Head. Side. Maybe leg.
Was there a crash?
Another nod.
Truck hit us. Dad drove away. Then our truck stopped.
Cole’s eyes sharpened.
The truck hit you on purpose?
Maya hesitated.
Dad said yes.
Ellis and the third biker, Jonah Reed, had left the booth and were standing nearby now.
Neither knew more than basic sign.
Cole spoke without looking at them.
“Call county dispatch.”
Rick immediately objected.
“Police?”
Cole glanced toward him.
“Yes, Rick. Police.”
The manager muttered something and moved toward the register phone.
Maya suddenly grabbed the edge of Cole’s vest.
He looked down.
Her eyes were locked on the wolf patch stitched across his chest.
Not the large club insignia on his back.
A smaller patch above his heart.
Older.
Faded.
A silver wolf beneath three black stars.
Cole had worn it longer than he had worn the president patch.
Maya’s face changed.
She pointed.
Then signed:
That wolf.
Cole stared.
What?
Her hands moved faster.
Dad told me if something happened, find the wolf with three stars.
Cole stopped breathing.
Nobody outside the oldest Iron Hollow members knew what the three stars meant.
The design had existed for only two years.
More than two decades earlier.
It had been created by four young riders who considered themselves inseparable.
Cole.
His younger brother Dean.
A mechanic named Samuel Pike.
And Cole’s son.
Aaron.
Cole had not allowed himself to think Aaron’s name in connection with hope for a very long time.
He crouched until he was eye level with Maya.
His hands were no longer steady.
Who is your father?
Maya reached into the backpack.
She pulled out a clear plastic sandwich bag wrapped with tape.
Inside was an old photograph.
She opened the plastic.
Cole took the picture.
The world seemed to tilt.
Four men stood beside motorcycles outside the original Iron Hollow clubhouse.
The photograph had been taken eighteen years earlier.
Cole recognized the day.
A summer charity ride.
His beard had still been mostly dark then.
Dean stood on his right.
Samuel on his left.
And beside Cole, one arm thrown carelessly across his father’s shoulders, stood a nineteen-year-old Aaron Barrett.
Cole’s son.
His only child.
The boy had his mother’s smile.
Cole had spent fifteen years trying not to remember it.
His thumb moved across the faded image.
Maya watched him.
Then signed:
That’s Dad.
Cole looked at her.
For several seconds, language abandoned him.
Maya turned the photograph over.
Cole saw handwriting.
Not hers.
He knew it instantly.
Aaron’s.
Dad — if she ever reaches you before I do, please don’t make the same mistake we made. She deserves to know her grandfather.
Cole sat down hard on the nearest stool.
The diner became unnaturally quiet.
Ellis stepped closer.
“Cole?”
Cole could not answer.
Maya looked frightened again.
She tapped his arm.
You’re my grandpa?
The question hurt more than anything Cole had experienced in fifteen years.
More than broken bones.
More than funerals.
More than sleeping drunk on the clubhouse floor after learning Aaron had disappeared from Tennessee.
He stared at the child.