Instead, he slowly held out his hands, offering the toy for Cole to see. Cole leaned in. As his eyes adjusted to the glare, the breath caught in his throat. This wasn't a Hot Wheels toy. It wasn't something bought off a rack at a Walmart.
It was heavy die-cast metal, but it had been meticulously altered. The frame had been chopped. Someone had brazed tiny custom ape-hanger handlebars onto the front fork. A miniature bar was welded to the back fender, but it was the paint that made Cole's stomach drop. It wasn't a standard factory color.
It was painted a deep, lustrous crimson that shifted in the sunlight, glittering with microscopic metallic flakes. Candy apple red with a gold flake undercoat. Cole knew that color. Every man in his charter knew that color. It was a custom mix, a mix that belonged to one specific bike.
"Can I... can I hold it?" Cole asked. His hand was actually trembling. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't stop it. The boy hesitated.
Then nodded. He placed the heavy little model into Cole's massive, calloused palm. It weighed more than it looked. Cole turned it over in his hands. The detail was agonizing.
The tiny exhaust pipes had been blued with a torch to look like they'd run hot. The leather on the miniature seat was real, scraped and worn. The diner door opened behind him. Wyatt and Jimmy stepped out, laughing about something. "Hey Cole, you stealing toys now?"
Wyatt boomed. "We got to roll, man. We're losing daylight." "Shut up, Wyatt." Cole said.
His tone was dead flat. It wasn't a request. It was an order. Wyatt stopped laughing instantly. He looked at Jimmy, confused.
The mood in the parking lot shifted, the casual banter evaporating, replaced by a sudden, heavy tension. They recognized the tone. Something was wrong. Cole ignored them. He was staring at the underside of the toy.
The bottom of the miniature gas tank was flat metal. It wasn't smooth. Something had been scratched into it, carved deep with a metal scribe or a heavy needle. Cole rubbed his thumb over the grime, clearing the dust from the grooves. The letters were blocky, cut with heavy pressure.
"To my little road dog, RIP the wind." Dutch. Cole couldn't breathe. The Nevada heat vanished. He was suddenly standing in the pouring rain in Oakland 3 years ago.
The smell of wet asphalt, the flashing blue and red lights of the police cruisers, the twisted, unrecognizable wreckage of a candy-apple red chopper wrapped around the grill of a semi-truck. Dutch. Arthur "Dutch" Miller. Cole's closest friend. A brother who had ridden by his side for 15 years, who had bled for the patch, who had taken a bullet in the shoulder for Cole outside a bar in Sturgis.
Dutch had died on a slick highway, leaving nothing behind but a legacy of wild stories and a wrecked bike. Or so they thought. Cole swallowed hard. The lump in his throat felt like a golf ball covered in glass. He looked up at the boy.
The kid's blue eyes, Dutch's eyes, he realized with a sickening jolt, were watching him nervously. "What's your name, son?" Cole asked, his voice cracking. "Chris," the boy said quietly. Chris.
Cole repeated. He looked at the diner window. The tired blonde woman was standing now, pressing her hand against the glass, her face tight with rising panic. She was looking right at Cole. Dutch had a girl, a waitress he'd been seeing off and on before he died.
He never talked much about her. Kept her separate from the club life. When Dutch died, they buried him, drank to his memory, and moved on. The girl had vanished. Nobody went looking.
"Your mom?" Cole said, pointing a thick, scarred finger toward the window. "What's her name?" "Selene," Chris answered, reaching his hands back out to reclaim his precious toy. Cole didn't hand it back immediately.
He stood up slowly, the joints in his knees complaining. He dwarfed the boy now, a leather-clad giant casting a long dark shadow. He turned to face Wyatt and Jimmy. Wyatt had his hands on his hips. "Cole, talk to me.
What is it?" Cole walked over to Wyatt. He didn't say a word. He just opened his hand and shoved the tiny candy-apple red motorcycle into Wyatt's chest. Wyatt took it, looking annoyed.
He glanced at the toy, then at Cole. "What am I looking at?" "Look at the undercarriage," Cole said. Wyatt frowned. He flipped the heavy toy over.
Jimmy leaned in over his shoulder to look. The silence stretched out for 10 agonizing seconds. A semi-truck roared past on the highway, shaking the ground, but none of the bikers noticed. Wyatt's weathered face drained of color. His jaw slacked.
He looked from the toy to Cole and then slowly turned his head to look at the skinny kid standing by the ice machine. "Jesus Christ," Jimmy whispered, taking a step backward as if the toy had suddenly burst into flames. "Is that—" "Yeah," Cole said quietly. He turned his gaze back to the diner window. Selene was at the door now, pushing it open, stepping out into the heat.
She looked terrified, but she was moving forward anyway, a fierce, desperate light in her tired eyes. That's Dutch's boy. Cole said, the words heavy and absolute. And we're going to find out exactly how they ended up in a dirt lot in the middle of nowhere. The screen door slammed shut behind her, the sound loud like a gunshot in the stagnant desert air.
Selene marched across the cracked concrete. She didn't run, but her stride was rigid with the kind of frantic protective adrenaline only a mother knows. She grabbed Chris by the shoulder, pulling him roughly behind her legs, shielding him from the wall of leather and tattoos. "We don't want any trouble," she said. Her voice shook, but she locked eyes with Cole.
Her jaw was set. "He's just a kid. He doesn't know better." Cole held his hands up, palms open, showing empty space. He took a deliberate step back to give her room.
"Nobody's looking for trouble, Mom," Cole said, his voice dropping into a low, calm register. Just admiring the boy's toy. Selene looked from Cole to the heavy-set Wyatt, then down at the custom red motorcycle Chris was now clutching desperately against his chest. Her face crumpled for a fraction of a second, the tough exterior slipping before she pulled it back together. She knew what the toy meant.
She knew who these men were. She had seen that winged death's head stitched onto the back of a leather vest before, draped over the chair in her old apartment in Oakland. "You're his brothers," she stated. It wasn't a question. "We were," Cole corrected gently.
"I'm Cole. This is Wyatt, Jimmy." Selene crossed her arms, rubbing her elbows as if she were cold, despite the 90-degree heat baking the asphalt. Dutch told me to stay clear of the club. Said his life there wasn't for us, that it would only bring grief.
"Dutch was a hardhead," Wyatt rumbled, stepping forward, his massive frame blocking out the sun. "But he wasn't always wrong. He was right about this," Selene said bitterly. He died and the grief came anyway. Took about 2 weeks for the eviction notices to start showing up.