“GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM, LITTLE GIRL!”
The shout cracked across the healing courtyard of Mercy Ridge Children's Hospital, stopping every conversation beneath the afternoon sunshine.
A seven-year-old girl stood beside a white folding table, both of her small hands pressed firmly against the enormous tattooed forearm of a man nearly three times her size. Wet garden mud covered his wrist, his elbow, and the black-and-gray raven tattoo stretching toward his shoulder. She was rubbing desperately, as though the ink beneath his skin were something dangerous she could erase if she tried hard enough.
The man didn't move.
His name was Hammer Dawson.
He was forty-eight years old, six feet four inches tall, and weighed nearly two hundred and eighty-five pounds. His shaved head, thick gray-black beard, scarred knuckles, and muscular tattooed arms made him one of the most intimidating men anyone was likely to encounter in a hospital garden. A faded black T-shirt stretched across his shoulders, and a heavy silver watch rested against his wrist.
For eighteen years, he'd been president of the Iron Ravens Motorcycle Club, a brotherhood of mechanics, veterans, truck drivers, and working men who had earned a reputation that inspired both respect and nervous glances.
Yet now, as the little girl smeared another handful of mud across his skin, Hammer sat perfectly still in a chair that looked far too small for him.
Her name was Lucy Bennett.
She had straight light-brown hair falling to her shoulders, wide hazel eyes, and a pale-blue hoodie that was a little too large for her slender frame. There was mud on her sleeves and along one cheek. Her breathing was quick and uneven, and her lips trembled with the effort of holding back tears.
“Make it go away,” she whispered.
Hammer looked down.
“It's all right, sweetheart.”
“No.” Lucy rubbed harder. “Make the birds go away.”
Behind the table stood three older bikers. Their black leather vests bore the Iron Ravens emblem, a silver bird spreading its wings beneath a circle of stars. One of them, a bald man with a long gray goatee, stared in astonishment at the muddy handprints covering his president's arm.
Another biker stepped forward.
“Hey! You can't do that to Hammer!”
Lucy flinched.
Her hands stopped moving.
Then she looked toward the men and began trembling.
The biker reached out as though to pull her away.
Hammer's voice cut through the courtyard.