“That sounds like his problem.”
Chloe laughed weakly through her tears.
Silas stabilized her shoulder, prepared warm fluids, and made sure the bleeding had slowed. Chloe needed a hospital, but the roads remained blocked by fallen branches and mud. Her emergency transmitter had stopped flashing, and Silas had no way of knowing whether the signal had escaped the storm.
The sun rose.
Silas had just reached for the coffee tin when the cups on his shelves began rattling. The floor vibrated beneath his boots. Barnaby limped toward the window, whining as a low mechanical thunder rolled through the forest.
Silas pulled the curtain aside.
Motorcycles covered the mountain road.
They came in a continuous line, filling the driveway, the clearing, and every open space between the pines. Eight hundred members from Iron Saints chapters across several states had followed Chloe’s emergency signal into the wilderness. Their engines shook the windows before stopping almost simultaneously.
Silence fell across the clearing.
Tommy Callahan dismounted from the first motorcycle.
He had spent the entire night searching for Chloe. The Iron Saints had found her wrecked car at the bottom of the ridge and captured one of the men from the black SUV attempting to escape the mountain. The injured criminal claimed that Chloe had reached the old man’s cabin but insisted that Silas had killed her.
Tommy had no reason to trust either man.
He knew only that his wife’s blood trail ended at the porch.
Silas stepped outside with empty hands.
Tommy approached slowly, anger and grief tightening his face. Hundreds of bikers watched from behind him.
“My wife’s signal came from this property,” Tommy said. “There’s blood on your porch.”