The silence changed. Men who had been watching her with suspicion turned their eyes toward Jack. The rider with the sergeant-at-arms patch muttered something under his breath. Jack did not move for several seconds, and when he finally spoke, his voice was careful in a way Chloe had not expected.
"Richard Croft," he said. "Are you certain that's his name?"
"He's been my stepfather since I was eleven," Chloe answered. "I'm certain."
Jack looked down at the vest in his hand. He closed his eyes briefly, as if an old injury had suddenly begun to ache. "Then somebody owes you an explanation," he said. "And somebody owes our brother one too."
Jack O'Connor returned the vest to the folded shop rag and laid it across the motorcycle's damaged seat. He kept one palm on the leather for a moment, as if steadying an object that might otherwise disappear. The men around him seemed to understand that he needed the silence. One rider removed his helmet and held it against his chest. Another looked away toward the dark hills, blinking harder than the desert dust required.
Chloe stood at the edge of the light, not certain whether she was allowed to move. She had expected shouting or accusations, the same things Richard offered whenever anything went wrong. Instead a man stepped forward with a bottle of water and held it out without coming too close. He had a weathered face, a long braid threaded with gray, and a patch on his vest that identified him as Miller.
"You look like you've been riding through a furnace," he said. "Drink a little. Not all at once."
She accepted the bottle after a moment and took a careful sip. Cold water slid down her throat, and the sudden relief nearly made her knees give way. Miller noticed and moved a folding camp stool out of a saddlebag. He set it on the ground several feet away, then stepped back. "You can sit if you want," he said. "Nobody's going to make a show of it."
Jack turned toward her again. "This bike belonged to Dominic Hayes," he said. "Everybody called him Preacher, though he wasn't much for sermons. He was president of our chapter before I was. The last time any of us saw him alive was three Augusts ago."
Chloe remembered newspaper photographs from that summer. There had been a search, though the articles grew shorter with every passing day. A sheriff's spokesman said a motorcyclist had lost control near a washed-out stretch of road and gone into the gorge. The newspaper ran a photograph of a scarred guardrail, a few skid marks, and men in uniform looking toward a steep drop. By the following week, the story had almost disappeared.
"They said he went into the gorge," she murmured.
Jack nodded. "Croft told us the man had been drinking. Said the bike and the body were swept into a dry wash after a storm. I asked how a machine this heavy could vanish without leaving a trace. He told me people who ride with us ought to understand that bad things happen on highways."