Chapter 2 - Forty-Two Minutes Until MidnightCole Maddox had ridden through hurricanes.
Thunder rolled over the building.
Rain poured through the doorway.
And standing in the middle of it was a little girl.
Barefoot.
Soaked.
Shivering so badly her knees almost buckled.
She couldn't have been older than six.
The Rusted Halo was not a place children wandered into.
It sat outside the small Missouri town of Blackridge, hidden behind an abandoned tire shop and surrounded by motorcycles that looked like they belonged to men who preferred solving problems without lawyers.
Twenty-three bikers had been laughing a second earlier.
Now nobody spoke.
The girl stepped inside.
Mud streaked her pink pajama pants. Blood—just a little—marked one elbow.
Her wet brown hair clung to her cheeks.
“I… need help.”
The words were barely louder than the storm.
A huge man near the pool table set down his beer.
Another biker slowly removed the cigarette from his mouth.
At the back of the room, Cole Maddox lifted his head.
At forty-three, Cole was the president of the Iron Saints Motorcycle Club and the kind of man people in Blackridge crossed the street to avoid.
Six-foot-three.
Gray beginning at his temples.
A scar running from beneath his left ear toward his collar.
People told stories about him.
Some true.
Most exaggerated.
But none of that mattered when Cole saw the girl.
Because she looked terrified.
He stood.
His chair scraped across the floor.
The child flinched.
Cole stopped immediately.
“Easy,” he said.
His voice changed.
The hard edge disappeared.
“You're safe in here.”
The girl stared at him.
Her eyes were enormous.
Brown.
Familiar.
Cole felt something tighten in his chest.
“What happened?”
She looked over her shoulder toward the darkness outside.
“They're hurting my mom.”
Every man in the room went still.
Cole came around the table.
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“Where is she?”
The girl pointed toward the highway.
“Our house. Near the old water tower.”
Cole knew the area.
Three houses.
Miles apart.
Mostly woods.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
The girl rubbed her hands together.
“Lily.”
Cole froze.
Someone behind him said, “Boss?”
He didn't hear them.
“Lily what?”
“Lily Mercer.”
The blood seemed to drain from Cole's face.
The room noticed.
Everybody noticed.
Marcus “Bear” Lawson, Cole's second-in-command, frowned.
“You know that name?”
Cole stared at the child.
Mercer.
Brown eyes.
That face.
Impossible.
He crouched until he was almost eye level with her.
“What's your mother's name?”
Lily hesitated.
“Sarah.”
Cole's heart stopped.
Not literally.
But for one terrible second, it felt like it had forgotten what to do.
Sarah Mercer.
The woman he had not seen in seven years.
The woman who had disappeared without explaining why.
The woman whose last words to him had been:
Don't look for me.
Cole had looked anyway.
For months.
Then years.
Nothing.
He had eventually forced himself to accept that Sarah wanted a life without him.
Now her six-year-old daughter was standing barefoot in his clubhouse.
“Cole?” Bear said again.
Cole ignored him.
“Lily.”
His voice was quieter now.
“How did you get here?”
“I ran.”
“From your house?”
She nodded.
Cole looked toward the storm.
That was nearly two miles.
Through woods.
In bare feet.
His jaw hardened.
“What happened before you ran?”
Lily's lower lip trembled.
“Mom woke me up.”
“And?”
“She put me in the closet.”
Cole's eyes narrowed.
“She told me not to make any noise.”
The room had become completely silent.
“Then men came inside.”
“How many?”
“Three. Maybe four.”
“What did they want?”
Lily shook her head.
“I heard one say she had until midnight.”
Cole checked the clock.
11:18 p.m.
Forty-two minutes.
He stood immediately.
“Bear.”
The older biker was already moving.
“I'm on it.”
“Tank, kill the music. Ronnie, bring towels for Lily. Doc, check her feet.”
Then Cole pointed toward six men.
“You're riding with me.”
Chairs scraped.
Jackets went on.
Keys were grabbed.
The room exploded into controlled movement.
Lily suddenly reached for Cole.
Her tiny hand caught two of his fingers.
“Please.”
He looked down.
“They said if Mommy didn't tell them where it was, they'd make her disappear.”
Cole crouched again.
“What were they looking for?”
“I don't know.”
Then Lily remembered something.
She reached beneath the collar of her wet pajama shirt.
A thin silver chain appeared.
Hanging from it was a small metal key.
Cole stared at it.
Lily whispered, “Mom gave me this.”
Cole's face changed.
Because he recognized the key.
He had given it to Sarah eight years earlier.
It belonged to a safe-deposit box nobody was supposed to know existed.
“Mom said if anything happened…”
Lily swallowed.
“…I had to find the man with the broken-wing tattoo.”
Cole slowly looked at his right forearm.
A black wing.
Split through the center.
The tattoo Sarah had once traced with her fingertip while telling him that broken things could still fly.
Lily followed his gaze.
Her eyes widened.
“You.”
Cole couldn't speak.
“Mom told me to find you.”
Behind him, Bear whispered a curse.
Cole closed his hand around the key.
Then he looked at Lily.
One question had begun pounding through his mind.
A question he didn't have time to ask.
Not yet.
Because somewhere two miles away, Sarah Mercer was trapped inside a house with men threatening to kill her.
Cole lifted Lily into his arms.
She instinctively wrapped herself around him.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Nobody is taking your mother tonight.”
Outside, twenty motorcycles began roaring to life.
Lily buried her face against his shoulder.
Cole carried her toward Doc.
Then he stopped.
“Lily?”
She looked up.
“Yeah?”
“How old are you?”
“Six.”
“When's your birthday?”
“March nineteenth.”
Cole went completely still.
Seven years ago, he had spent his final night with Sarah on June eighteenth.
Nine months before Lily's birthday.
Bear saw the realization hit him.
Cole looked at the child again.
Same brown eyes.
Same small dimple near the left corner of her mouth that his mother had possessed.
And suddenly saving Sarah wasn't the only thing waiting for him at that house.
There was a truth.
One that had been hidden for six years.
Cole kissed Lily gently on the top of her wet hair.
Then he handed her to Doc and turned toward the door.
His face was cold again.
“Saints!”
The bikers looked at him.
Cole pulled on his leather jacket.
May you like
“Bring Sarah Mercer home.”
And twenty engines thundered into the storm.
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