Part 1
The little girl’s scream tore through the morning air before anyone actually saw her. It wasn’t a cry for attention; it was the sound of pure, unadulterated terror.
She burst through the diner door so hard the glass rattled in its frame. Six years old. Barefoot. Her school uniform was torn at the shoulder, and blood was streaking down her shin, mixing with the rain. Her voice cracked, high and desperate.
“He’s going to kill me! Please, help me! He’s going to kill me!”
I didn’t move right away. That’s something you learn in Fallujah—assess first, react second. But my hand went to my belt, instinctive muscle memory from twenty years of carrying a sidearm. Four of my brothers—Sal, Tommy, and Carlos—turned from their breakfast, coffee cups frozen halfway to their lips. The child’s eyes were wild, searching, desperate.
Through the rain-soaked window, I saw headlights cutting through the gray dawn of the parking lot. A BMW. It was getting closer. She wasn’t running from a nightmare. She was running from something real.
Rain dripped from her black hair onto the linoleum, each drop as loud as a drumbeat in the sudden silence of the diner.
“Please,” she whispered again, softer now, like she’d used up all her voice on that first scream. “Please don’t let him take me.”
Sal Romano was already moving, his medic training kicking in before his brain caught up. He crossed the distance between his booth and the door in four strides, dropping to one knee in front of the child. His hands hovered near her shoulders but didn’t touch—protocol, even now.
“Hey, sweetheart. I’m Sal. Nobody’s taking you anywhere. Can you tell me who’s after you?”
The girl’s eyes darted past him to the window. She was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. “Derek. He killed my brother, and now he’s going to kill me too because I saw him do it. I have proof. But nobody believes me because his dad owns everything.”
“Slow down,” Sal said gently. “Take a breath. Start with your name.”
“Emma. Emma Chen. I’m six.” She gulped air, her chest heaving. “Derek Hargrove killed my brother Jason three weeks ago. I took a picture. He’s been trying to get it back. And this morning… he chased me from the bus stop.”
The diner door swung open again.
Three teenage boys walked in, wet from the rain, wearing varsity jackets that cost more than most people made in a week. The one in front was tall, athletic, with the kind of confidence that comes from never hearing the word “no.” He smiled when he saw Emma, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It was a shark’s smile.
“There you are, Emma,” he said, his voice smooth. “Your mom’s been calling everyone. You scared her half to death running off like that.”
I stood up slowly, positioning myself between the boys and the girl. Tommy Park and Carlos Ortiz flanked me without a word. We formed a wall of leather and muscle. Tommy’s hand rested casually on the heavy wrench hanging from his belt loop.
“That’s funny,” I said, my voice flat and cold. “Because she just told us she’s running from you.”
Derek’s smile widened, dismissive. “Look, I don’t know what story she fed you, but Emma’s been having some trouble since her brother died. The accident really messed her up. She gets confused sometimes. Thinks she sees things that didn’t happen. We’re just trying to help her get home safe.”
“Is that right?” Carlos asked, stepping forward. “Is that why she’s bleeding?”
“She fell. Running through the woods in the rain tends to cause that.” Derek took a step forward, his entitlement radiating off him like heat. “Come on, Emma. Let’s go. These gentlemen probably have places to be.”
Emma pressed herself against Sal’s back, gripping his leather vest. “He’s lying! He killed Jason! I have proof!”
Something shifted in my chest. A familiar weight I’d carried for six years. My daughter Sarah’s face flashed in my mind. Nine years old. Pigtails. Gap-toothed smile. Gone in a school shooting while I was deployed in Afghanistan. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to protect her when she needed me most.
This girl wasn’t Sarah. But the terror in her eyes was identical.
“Show me,” I said to Emma, ignoring the rich kid. “Show me the proof.”
Emma’s small hands fumbled with her backpack zipper. It took three tries because she was shaking so hard. Finally, she pulled out a phone with a shattered screen. She held it up with both hands like an offering.
The photo showed a dark street, rain-slicked pavement, and a figure lying crumpled on the ground. Standing over the body was a tall figure, face partially visible in the glow of headlights. A BMW’s distinctive grill gleamed in the background. The timestamp read three weeks ago, 2:17 a.m.
I took the phone carefully, studied the image, and looked up at Derek. “That you?”
Derek’s smile finally cracked. “She Photoshopped that. Everyone knows you can fake anything these days.”
“Funny thing about metadata,” Tommy said quietly from beside me. “Photos have it. Shows when they were taken, where, and on what device. I used to work Navy Intel. Want me to pull up the details on this one?”
Derek’s jaw tightened. One of his friends, a stocky kid with a buzzcut, shifted nervously. “Derek… maybe we should just…”
“Shut up, Tyler,” Derek snapped. He turned back to me. “Look, you don’t know who you’re dealing with. My father is Charles Hargrove. He owns half this town. You really want to make this your problem?”
“Already is my problem,” I said. “Girl came in asking for help. We don’t turn away people who ask for help.”
“Touching.” Derek pulled out his phone. “Dad? Yeah, we have a situation at Rosie’s Diner. Some bikers are threatening me and my friends.” He paused, listening, eyeing our vests. “Yeah, all of them. Steel Wolves patches.” Another pause. “Okay. Thanks, Dad.”
He slipped the phone back into his pocket, smiling again. “Sheriff’s on his way. Should be here in about ninety seconds. And guess what? He’s going to see four dangerous-looking men surrounding three scared teenagers and one confused little girl. How do you think that’s going to play?”
Emma whimpered. Sal felt her small hands clutching the back of his shirt.
Carlos leaned close to me, his voice low. “He’s right, Marcus. We got no jurisdiction here. We’re not cops anymore.”
“And if the Sheriff’s dirty?” I asked.
“Then we improvise,” Carlos said.
I looked down at Emma. “Sweetheart, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
She nodded, eyes huge.
“Good. When I say run, you run out the back door with Sal. He’s going to take you somewhere safe. Understand?”
“But what about you?”
“We’ll be right behind you. Promise.”
The sound of sirens cut through the rain. Derek’s smile turned triumphant. “Too late.”
I made my decision in the space between heartbeats.
“Sal, go. Now.”
Sal didn’t hesitate. He scooped Emma up—she barely weighed fifty pounds—and bolted for the kitchen. The cook, a heavyset woman named Rosie who’d served us breakfast every Wednesday for three years, took one look at the situation and hit the button to unlock the back door.
“Through the alley,” she shouted. “Take the fire escape up to Third Street. My car is the blue Honda. Keys are in it!”
Sal kicked open the back door and ran into the rain. Behind him, Derek lunged forward. “Hey! Stop them!”
Tommy’s wrench came up fast. Not threatening, just present. “I wouldn’t.”
Three sheriff’s vehicles screeched into the parking lot, light bars blazing red and blue. Six deputies piled out, hands on their weapons. The lead officer, Sheriff Roger Bennett—fifty-five, with a gut that hung over his belt and eyes like chips of ice—pushed through the diner door.
“Who’s in charge here?”
I raised my hands slowly, palms out. “That’d be me. Marcus Hayes. These are my brothers, Tommy Park, Carlos Ortiz. We ride with Steel Wolves MC out of Billings.”
“Steel Wolves?” Bennett repeated, like the words tasted bad. “Uh-huh. And where’s the little girl?”
“What little girl?” I asked.
Part 2
The door of the diner slammed shut behind us, cutting off the scent of bacon and coffee, replacing it with the smell of wet asphalt and impending violence. The rain had intensified, coming down in sheets that turned the world into a gray blur.
“Mount up!” I barked, swinging my leg over my Harley Street Glide. The engine roared to life, a deep, guttural growl that vibrated through my chest. It was the only sound that ever truly calmed me, but today, even the 114-cubic-inch engine couldn’t drown out the pounding of my own heart.
Sal was right behind me. He had Emma tucked into the front of his jacket, her small head barely visible, pressed against his chest. It wasn’t the safest way to ride, but we had no choice. We needed speed, and we needed body armor around that kid.
“Which way, Marcus?” Tommy’s voice crackled over the Sena comms system inside my helmet.
I scanned the parking lot. The three Sheriff’s cruisers were blocking the main exit onto Route 9, their lights flashing in a chaotic rhythm of red and blue. Deputies were scrambling out, weapons drawn, but they were hesitating. They saw the patches on our backs—Steel Wolves—and they knew that shooting at a motorcycle club, especially one comprised of combat veterans, would turn a messy situation into a war zone.
“We don’t take the highway,” I commanded. “They’ll have a roadblock set up within five miles. We take the logging road behind the gas station. It cuts through the jagged ridge and dumps us out near the old sprawling scrapyard on the east side.”
“That’s mud and gravel, Marcus,” Carlos warned. “On street tires?”
“Better than a jail cell,” I shot back. “Move!”
We peeled out of the lot just as Sheriff Bennett shouted an order I couldn’t hear. A single gunshot cracked—a warning shot, fired into the air—but it was enough to trigger the adrenaline dump I’d been suppressing.
We hit the gravel access road doing sixty. The heavy touring bikes fishtailed, rear tires fighting for traction in the slick mud. I wrestled the handlebars, using every ounce of strength to keep the bike upright. Behind me, I saw Sal struggling, the extra weight of the child throwing off his center of gravity.
“Easy, Sal,” I said over the comms, forcing my voice to be steady. “Smooth throttle. Don’t fight the slide. Ride into it.”
“I got her,” Sal grunted, his breathing heavy in my ear. “She’s shaking like a leaf, Marcus. She’s terrified.”
“Just keep her eyes closed,” I said. “Tommy, you still have a signal?”
“Barely. The storm is messing with the cell towers, and we’re heading into the valley.”
“Kill your GPS tracking,” I ordered. “Bennett will try to ping our phones. Go dark. Now.”
We rode in silence for the next twenty minutes, navigating a road that was little more than a goat path cut into the side of the mountain. The trees were dense here, towering pines that blocked out what little light the gray morning offered. It felt like we were descending into the underworld.
My mind raced. This wasn’t just a corrupt cop trying to do a favor for a rich friend. The desperation in Bennett’s eyes, the way Derek Hargrove acted… this was a cover-up of something massive. You don’t threaten federal crimes over a hit-and-run unless the consequences of the truth are worse than the crime itself.
We emerged from the tree line near the East Cedar Scrapyard. It was a graveyard of rusted metal, stacked cars, and forgotten machinery, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. It belonged to an old friend of the club, a Vietnam vet named “Dutch” Van Der Linde.
I pulled up to the rusted gate and revved my engine three times—two short, one long. A moment later, the gate creaked open electronically. We rolled inside, the bikes splattered with brown mud, steam rising from the hot engines as the rain hit them.
We parked inside the main hangar, a cavernous space that smelled of oil, rust, and stale tobacco. Dutch walked out from the shadows of a stacked pile of engine blocks. He was seventy years old, missing his left arm from the elbow down, his face a roadmap of scars and wrinkles. He held a pump-action shotgun in his good hand, resting it casually on his shoulder.
“You boys bring a lot of heat with you,” Dutch said, spitting a stream of tobacco juice onto the concrete. “Police scanner is going crazy. ‘Armed and dangerous motorcycle gang kidnapped a child.’ That the headline?”
“We didn’t kidnap anyone, Dutch,” I said, dismounting. I rushed over to Sal’s bike.
Sal unzipped his jacket. Emma was curled into a ball, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands gripping Sal’s shirt so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Emma,” I said softly. “It’s Marcus. We’re stopped. You’re safe.”
She opened her eyes. The terror in them broke my heart all over again. It wasn’t the fear of a child who thinks there’s a monster under the bed; it was the fear of a child who knows the monster is real, and that it drives a BMW.
Sal lifted her down gently. Her legs gave out the moment her bare feet touched the concrete, and Sal caught her, scooping her up and carrying her to a workbench Dutch had cleared off.
“I need a first aid kit,” Sal barked. “Clean water, disinfectant, gauze. And I need a blanket.”
“On it,” Dutch said, moving with surprising speed for a man his age.
I turned to Tommy and Carlos. “Security perimeter. Carlos, take the front gate. Tommy, check the back breach. If you see anything that isn’t a squirrel, let me know. Do not engage unless fired upon. We need to buy time, not start a war.”
“Roger that,” Carlos said, pulling his Sig Sauer from his waistband and racking the slide.
I walked over to the workbench. Sal was working with the precision of the combat medic he used to be. He was cleaning the gash on Emma’s leg. It was deep, a jagged tear that looked like she’d snagged it on a chain-link fence or a thorny bush.
“This needs stitches,” Sal murmured. “I can do it here, but it’s going to hurt.”
Emma didn’t cry. She just stared at me. “Are you going to give me back to them?”
The question hung in the air, heavy and accusatory.
“No,” I said, leaning down so our eyes were level. “I told you, Uncle Reaper doesn’t break promises. We aren’t giving you back.”
“The Sheriff said I was lying,” she whispered. “He said if I didn’t stop telling stories, he’d put my mom in jail.”
“Your mom?” I asked. “Where is your mom, Emma?”
“She’s at work. The factory. They don’t let her have her phone. She doesn’t know.” Tears finally spilled over her lashes. “Derek said he’d hurt her. He said accidents happen to people who talk.”
I looked at Sal. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping.
“We need to get her mom,” Sal said quietly.
“We can’t,” I said, frustration boiling in my gut. “If we show up at that factory, Bennett will be waiting. He knows we’ll try to unite them. It’s a trap.”
“So we just leave her there?”
“We secure the girl first. Then we find a way to get the mother.” I turned to Emma. “Emma, I need to see the proof. The phone.”
She hesitated, her hand going to her pocket. “It’s all I have. If I lose it, nobody will believe me.”
“I know. But Tommy is a wizard with this stuff. He needs to copy it, make sure that even if they smash this phone, the picture never goes away. Can you trust me with it for five minutes?”
She looked at the phone, then at me. Slowly, she held it out.
“Tommy!” I yelled.
Tommy jogged over from his post. “Yeah?”
“Pull everything off this device. Cloud backup, hard drive, encrypted server. Make ten copies. Send one to that journalist in Seattle, Jessica Ramirez. Send another to the ACLU. Send one to the FBI field office in Denver—bypass the local guys completely.”
Tommy took the phone, his eyes widening as he saw the shattered screen. “On it. Give me ten minutes.”
I walked to the hangar door, lighting a cigarette to calm my nerves. The rain was still hammering down. We were trapped. The Sheriff had jurisdiction here, and he had the narrative. To the world, we were kidnappers. We needed to flip the script, and fast.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed. Unknown number.
I stared at it. Nobody had this number except the club and a few family members. I slid the answer bar.
“Hayes,” I said.
“Mr. Hayes,” a smooth, cultured voice replied. “This is Charles Hargrove.”
My grip on the phone tightened until the plastic creaked. “You have a lot of nerve calling me.”
“I’m a businessman, Mr. Hayes. I believe in resolving conflicts efficiently. You have something of mine. I’d like it back.”
“She’s a human being, not a piece of property.”
“She’s a confused child who has been abducted by a violent gang. That’s how the news is running it right now. Have you checked Twitter? ‘Biker Gang Snaps: Child Hostage Situation Underway.’ The State Troopers are mobilizing. SWAT is gearing up. You have, by my estimate, about an hour before they storm whatever hole you’re hiding in.”
“You think scare tactics work on me?” I exhaled smoke. “I’ve been hunted by the Taliban in the caves of Kandahar. Your local SWAT team doesn’t scare me.”
“Perhaps not. But consider this: If they storm the building, bullets fly. Can you guarantee that little girl won’t catch a stray round? Can you guarantee her safety when the tear gas canisters start flying?”
Silence. He knew exactly which button to press.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Bring her to the old mill bridge. Leave her there. Drive away. If you do that, the charges disappear. The Sheriff will announce it was a misunderstanding. You and your boys ride off into the sunset. No harm, no foul.”
“And the girl?”
“She gets the psychiatric help she clearly needs. My family will pay for everything.”
“You mean you’ll lock her up in a facility until she forgets what your son did.”
Hargrove’s voice dropped an octave, losing its polished veneer. “My son has a future. He’s going to Stanford in the fall. I will not let a momentary lapse of judgment and a hysterical immigrant family destroy that. Do we have a deal?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“You have twenty minutes. After that, I stop holding the Sheriff’s leash.”
The line went dead.
I threw the cigarette into a puddle. “Tommy! Status!”
“I got into the phone,” Tommy shouted, not looking up from his laptop. “Marcus, you need to see this. It’s not just the photo.”
I strode over. “What do you mean?”
“The kid… Jason. He didn’t just take a picture. He had an audio recording app running. Emma said he was bullied? He must have been recording for his own protection.”
Tommy hit a key. A tinny, static-filled audio file began to play.
Sound of footsteps. Rain. Jason’s voice: “Come on, Emma. Walking faster. It’s cold.” Emma’s voice: “My feet hurt.” Sound of a high-performance engine revving. Tires screeching. Derek’s voice (distant but clear): “Watch this! Ten points for the little one!” Other boys laughing. Jason screaming: “Emma! Move!” A sickening thud. Silence. Derek’s voice, closer now: “Oh sht. Oh sht, dude. You hit him.” Tyler’s voice: “Is he dead? Derek, is he dead?” Derek: “Who cares? Nobody saw. Grab the bumper piece. Let’s go. Go!”
The audio cut out.
The silence in the hangar was deafening. Even Dutch looked sick.
“That wasn’t an accident,” Carlos whispered. “Ten points? He hunted them. For sport.”
“He aimed,” I said, my voice trembling with rage. “He aimed at them.”
I looked at Emma. She was sitting on the workbench, her leg bandaged, drinking a juice box Dutch had found. She looked so small.
“They aren’t getting her,” I said. “Not now. Not ever.”
“Marcus,” Tommy said, “I sent the files. But the upload is slow. The storm is killing the bandwidth. It’s at 40%. If we move, we lose the connection.”
“We can’t stay here,” I said. “Hargrove knows we’re close. He gave us twenty minutes, which means his private security is probably five minutes out. He’s not waiting for the Sheriff. He’s sending hitmen.”
“Hitmen?” Sal asked.
“Blackwood Security,” Dutch chimed in. “Hargrove owns a stake in them. Private military contractors. They operate domestically under the guise of ‘consultants.’ They’re nasty work. Ex-Special Forces who washed out for being too aggressive.”
“We need reinforcements,” I said. “Carlos, call Boomer. Tell him to bring the wrath of God. Tell him to bring the whole chapter. But they can’t meet us here. We’ll be overrun by then.”
“Where do we go?”
I looked at the map on the wall. “The Courthouse.”
“The Courthouse?” Carlos looked at me like I was insane. “That’s right in the middle of town. That’s Bennett’s fortress.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s public. There are cameras everywhere. If Blackwood hits us in the woods, we disappear. If they hit us on the steps of the Courthouse in broad daylight? They can’t hide that.”
“It’s a suicide run,” Tommy said. “We have to cross ten miles of hostile territory with a wounded kid.”
“Then we make it a parade,” I said. “Dutch, you have that old semi-truck out back? The one you use for hauling scrap?”
Dutch grinned, revealing yellow teeth. “The Behemoth? She runs. Barely.”
“I need a distraction,” I said. “I need you to take the Behemoth and block the main bridge on Route 9. Stall them. Give us a clear run to the back roads.”
“Consider it done,” Dutch said. “I always wanted to annoy the Sheriff one last time.”
We mounted up. This time, the formation was different. Sal and Emma in the center. Me in front. Carlos and Tommy flanking.
As we rolled out of the scrapyard, Dutch fired up the massive, rusted semi-truck. It belched black smoke like a dragon waking up. He roared toward the main road to create our diversion.
We hit the back roads, moving fast. The rain was blinding now.
Five miles out, the first trouble hit.
Two black SUVs, unmarked, tinted windows, exploded out of a side road, flanking us. No sirens. No lights. Just pure aggression.
“Hostiles!” I screamed over the comms. “Right flank! They’re trying to run us off!”
The lead SUV swerved hard into Carlos. Carlos, a master rider, tapped his brakes, letting the SUV miss him by inches. The SUV overcorrected and slammed into the guardrail, sparks flying.
“They’re trying to kill us, Marcus!” Carlos yelled. “They aren’t trying to stop us!”
“Return fire only if you have a clear shot and no civilians!” I ordered.
The second SUV pulled up alongside Sal. The window rolled down. A man in tactical gear leaned out, raising a suppressed MP5 submachine gun.
“Sal! Break left!” I shouted.
Sal banked hard. I dropped back, pulling my own sidearm—a Colt 1911—while steering with my left hand. It was a move I hadn’t practiced since the war.
I aimed for the SUV’s front tire. Bang. Bang.
The tire blew. The SUV spun out wildly on the wet asphalt, doing a 360 before crashing into a ditch.
“Clear!” I yelled. “Keep moving! Don’t stop!”
We were three miles from town. But the road ahead was blocked. Not by police cars, but by a fallen tree.
“It’s an ambush,” I realized. “Brake! Brake!”
We skidded to a halt fifty yards from the tree. From the woods on either side, figures emerged. Men in black tactical gear, faces covered. Blackwood mercenaries. There were at least ten of them.
They didn’t shoot. They just stood there, weapons raised.
A man stepped forward. He wasn’t wearing a mask. He had a scar running down his cheek.
“Engine off, Hayes,” he shouted over the rain. “End of the line. Give us the girl, and you walk away.”
I looked at my brothers. We were outgunned. Outmanned. Stuck in a kill box.
“Sal,” I whispered over the comms. “On my signal, you turn that bike around and you go off-road. You take the hiking trail down to the river. It’s steep, but you can make it.”
“What about you guys?” Sal asked.
“We’re going to be a distraction.”
“Marcus, no…”
“Do it!”
I revved my engine. “Hey!” I shouted at the mercenary leader. “You want the girl? Come and get her!”
I dumped the clutch. My bike roared forward, rear tire spinning, throwing up a rooster tail of mud. Carlos and Tommy did the same. We charged the blockade, not to escape, but to draw fire.
The mercenaries opened up. Bullets whizzed past us, sparking off the pavement. I felt a tug on my sleeve as a round passed through the leather.
Behind us, Sal spun his bike and shot into the woods, disappearing into the trees with Emma.
We hit the blockade hard. I laid my bike down at the last second, sliding into the fallen tree, using the bike as cover. Carlos and Tommy slid in beside me. We were pinned down, bullets chipping away at the wood and metal protecting us.
“We can’t hold them for long!” Tommy yelled, returning fire with his handgun. “I’m down to two mags!”
“We just need to give Sal ten minutes!” I shouted back.
The mercenary leader raised his hand, signaling his men to flank us. They were moving professionally, closing the net.
I checked my ammo. Seven rounds left.
“It’s been an honor, brothers,” I said softly.
“Shut up, Marcus,” Carlos grunted. “We aren’t dead yet.”
Then, we heard it.
At first, it sounded like thunder. A deep, rolling rumble that shook the ground beneath us. But the storm had passed.
The sound grew louder. A chaotic, mechanical symphony.
From the road behind the mercenaries, headlights appeared. Dozens of them. Then fifty. Then a hundred.
The crest of the hill was suddenly filled with motorcycles.
The Steel Wolves had arrived.
And they weren’t alone. Boomer had called everyone. The Iron Horsemen from the next county. The Vets MC from Billings. Even a few independent riders. It was a sea of chrome and righteous anger.
Boomer was in the lead, riding his custom chopper. He didn’t slow down. He saw the mercenaries. He saw us pinned down.
He pointed a finger forward.
The roar of a hundred bikes revving at once was a sound that primal fear understands perfectly.
The mercenaries turned, realizing too late that they had brought guns to a stampede.
The bikers didn’t shoot. They just rode. They swarmed the mercenaries like a tidal wave. It was chaos. Fists, boots, chains. The mercenaries, for all their tactical gear, weren’t ready for the sheer ferocity of a hundred men defending their own.
I stood up, adrenaline shaking my hands. “Hold fire! Save the ammo!”
The fight was over in minutes. The mercenaries were disarmed, zip-tied, and left groaning on the side of the road for the police to find.
Boomer pulled up to me, grinning through his gray beard. “You called for a tow truck?”
“You took your sweet time, old man,” I said, clapping his shoulder. “Where’s Sal?”
“One of our scouts picked him up near the river. He’s already heading to the courthouse. With an escort of twenty bikes.”
“Let’s go,” I said. “We have a corrupt Sheriff to fire.”
We rolled into the town square of Cedar Springs like a conquering army. The sight of nearly two hundred bikers filling the streets brought the entire town to a standstill. Shopkeepers came out. People stared from windows.
We parked in front of the Courthouse. Sal was already there. Emma was standing on the steps, holding Agent Williams’ hand.
Wait. Agent Williams?
The FBI agent I had hoped to contact was already there. She stood tall, wearing a windbreaker with “FBI” in yellow letters. Beside her were four other agents, armed with rifles.
Sheriff Bennett stood at the top of the stairs, looking small and defeated. Charles Hargrove was there too, handcuffed, shouting at a lawyer.
I walked up the steps, my boots heavy on the stone.
“Mr. Hayes,” Agent Williams said, nodding at me. “Your friend Tommy sent us the files. We got them twenty minutes ago. The audio recording was… compelling.”
“Is it enough?” I asked.
“For an arrest? Absolutely. Kidnapping, conspiracy, accessory to murder, federal witness intimidation. We’re taking jurisdiction. The State Attorney General is already on the phone.”
I looked at Emma. She ran to me, burying her face in my muddy jeans.
“You came back,” she sobbed.
“I told you,” I said, resting my hand on her head. “We’re family now.”
“Look,” Sal said, pointing to the street.
A news van had pulled up. Jessica Ramirez jumped out, microphone in hand. The camera light turned on.
“We are live in Cedar Springs,” she said into the lens, “where a shocking story of corruption and murder has just been exposed, not by the police, but by a group of motorcycle veterans protecting a six-year-old girl…”
I knelt down to Emma.
“See that lady?” I pointed to the reporter. “Go tell her your story. Tell her everything. Don’t leave anything out.”
“Will I get in trouble?”
“No,” I smiled. “You’re going to be a hero.”
Emma wiped her eyes. She took a deep breath, squared her small shoulders, and walked toward the camera.
I stood back with my brothers. Carlos lit a cigarette and handed it to me.
“So,” Carlos said. “What do we do now?”
I watched Emma speaking into the microphone, her voice gaining strength with every word. I watched the FBI agents leading Hargrove and Bennett into the back of a federal vehicle. I watched the sun finally break through the storm clouds.
“Now?” I took a drag. “Now we get some breakfast. I’m starving.”
We stood guard until the very end, until Emma’s mom arrived in a police escort arranged by the FBI. The reunion on those steps made even Boomer tear up, though he’d deny it if you asked him.
As we rode out of town an hour later, I looked in my rearview mirror. Emma was waving.
We didn’t just save a life today. We took back a town.
And Derek Hargrove? He learned the hard way that you can buy a Sheriff, but you can’t buy courage. And you sure as hell can’t outrun the Steel Wolves.
