Miller offered her his spare jacket when he noticed her trembling again. It was too large and smelled of clean leather and road dust. She hesitated to put it on, aware of the patches stitched across the back.
Miller shook his head and turned it around. "It's a plain riding jacket," he said. "No colors. Just warmer than what you've got."
Chloe wrapped it around herself. A memory flashed of Richard accusing her of taking one of his shirts to stay warm, then demanding she stand outside to prove she could survive without him. She tried to push the memory away. But the kind way Miller waited for her to settle into the stool made her suddenly conscious of how strange kindness had become. She thanked him without lifting her eyes.
Jack crouched beside her, careful to keep enough distance that she did not need to lean away. He was still an intimidating man, taller than Richard and broader through the shoulders, but his questions were patient now. "Is there anyone else who knows what he's done to you?" he asked.
"Arthur knows some. My mother knew things before she died. Nobody ever did anything." Chloe stared at the wrench still held across her knees. "He has a badge. People act like that makes his version of everything the only version worth hearing."
Jack listened without interrupting. "How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"Then you can decide where you go. He doesn't get to own you because he married your mother. The badge doesn't change that."
It was the simplest statement Chloe had heard all day, and it hurt to realize how long she had waited for anyone to say it aloud. She knew, in a vague schoolroom sense, that an adult could leave home. But Richard had spent years replacing facts with threats, until legal freedom seemed like a piece of paper he could tear up. Jack's words did not make her instantly brave. They made her angry at the number of years that had already been taken.
One of the riders walked over with a small radio. "Jack, dispatch at the salvage yard got word to our people," he said. "Arthur Pendleton called a number from an old club card he found. Says a young woman left on the Shovelhead and a deputy came tearing in not five minutes afterward. He thought we needed to know the bike was moving."
Chloe looked up sharply. "Arthur called you?"
Jack nodded. "He made sure somebody who cared about that bike knew where it went. We were already out on the road. Ninety-seven of us, riding the memorial route we ride every year for Preacher. We were a couple of hours away when the message reached us."
The coincidence was suddenly less mysterious, though no less frightening. The men had not appeared from nowhere or tracked her by some impossible instinct. They had been remembering a friend on the anniversary of his disappearance, and the missing motorcycle had surfaced within reach of their route. Jack had turned the ride toward the highway when he learned that the Shovelhead might have been found. The rest of the men had followed because they shared an unfinished grief.