Maggie and Greg

"Then take the burger with you," he suggested.

Maggie stood to walk away. "You want me to get this?" she asked.

"Call it a going away present," Greg suggested.

"Okay but I'm not going anywhere. It's your condo and your studio apartment in the meat locker," she said with a laugh.

"You need to go," he said. "Now."

"Yes I do, see you later." Maggie said as she turned again to the door.

After Lunch Greg returned to finish his first Rhinobike. He named it that because of the motor and scooter wheel sitting on top of the front wheel gave the bike the profile of a rhinoceros.

The bells on his front door tinkled, so he turned his attention to the person who entered. "Hello there," he said to the middle aged man who entered.

"Hello, I saw your add on the Local Business line. I'm with the local TV station," he said.

"You mean Portage has a TV station?" Greg asked with false wonder in his voice.

"In a way, we cover news from all over the eastern part of the state. Today I wanted to interview you. Well I do, if you are the owner?" he asked.

"So, you are the one who got stuck with covering the old fart news," Greg commented with a grin."

"We like to call them stories with a local interest," he said smiling

"Come on, you do the happy news," Greg said. "Hey I will be happy to have you cover the story."

"Okay I'll be back tomorrow with a camera man," he said.

"You never told me your name. I don't watch much local news." Greg said.

"Ralph," he said. "Everyone just calls me Ralph."

"Well I'll see you tomorrow Just Ralph," Greg said.

Greg drove his old pickup the twenty plus miles to his condo after he finished with the rhino. He wanted a good night's sleep and a real shower before his TV debut

Ralph was right on time the next morning. They met at the diner where they did the off camera interview conversation, then went right to the shop and began filming.

"So what kind of range do these bikes get," Ralph asked the inevitable question.

"Ralph that is like a car. It just depends. In this area, with our standard battery, a hundred and twenty pound rider could get about a twenty mile ride. Trust me that's about all you want to do on a bike like this."

"So are you going to demonstrate it for our viewers," Ralph asked.

"I'm going to go you one better, I'm going to have my daughter's friend demo it. He has never ridden one of my bikes, so you will either see how easy it is, or how strong they are if he falls off it," Greg said. Needless to say Greg was a little worried. He needn't have been.

Maggie's receptionist took to it instantly. They waited while he rode down the main street of town, then turned and rode past them.

"I want it," he said when he got off. I'm serious, I can ride that to work."

"You realize we are going to edit that blatant commercial out," Ralph said.

"Since I'm not paying for it, you can do anything you want," Greg said. Ralph left with a smile. He had a story so he was satisfied.

"You know I wasn't joking" the receptionist said. "I would really like one of these bikes. My boyfriend is driving me to work now, I would like little more freedom."

"I'll tell you what, maybe we can work something out. Let me see what Maggie thinks. I know I would love to have a dozen of the bikes out there running around town."

"Cool, but I have the money, you don't need to work out anything," the younger man stated.

"We need to work a deal, then you can pick a frame and I'll start work on it." Greg said. "Frankly I'm more interested in the advertising than the profit right now. So how about I do it for cost plus a hundred dollars and you allow me to use you and the bike in my ads and to allow a small tasteful sign on the bike," Greg suggested.

"Sure, so what will it cost with all the discounts?" the kid wanted to know.

"Three hundred bucks, plus the battery you decide to buy. You can save that much just by not having to buy insurance," Greg suggested.

"I'm sold," the kid replied.

"So go pick your frame," Greg said.

"It took a complete day to assemble the bike only because it was a one off build. If he had been organized for a multiple bike build he could have done three in the same amount of time.

Greg also worked out a sticker design, but didn't have one ready since it all had to come by mail. He decided he could build a sign for each side of the bike giving his website address which he had arranged to be very simple to remember. He had wanted the picture of a Rhino on the sign but that proved to be too complicated. So he used a lightning bolt instead. Simple graphic for the first one at least.

"So here is your bike. I don't have any stickers so when they arrive I'm going to put three or less stickers on it," Greg said. "Now decide on the battery size and I'll have it ready by the end of day. You can ride the whole thing home." Greg said.

Maggie's friend chose a 24volt 15amp hour battery. "You are sure that will get me ten miles on a full charge."

"Tell you what, On your next day off, ride the bike to the interstate plaza. The one with the home depot. It is five miles. If you can't get back, I will come get you and build a bigger battery for you."

Greg wasn't sure if the kid did it or not but since he never heard from him, He just figured all was well.

Maggie who was a lot more computer savvy than Greg copied the story from the local TV station for his website. She also put a video of her receptionist on his bike.

It took another month but Greg began to make a small profit. He was down a couple of grand but he had turned the corner. Of course Maggie was going great gun with her clinic.

She needed a lot more money than Greg did to operate. He was glad to see the traffic in his parking lot for that reason.

It had taken Gregory a few months to turn the corner, but he never doubted that he would. In the geographical area where he was located, the Motobike would have to be a hit. The number one reason was that he was in a good flat area. The number two reason was that he was in a position to offer service and a guarantee. The third reason was also geographic in nature. It was the weather of course. The weather at the coast was warm enough to ride everyday. Some days one might get wet, and a couple of days there was a damp cold, but it was never so wet or so cold that the bike wouldn't perform. With the exception of a hurricane.

Hell he even offered a roadside assistance program for the buyer who wanted it all and was willing to pay for it. There were only two of those purchased in the first six months. Most people bought the bikes for basic transportation.

Once they were a few Motos on the road the business grew steadily. The $499 stripped down Rhino model was the bike of choice of the college kids and the working poor.

The batteries Greg built carried a one year guarantee because the cells were expected to last two years. If they had been new they would have had a two year guarantee from the manufacturer. Greg had been bidding on the battery lots from the government himself lately. He won a few auction which meant there was a battery storage room outside the building.

He also sold a $39.99 battery charger. The batteries arrived at Greg's shop already charged but he checked them anyway. He recommended that the bike owner not leave them on the charger more than six hours. He knew that they were probably safe on the standby mode of his charger for a couple of days. Since six hours was the time needed to recharge even a fully drained pack, it should be more than enough to recharge from any days ride. He also recommended that, if the bike had not be used over the last week, it be recharged till the green light came back. Usually that took no more than a half hour.

That battery plan came only after Greg was sure the bike could be made well enough to be guaranteed for the full year as well.

His wheel on a wheel design was bullet proof. If the client was so inclined, Greg could get a heavier duty set of wheels for a custom build. The custom builds would be few he expected.

Greg even made himself a custom paint booth for shooting the bikes. If he repainted it added a very few bucks to the cost of the bike. There were only two colors available for the Repainting. One was a traffic cone orange, that almost glowed in the dark, and the other was stealth black.

The stealth black came with the custom 48volt hub motor rat rod. That mother was way to fast to be on the road, but some of the kids liked to run around at forty five miles and hour on a bike.

On the rat rod the beefed up wheels were standard, because Greg didn't want to get sued. The 48volt front wheel hub motor came directly from China as did the 48volt rear hub motor he used. The two motor was the reason the bike would do forty mile and hour or so.

Also standard with the rat rod was a $1999.00 price tag. Greg had built one Rat Rod to show to clients, but never expected to sell it.

Their second spring arrived with Greg and Maggie both working hard but also financially secure.

Greg based his success on the simple shoe box method of accounting. When there was a lot of money left in the computer program called shoe box, for the three consecutive months, Greg called the business successful.

Maggie's success formula was simple, when she was able to stop drawing from the government loan account and start to repay it and start too pay her father rent on the her half of the condo and the space in his parking lot she considered her clinic a success.

She could relocate both her closet and the clinic by the end of the first year but she was perfectly happy with the arrangement. Well happy enough not to change anything.

Greg was spending most of his days at the shop, so when she took a day off she had the condo to herself mostly. She even brought men home with her. They were for the most part men she met on Wrightsville Islands. In the summer they might be college kids, in the winter they might be businessmen attending a convention either way it wasn't difficult to attract them.

To be honest there had been only one of each, and they both had rooms in the motels where she met them. She also stayed there, but the point was she could have taken them home.

The only man she did take home was a computer IT man. He had come to repair her computer system at the clinic. He did things to her she had never experienced before. He visited her whenever they happened to be available at the same time. Hell she even called him to check his schedule.

Greg didn't worry about Maggie not being home on time, since he after six months he lost track of her schedule. Even when he knew her schedule, he didn't know it. That was because things could change at the last minute.

Greg's love life was even more complicated. His problem was much different from Maggie's.

Greg was still on the very sunny side of sixty. He owned his own business, and had no medical issues. Well no obvious ones for Maggie to find.

So widows and divorced women of all ages where attracted to him. In the terms of his generation, Greg was quite a catch. Greg had also been called an inspired lover by more than one women. He had no idea what exactly that meant, but assumed that it was a passing mark.

Also in his favor was an inland condo within a twenty minute drive of the beach. It was also a thirty minute ride via motobike. The shop was about the same distance further inland from the condo.

After the first year both he and Maggie were happy with their positions. There day to day lives were enhanced by a woman who came in every two weeks to clean the condo and do the laundry. She worked a full day because Greg and Maggie were both slobs. On those days Greg went home for lunch at 11am and Maggie either went or sent the receptionist at 2pm.

Both Maggie and her father like to be sure the maid was working. The two them were not trusting people. The wasn't their Aunt Lucy she was just a stranger from a cleaning service. She was sent by a service recommended to her for the clinic. The service also had contracts with Realtors and other businesses.

Greg and his daughter thought they had the world by the ass. That all came crashing down on a sunny Wednesday morning during the second June since their arrival in Portage.

Greg heard the siren pull into the parking lot. He didn't even look up from his build since ambulances pulled into the clinic all the time.

He did look up when he heard the second siren sill a few hundred yard and moving fast toward the clinic. It was a WTF moment for Greg.

He moved quickly to his rear door. He walked carefully over the broken pavement of the alley. Once upon a time that strip of asphalt had been meant for trucks to unload groceries at the market's rear. Since that time was long gone the asphalt surface was cracked and filled with pot holes.

When Greg saw the two police cars in the parking lot with their officers standing behind the doors and looking toward the clinic, he knew something had gone all to shit.

Greg recognized Maggie's car and her receptionist's Motobike parked to the side of the clinic. The ambulance was still in the parking lot along with one other SUV belonging to the CRNA who had joined Maggie's practice just the week before. Beside the police car there were three unknown cars in the parking lot.

Greg didn't think that the CRNA would last, even before whatever was going on happened. He pretty much knew that what was going on was a hostage situation.

Rather than ask the police, Greg went back into the bike shop. Once he got there, he turned on the surveillance system's dedicated notebook. With the notebook, and the five cameras, which he had mounted in the clinic himself, he was able to see all three rooms and the parking lot as well. The fifth camera was on the back wall of his shop and aimed toward the front. It gave a funnel shaped view of his shop.

While the cops were dicking around waiting for some 'special' swat equipment, Greg had evaluated the situation.

It appeared a patient or maybe a family member was holding everyone hostage. On the audio he heard Maggie speak in a calm voice.

"This man the ambulance brought in needs to go to a hospital. If not he is going to die. You don't want that to happen," Maggie said. "If will just make all this worse. Why not let the ambulance crew take this man and get on their way. They are of no use to you."

"Nobody goes anywhere till I think this through so just shut up lady," the man who was slightly older than a teenager said.

Greg checked the other two rooms of the clinic and found nothing. The treatment room did have a man laying on the table unconscious.

Greg needed to get inside that clinic. With the cop cars in the parking lot the situation was far past a stealth entry. He wondered why Maggie hadn't pushed the panic button. After the situation was resolved he would check the history to see why the cops got notified before he did.

The job at the moment was to neutralize the man with the gun. As Greg watched the phone in the clinic rang.

"Yeah," the gunman said after it had rang ten times.

Everybody is fine except for the guy the ambulance brought in. The doc says he needs to get to the hospital. Hell no I'm not going to let them out."

Greg could imagine what the cops were trying to do. They planned to drag the situation out. That was the protocol. For Greg the fact that the protocol didn't mean shit. The protocol was not written by a man whose kid wasn't one of the hostages. Since that was the case the protocol was useless. He didn't want to talk the asshole out of the clinic, he wanted him to die in place.

Greg used the military approach without the permission of the policemen in the parking lot. First he killed all the power to the mobile clinic. He could do that since the clinic's power came through the main circuits of the old grocery store. It was part of why they had located the shop in an old building. Everything was on site. Adding the clinic was no more than rerouting some electric services that had gone to the freezer units when the building had been a grocery store.

Greg just tripped the breakers. The inside power was gone but the emergency battery powered lights came on immediately.

In theory the lights would provide enough illumination for anyone in the clinic to reach the doors safely.

Greg moved quickly to get into the clinic while everyone was in a state of panic and concern. He moved from his rear door to the clinic's rear.

The trick to moving around a crime scene, was to attack it's weakest link. Which was the positions guarded by the local police. He just calmly walked past the local cops like he was a state police detective. He went to the rear window of the clinic and pushed in on it. That particular window was held in by springs. On the outside there were two hidden retainers. Once those were twisted, the window would fall in when enough force was applied.

Gregg did all the right things to get inside the clinic without making too much noise. When he was inside the building it was in the end room furthermost from the waiting room where the hostages were being held.

The gunman was so busy protecting himself from the door, that he never realized he was in danger from his rear. Greg go within twelve feet of him, then shot him in the back of the head.

Before the cops crashed the door, he put his colt 1911 on the receptionists desk. By the time the cops crashed through the door Maggie was in his arms. He held her while she cried. After they waited to be evacuated she said, "I knew you would come for me."

"Of course, it's your turn to make dinner," Greg said.