It was the kind of establishment that had probably looked exactly the same since 1987 and intended to stay that way.
The parking lot was half full, which was already more activity than he expected for that hour.
The reason became clear when he got close enough to see the motorcycles.
There were a lot of them.
Not a few.
Not a handful.
An entire formation of motorcycles parked along the far edge of the lot, arranged with a kind of order that felt intentional, almost military.
Big machines.
Heavy chrome.
Leather saddlebags and custom paint and the kind of detail work that took years, real money, and a particular relationship with a machine that went beyond transportation into something closer to identity.
Noah had seen motorcycle clubs before.
He was from Las Vegas. You could not live in this city for twenty years, even a hard twenty years, without understanding the basic landscape of who occupied what corner of it.
He knew better than to stare.
He knew better than to linger.
He adjusted his course to skirt the edge of the parking lot rather than cut through the middle of it.
That was when he saw it.
He almost did not.
His eyes were moving across the asphalt in that half-conscious scanning pattern he had developed over nearly a year of outdoor survival, looking for anything useful, anything discarded, anything that might be breakfast or dry socks or a few dollars that had fallen from someone’s pocket.
His brain processed the black rectangle on the ground near the rear wheel of a massive motorcycle a full half second before it consciously registered what he was looking at.
A wallet.
Black leather.
Thick.
Lying flat on the ground near the back tire of the biggest motorcycle in the row.