She put the vest down on a clean patch of dirt and backed away from it. In her mind she could hear Arthur saying that whoever had owned the bike did not seem like the sort of person who spent much time at the DMV. He had been wrong about how small that problem might be. She had bought a piece of somebody else's history for forty dollars and ridden it into the middle of nowhere. Worse, that history seemed to involve people Richard had trained her to fear.
The motorcycle's fuel tank carried an odd raised patch beneath the rust, a swelling of gray filler along the lower mounting bracket. Chloe remembered seeing the same clumsy repair in the salvage yard and thinking it had been done by someone who cared very little about appearance. In the flashlight beam, the filler looked newer than the surrounding corrosion. She could not explain why that bothered her. She took a photograph only in her imagination, wishing she had a phone with which to record what she saw.
A car appeared on the horizon behind her. Two headlights rose over a distant hill and disappeared into a depression in the road before returning closer and brighter. Chloe snatched up her father's wrench and retreated instinctively toward the scrub. Every muscle in her body tightened at the possibility that Richard had tracked her. She crouched behind a creosote bush whose branches offered almost no cover and listened.
The sound approaching her was not a patrol car's engine. It was deeper, more layered, a distant rolling beat that seemed to arrive through the soil before reaching her ears. A second pair of lights appeared beside the first. Then another, and another, until the darkness behind the first two riders filled with rows of moving stars.
Motorcycles. Dozens of them. Their headlights advanced along the roadway in a controlled formation, slowing as the lead riders noticed the stranded Shovelhead at the shoulder. Chloe pressed herself closer to the ground and watched the first row pull off the asphalt. More motorcycles followed, spreading into a wide arc around the damaged machine. The sound of their engines overwhelmed the wind, the insects, and even the pounding of Chloe's heart.
She counted until the numbers became meaningless, then watched the riders settle around the roadside in near-perfect coordination. Ninety-seven heavy motorcycles had come to a stop. Their headlights turned the broken Shovelhead into the center of an enormous, harshly lit stage, every dent in its tank suddenly visible. The men who climbed off wore leather cuts and road-worn denim, and several carried helmets whose surfaces were marked by countless miles. They had not arrived by accident. Chloe could feel that certainty in the way they looked at the motorcycle before they looked anywhere else.
One of the men walked ahead of the others. He was tall and broad, with an iron-gray beard and a face worn by weather rather than age alone. His vest carried the name JACK above one pocket and an office patch beneath the other. He held a heavy flashlight and moved toward the damaged bike without hurrying. The riders behind him waited, their machines ticking as the engines cooled.