Harper’s stomach dropped, and she bolted for the driver’s door. But the man was already inside, slamming the door in her face and hitting the lock.
“You can have my bike,” he shouted through the glass, shifting into drive. “It’s worth more, anyway.”
He meant it. He was really going, and he was taking her Baby with him. Harper ran for the front of the car, whether to throw herself in front of it or to try to reach the open passenger’s window, she didn’t know, but he was already pulling away, and the car peeled out before she could take more than a couple of steps, narrowly missing her toes and making a wide U-turn before heading north along the road.
She stood frozen in the dust of the tires for half a second, her heart hammering a frantic beat.
Damn. Damn, damn, damn.
There was no way in hell she was going to let anyone take her Baby. Her brother Cory had had it towed home for her sixteenth birthday, and she’d spent hundreds of hours restoring it in the old barn with her brothers. It was the thing she cared about most in the world.
She ran back to the bike, the heels of her boots digging into the ground. A Ducati, she saw, and she was sure that her original estimate of its value wasn’t wrong. If the bike wasn’t hot—and seeing as she’d just gotten it from a car thief, how likely was that?—she’d come off better from the swap.
But she didn’t want to come off better. She wanted Baby.
Of course he hadn’t left the keys. That would make it too easy. And the steering column was locked in place by the pin that kept people like her from just hotwiring the bike and riding off on it.
But steering locks were easy enough to defeat. And she knew how, having driven Summer’s brother over to the old Martin place to get his bike back when Mason Martin had taken it. The only thing that kept the steering wheel from moving was a small metal pin, and she had the handlebars to use as a lever against it, plus all the strength in her legs….
She flung herself onto the seat of the motorcycle, grabbing the seat with both hands, and pulled her legs up against her belly, balancing her feet against the very end of the handle that was turned closest to her. And she pushed, hard, the muscles in her legs and butt and stomach straining.
It gave with a snap so sudden that the tire jerked the other direction, and Harper was nearly flung from the seat. She caught her balance just in time to keep from going over—and maybe even pulling the motorcycle down on top of her.
The front wheel turned freely. Now it was just a matter of getting the motorcycle started. That was simplicity itself, but every second she took meant that Baby was getting farther and farther away.
Harper groped under the carbon fiber cover near the ignition, finding where the wires of the electrical system ended in plugs that slotted into each other. She pulled apart the one that went to the ignition. All she needed now was a wire to short it out.
She separated a single wire from its bundle and flicked her pocket knife open with her thumb. In a few seconds, she had a short length of wire, the plastic housing stripped from the ends, and the motorcycle’s left turn signal was toast. She slid the wire securely into the slots on the ignition plug, and several symbols on the dash lit up.
Bingo.
She raised the kickstand with the back of her ankle boot and checked the kill switch. Shifting to neutral, she pulled the clutch and hit the starter. The engine roared to life.
She gave the empty road in front of her a grim smile as she eased up on the clutch and shifted into first.
Hold on, Baby. I’m coming for you.
And that bastard Levi was going to learn a lesson. Bad boy or not, no one messed with Baby.
The motorcycle leaped forward.
