nugget. “Figured they’d take it out of my salary for selling their shit, that I’d get everything straight when we got back from Cali.” Fixing his half helmet, sliding on his shades and leather jacket. “Who am I riding shotgun with?”

“You mean riding bitch? Sure as shit ain’t me,” Nugget tells him.

“Thought they took it pretty good? And you think somebody who grows weed in Kentucky for a living just lets people do that?” Hunter asks, sliding on a pair of black leather gloves with skulls decorating the knuckles. He fires up his motorcycle.

Yelling over the engine, Itch says, “Well, when you put it like that, I s’pose not. But I ain’t like everybody else.”

“You got that right,” Hunter tells him. “Get your bony ass and half-baked brain on the back, but remember, no fucking foreplay.”

Itch slides onto the back and tenderly wraps his beefy arms around Hunter’s chest.

Hunter says, “Cut the shit.” Pauses and asks, “Why would you pull some shit like that? That’s like me building a custom bike for a customer for an agreed price and they decide to only pay me half after all the time and money I put into it. Thinking they’ll pay the rest in their own sweet-ass time.”

“Like I said, I’s thinking I’d get the rest of the money when we got back from our trip.”

Beside Hunter, Nugget shakes his head. He runs a hand over his smooth skull, then pulls on a pair of leather gloves. Laughing, he talks over the rumble of the bikes. “It’s like Hunter told you: they took your bike as collateral. Now we gotta go and get it back. Fix your fuck-up. How much you owe them to get it out of hock?”

Itch holds up three fingers.

“Three hundred?” Nugget yells. “That ain’t so bad.”

Itch twists his head vigorously from left to right. “No. I’s three grand shy.”

Nugget and Hunter yell as one, “Three fucking grand?”

“Yeah. I—”

“Stop!” Hunter demands. Holding up a gloved hand to stop any more words from falling out of Itch’s mouth. “I don’t wanna know why. Seriously, I don’t wanna know.”

Nugget yells, “I’m sure it’s got to do with a fair-skinned, shit-stompin’ maiden named Dani.”

Dani. About five feet five inches. Toned and covered with more ink than the Sunday comics. Raven locks of hair all the way to a truly memorable ass. She doesn’t take any shit from man or beast. And if she wants what Itch has, she’ll just take it—leave him with the responsibility or else resolve to fix any problems that might arise from her actions. And she loves to fill her lungs with a long, luxurious drag of that wacky tobacky.