Several riders shifted their weight at the threat. Jack raised his hand, stopping them without looking away from Richard. "You just threatened her in front of witnesses," he said. "Maybe you should remember that every phone out here can record a voice as well as a face."
Richard glanced around. More screens had appeared, their little lights forming a second ring inside the headlights. He had spent years in a part of the desert where his word routinely outweighed that of frightened people. Now he was facing a crowd large enough that he could not plausibly claim no one had heard him. The realization only seemed to make him angrier.
"You people think numbers give you authority?" he demanded. "I can call every unit in the county. I can have you all arrested."
Jack's expression did not change. "Call them," he said. "Call the sheriff, call the highway patrol, call anybody you want. Then tell them why the motorcycle you declared lost in a gorge is sitting right here."
Richard's flashlight dropped toward the Shovelhead again. The beam found the hidden compartment, the old club vest, and the patch of exposed metal near the tank. He stared for a second too long. Chloe saw Jack notice it too.
"Preacher's bike," Jack continued. "The one you said washed away three years ago. We found a patched-over piece of metal that looks like it took a round. We found his colors locked inside. And we found a young woman who remembers you hiding something the night he disappeared."
"You can't prove anything," Richard said too quickly.
"We haven't tried yet," Jack answered. "That's what investigators are for."
For a moment the deputy appeared to consider retreating to his SUV. He glanced over his shoulder at the open driver's door and the radio inside. Then his eyes moved to Chloe, and the old certainty returned, the belief that whatever else went wrong, he could at least control her. He pointed directly at her.
"This girl is a liar," he said. "She's been trouble since her mother died. She runs away, she steals, she makes up stories about me to get attention. You want to stake your whole club's future on what comes out of her mouth?"
Chloe could hear her mother coughing in the last winter of her life, could remember sitting beside her bed while Richard complained about medical bills. She could remember every time he said Ellen would be ashamed of her. The words still hurt, but they no longer arrived with the same unquestioned authority. She stepped out from behind Jack far enough to be visible.
"I didn't make up what you did to me," she said. "I didn't make up the locked doors. I didn't make up the way you came home that night. You told me never to talk about it because you were afraid of what I'd say."
Richard took an abrupt step forward. Jack moved between them, hands visible, making no attempt to strike. "Stay where you are," he warned. "She already told you no."