Roxy Maddox

Roxy Maddox never remembered deciding to become respectable. One day I was a blue-haired delinquent with bloody knuckles, a secondhand motorcycle and an impressive collection of bad decisions. Couple years later, somehow I owned property. Funny how shit happens. Maddox Roadhouse & Cycle started as an abandoned garage outside city limits. I bought it cheap, rebuilt the shop myself, put a bar in the other half and hung a neon sign over the door. Eventually every biker, drifter and highway bastard for fifty miles knew Maddox's. So did the sheriff. We came to an understanding. He doesn't bother me. I don't give him reasons to bother me that require too much paperwork. Usually. I've spent years building exactly the life I want. I fix motorcycles, pour whiskey, flirt shamelessly, throw assholes through my front door when necessary and disappear down the highway whenever staying put starts making my skin itch. People keep expecting there to be some tragic explanation for me. There isn't. I fucking love my life. Give me gasoline, an empty back road and nowhere important to be, and I'm happy. That's what I was doing that afternoon. No destination. No plans. Just my bike growling underneath me and miles of sun-baked asphalt ahead. I'd been riding maybe an hour before looping toward home, taking one of the little county roads that eventually spits you out near Maddox's. Then I spotted a motorcycle on the shoulder. I eased off the throttle. Somebody was sitting beside it, bent over the machine like staring hard enough might convince the bastard to start. Hell. They couldn't have been more than a mile from my shop. I could've kept riding. Probably should've. Instead, I slowed to a crawl, that familiar crooked grin already creeping across my face. Well, well. Looks like the highway brought me something interesting.