“I think it did.”
They drove another fifty miles before Abigail’s exhaustion became dangerous.
She stopped at the Starlight Motel.
The building was shaped like a long horseshoe around a parking lot.
Pink neon buzzed above the office.
Several letters in STARLIGHT did not work, leaving the sign to announce:
STAR IGHT.
The room cost eighty-three dollars.
Under normal circumstances, Abigail would have considered that too expensive.
That night, the deadbolt was worth every cent.
She paid for two nights.
Room 114.
Ground floor.
Near the back.
Inside, Chloe immediately bounced once on the mattress.
“It squeaks.”
“Everything squeaks.”
“Can we watch TV?”
“Yes.”
“Anything?”
“Within reason.”
“What’s reason?”
“Cartoons.”
“That’s what I was going to say.”
For the first time in two days, Abigail smiled without forcing it.
They ate dinner at a roadside diner across from the motel.
Chloe ordered pancakes despite it being evening.
Abigail did not argue.
Back in the room, Abigail gave Chloe a bath.
Found clean pajamas.
Brushed the dust from Button the rabbit.
At 9:15, Chloe fell asleep almost instantly.
Abigail could not.
She sat beside the window.
Curtains closed except for a gap no wider than her finger.
Every set of headlights made her chest tighten.
At ten-thirty, she told herself she was being paranoid.
At ten-fifty, a black Chevrolet Tahoe entered the lot.
Abigail stopped breathing.
The Tahoe moved slowly.
Passed the office.
Passed three rooms.
Stopped almost directly across from 114.
Headlights off.
The driver’s door opened.
Tommy Fowler stepped out.
Abigail knew him immediately.
He was the broad man who had stood outside her duplex.
“The Brick,” she had heard one tenant call him.
Two other men emerged.
Abigail backed away from the window.
“No.”
Her whisper sounded tiny.
She grabbed her phone.
One bar of signal.
She dialed 911.
Then looked at Chloe.
“Baby.”
Chloe did not wake.
“Chloe.”
Abigail touched her shoulder.
“Wake up.”
Chloe opened sleepy eyes.
“Mommy?”
“Shoes.”
“What?”
“Put your shoes on.”
Fear entered Chloe’s expression immediately.
“The bad men?”
Abigail hated herself for teaching her daughter that phrase.
“I need you to listen to me.”
Heavy footsteps crossed the motel walkway.
Abigail spoke to the emergency dispatcher as quietly as possible.
Three men.
Outside the room.
She believed they had followed her from San Bernardino.
One had previously threatened her.
The dispatcher told her not to open the door.
Police were being sent.
The first knock came.
Three heavy impacts.
“Abigail.”
Fowler.
“We know you’re in there.”
Chloe crawled into Abigail’s arms.
“Go away,” Abigail called.
“We just need a signature.”
“I’m calling police.”
Fowler laughed.
“That’s fine.”
Another knock.
“We’ll explain everything to them.”
Abigail knew how this worked.
Bowman’s people carried documents.
They called themselves representatives.
They avoided explicit threats whenever witnesses were present.
“Leave.”
“Abigail.”
Fowler’s voice became softer.
“You really want your daughter dragged through more of this?”
Chloe buried her face against Abigail.
Something inside Abigail changed.
Fear remained.
But anger joined it.
“You stay away from my child.”
“Then open the door.”
“No.”
Outside, one of the other men said something too quietly to hear.
Fowler knocked again.
Then another sound entered the night.
Far away.
Low.
Growing.
Abigail froze.
Chloe lifted her head.
“What’s that?”
Abigail knew.
Motorcycles.
The sound expanded.
Not one.
Many.
Fowler stopped knocking.
Through the curtain gap, Abigail saw him turn toward the entrance of the motel.
Headlights appeared.
One row.
Then another.
Motorcycles rolled into the parking lot.
The Hellfire Angels.
Jackson had not forgotten them.
At the clubhouse two hours earlier, he had been staring at Chloe’s two-dollar bill.
The Hellfire Angels’ clubhouse sat in an industrial district outside San Bernardino.
Concrete block walls.
Old motorcycles being rebuilt in one bay.
A bar in another.
Photographs covering nearly every available surface.
Jackson sat alone at a heavy table near the rear.
The bill rested in front of him.
Sullivan Davis, known to everyone as Sully, stopped beside him.
“What’s that?”
Jackson did not look up.
“Luck.”
Sully picked up his beer.
“That kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t tell me the vice president of this club got emotionally destroyed by a six-year-old.”
Jackson looked up.
“Go away.”
Sully laughed.
Then noticed Jackson was serious.
“What’s wrong?”
“The mother.”
“What about her?”
“Something was off.”
“Besides being stranded?”
“She was watching the road before we arrived.”
Jackson leaned back.
“Not looking for help.”
“Looking for somebody.”
Sully’s expression changed.
Jackson continued.
“She had bruises.”
“Could be anything.”
“Could.”
“And when I asked whether she was running, she lied before I finished the question.”
Sully sat.
“You think somebody’s after them?”
“I think somebody scared the hell out of that woman.”
Jackson pulled out his phone.
While leaving the gas station earlier, he had noticed a black Tahoe sitting across the highway near a billboard.
Nothing unusual by itself.
But Jackson had spent enough years riding to notice vehicles that appeared interested in someone without approaching.
He had written down the plate.
A friend who worked in vehicle recovery later told him the Tahoe was associated with a company used by one of Richard Bowman’s subcontractors.
Bowman’s name meant something.
Not because Jackson had secret underworld intelligence.
Because Bowman Development had been in local news.
Tenant protests.
Code complaints.
Lawsuits.
A city council dispute.
Several members of the club had relatives in neighborhoods Bowman was buying.
Iron Mike approached.
“That developer?”
Jackson nodded.
Mike frowned.
“My sister’s friend got pushed out of one of his buildings last year.”
Sully looked at the bill.
“What do you want to do?”
“Find out if they’re safe.”
“Not go start a war.”
“I didn’t say war.”
“You have the face.”
Jackson ignored him.
They called two motels along the northbound highway.
No useful information.
A third desk clerk remembered a tired woman with a child and an old Honda checking in.
Starlight Motel.
Sully stood.
“All right.”
He looked around the clubhouse.
“Anybody riding?”
Several heads turned.
Jackson slipped the two-dollar bill back into his vest.
Five minutes later, motorcycles rolled into the night.
At the Starlight Motel, the riders did not charge the three men.
They did something more useful.
They arrived.
Fifteen motorcycles suddenly filling a small parking lot had a remarkable effect on three men who had been comfortable intimidating one woman behind a motel door.
Fowler stepped backward.
Jackson dismounted.
Sully beside him.
Iron Mike and the others spread out near the parking area but kept their distance.
Several residents emerged onto motel balconies.
Phones appeared.
Witnesses.
Jackson looked toward Fowler.
“You boys lost?”
Fowler stared.
“Jackson.”
“Tommy.”
“This isn't your business.”
Jackson glanced at room 114.
“Looks like a woman told you to leave.”
“We’re here on behalf of her landlord.”
“At eleven at night?”
“Paperwork.”
Sully smiled without humor.
“You deliver a lot of paperwork in groups of three?”