Chapter 1
The bell above the diner door didn't ring so much as rattle, loose in its rusted housing from decades of slamming shut against the howling winds of the Mojave. Inside, the air smelled of stale coffee, sizzling bacon grease, and the heavy leather of three dozen bikers who had parked their chrome-heavy machines outside for the annual rally. Jax sat at the worn laminate counter, his broad shoulders squared inside a heavy vest weighed down by patches earned on highways he had long since stopped counting. At forty-eight, his dark hair was streaked with gray, pulled back into a ragged tail that matched the coarse salt-and-pepper beard hiding the deep lines around his mouth. He stared down into a ceramic mug of black coffee, watching the dark liquid ripple every time a heavy boot hit the floorboards.
Across from him, wiping down the counter with a rag that had seen better decades, Marie paused. Her eyes shifted cautiously from Jax’s scarred knuckles to the small figure that had just slipped through the door.
The boy stood just inside the threshold, shivering slightly beneath an oversized canvas jacket that smelled of damp earth and old wool. He was eight, perhaps nine at most, with pale skin that looked stretched too tight over high cheekbones and a mop of messy light brown hair falling into eyes that held an uncanny, desperate stillness. He didn't look around at the bikers, nor did he flinch at the rumble of low laughter coming from a booth near the jukebox. He walked straight toward Jax with a mechanical, deliberate grace, his scuffed sneakers squeaking softly against the linoleum.
Jax didn't look up immediately. He sensed the shadow before he saw it, feeling the shift in the air that signaled trouble or a beggar. In towns like this, people usually gave men like Jax a wide berth. But the footsteps stopped right at his elbow.
Slowly, Jax raised his heavy chin. He looked down into a pair of big, hopeful hazel eyes that seemed far too old for the small face framing them. The boy’s small, chapped fingers were clenched tightly around a piece of cardboard. Without a tremor in his voice, despite the obvious cold in his bones, the boy spoke the words that cut through the noise of the diner like a knife.
May you like
“Daddy saver, she didn't do it!”
The low rumble of conversation at the nearby tables tapered off instantly. Jax felt the blood rush away from his face, leaving a cold hollow in his stomach. The photograph in the boy's hand—edges soft and curling from decades of being clutched by nervous fingers—showed a much younger Jax, grinning wildly on a custom chopper, holding an infant wrapped in a faded blue blanket. Jax hadn't seen that picture in seven years. Marie stopped wiping the counter entirely, her grip tightening on the rag. The diner grew unnaturally quiet, save for the hum of the old refrigerator in the corner. Jax stared at the child, realizing with a sudden, sickening drop in his chest that his past had finally caught up to him on a lonely stretch of highway.
