Somewhere far away a coyote called. The sound stretched across the scrubland, followed by an answer from the opposite slope. Chloe had never been especially afraid of animals, but her nerves turned every noise into an approaching vehicle. She switched the flashlight on and off twice, testing it, then decided not to waste the battery. The stars grew unusually bright as darkness settled, and the distant mountains became nothing more than black outlines against the sky.
She tried using what David had taught her to diagnose the damage, but the symptoms were too severe and the bike too unstable to risk touching in the dark. Whatever had failed was not a roadside adjustment. She remembered Arthur's warning about the bent frame and bad suspension, and shame rose through her fear. It would have been easier to blame him, but he had told her the truth repeatedly. She had been desperate enough to choose danger because the other danger had felt certain.
A gust of wind lifted the torn edge of the seat covering. Chloe reached to pull it flat, partly to keep it from flapping and partly because she could not stand to be helpless. Her fingers struck a hard object beneath the foam. At first she thought a piece of the seat bracket had come loose in the skid. When she aimed the flashlight underneath, she saw a narrow steel compartment fixed awkwardly behind the frame tubes.
The compartment was not part of any Harley she remembered seeing in her father's shop. Its latch had been bent open by the force of the breakdown, and a corner of an oily cloth protruded through the gap. Chloe hesitated, wondering what someone might have hidden inside a motorcycle in this condition. She knew she should leave things alone. But curiosity and fear had never been good companions, and the hidden object seemed to offer one more explanation for why this abandoned machine felt wrong.
She carefully pulled the cloth free. Something stiff and heavy came with it, folding against her hands as it emerged. The smell was unmistakable: old leather, oil, sweat, and the dusty scent of fabric that had been sealed away too long. She unfolded a dark leather vest on the dirt. Its patches caught the flashlight beam in colors that remained vivid despite the grime.
Across the back, in large red and white lettering, was the name of a motorcycle club known to nearly everyone who had grown up along the desert highways. Beneath the letters sat the winged death's-head insignia, and below that a rocker identifying California. The small patches across the front had been sewn and resewn at different times. One bore a name: PREACHER. Another identified its owner as PRESIDENT.
Across the inside lining, on a strip of cloth added with a different color thread, was a memorial inscription: IN MEMORY OF DOMINIC "PREACHER" HAYES. Chloe read it twice, confused by the fact that the name of a dead man had been stitched into what appeared to be his own vest. She thought of the old stories Richard told whenever a motorcycle pack passed through town, stories about people who disappeared and questions nobody wanted to ask. Suddenly the scratched identification marks on Arthur's salvage bike looked less like a nuisance and more like a warning.