The Girl Walked Into a Biker Diner

They were supposed to leave Barstow at dawn. They didn't make it to dawn.

At 2:47 in the morning, Maya woke to the sound of breaking glass — not the window of her room, but the one next door, where Marcus and Sarge were sleeping in shifts. She sat bolt upright in the motel bed, her father's letter clutched in her fist — she'd fallen asleep reading it — and then the world exploded.

The first shot took out the window of Room 12. The second punched through the drywall between the rooms. Maya hit the floor the way Daniel had drilled her — flat, face down, hands over her head — and army-crawled under the bed, her heart hammering so hard she was sure they could hear it outside.

Shouting. Boots on asphalt. Then Marcus's voice, roaring: "CONTACT! West side!"

More shots — three, four, five — and then the deep, rolling thunder of a shotgun, and then a car engine screaming away into the dark. Silence. Then Sarge's voice, tight with pain: "I'm hit. I'm hit, it's the shoulder, I'm fine, somebody get me a towel — "

Maya stayed under the bed until Marcus lifted the mattress with one hand and looked down at her. His face was black with anger.

"You hurt?" he asked.

She shook her head. She couldn't speak.

"Good. Stay down one more minute."

The parking lot was chaos. Sarge sat on the curb with a towel pressed to his shoulder, blood seeping through, cursing steadily and creatively. Mags had the first-aid kit. Domino was on the phone with 911, giving the dispatcher a version of events that involved "a drive-by" and "we didn't see the car." Finn walked the perimeter with a flashlight and came back with three shell casings and a face like stone.

"Professional," he said, dropping the casings into Marcus's palm. "Suppressed rifle, I'd guess. They weren't trying to kill us — they were trying to scare us. Sarge caught a ricochet, most likely."

"Scare us," Wyatt repeated. He'd come out of his room in a t-shirt, barefoot, and he looked younger without the cut, and more afraid. "Or send a message."

Marcus was looking at something on the windshield of the support van. A photograph, tucked under the wiper. He pulled it free with two fingers.

It was Daniel's cabin. Or what was left of it — burned to the foundation, black timbers against the desert sky. On the back, in block letters: NEXT TIME WE DON'T MISS.

Marcus showed it to Wyatt. Wyatt read it twice.

"He burned the cabin," Maya whispered. She'd come out of the room, wrapped in the motel blanket, and she was looking at the photograph over Marcus's arm. "That was my home. That was — " Her voice broke. "He already killed my dad. What else does he want?"

"He wants you scared," Marcus said. "He wants us scared." He folded the photograph and put it in his pocket. "Pack up. We're moving."

"Where?" Domino asked.

"The Reyes place." Marcus looked at Wyatt. "Your call, President."

Wyatt looked at Sarge's bloody shoulder. He looked at the girl in the blanket. He looked at the photograph in Marcus's pocket. And something in his face changed — the careful, calculating president falling away, and something older underneath.

"The Reyes place," Wyatt said. "Domino, you ride ahead. Everybody else, we roll in ten. And somebody — " He pointed at Jace. "You call Ruby. Tell her the Throttle Stop stays closed tomorrow. Tell her — " He hesitated. "Tell her to stay with her sister in Carson City for a few days."

The sheriff's deputy arrived at 3:30 — a young woman with tired eyes who took one look at fourteen bikers, a wounded man, and a terrified girl, and decided to write down exactly what Domino told her. Drive-by. Didn't see the car. Yes, we'd like to press charges against person or persons unknown. She photographed the shell casings, took Sarge's statement at the ER — through and through, missed the bone, he'd be fine, he'd been hurt worse falling off a ladder — and told Marcus, quietly, by the ambulance: "You folks watch yourselves. This doesn't feel random."

"It never is," Marcus said.

She looked at him for a long moment. "The girl. Is she safe with you?"

"She's safer with us than anywhere else on earth," Marcus said, and meant it, and the deputy's eyes said she believed him, which was either a testament to his sincerity or an indictment of the world.

Maya rode in the van with Mags driving and the coffee can of money on the floor between her feet — forty-one thousand dollars, her father's last gift, rattling softly with every bump. She kept touching her jacket pocket, where the letter was. Baby girl, if you're reading this, then the headlights finally found me.

"Dad always said the desert was the safest place," she said suddenly. "No people, no problems."

Mags glanced over. "Your dad was a smart man. But he was wrong about that. People find you wherever you go. The trick isn't hiding." She downshifted for a curve. "The trick is having people beside you when they do."

Maya looked out at the pack ahead — fourteen headlights in formation, carving through the dark — and she thought about the photographs on the kitchen table, and the Sunday quizzes, and the man with the skull tattoo who'd kept a promise for ten years.

"Do you think he'll come?" she asked. "Harlan. Do you think he'll really come for me?"

Mags was quiet for a mile. Then: "I think men like Harlan don't know how to stop. I think your dad knew that. I think that's why he made you memorize us." She reached over and squeezed Maya's hand, briefly, fiercely. "And I think he's going to be real sorry he started this."

They rolled out of Barstow at 4 a.m., fourteen bikes and a van, running dark on the back roads. Maya sat in the van between Mags and the coffee can of money, watching the headlights of the pack ahead of her, and she thought about the root cellar, and the cottonwood, and the note in the tobacco tin.

Don't be anywhere they expect.

She leaned her head against the window and whispered, so quiet Mags couldn't hear: "I'm sorry, Dad. I led them right to you. Again."

But Mags heard. Mags reached over and took her hand, and held it all the way to the Reyes ranch, and didn't say a word, because some things don't need saying.