Chapter 6 - Mile Marker 15
The ride up the mountain was a blur of freezing wind and roaring engines. Emily clung to Hawk’s waist, her face pressed against his heavy leather jacket, feeling the raw, thundering power of the motorcycle beneath her. Behind them, a convoy of thirty Hells Angels tore up the winding asphalt of Highway 11, a black iron snake cutting through the pine forests.
Emily’s mind was spinning faster than the wheels. Her father hadn't just saved a man; he had built a life for him. A blue cabin. A child who called him Uncle Tommy. All those weekends her father said he was going to hunting lodges to buy venison—he was going to this family. The family he was hiding from a corrupt police force.
As they rounded a sharp bend, Hawk slammed on the brakes. The massive bike fishtailed slightly before coming to a hard halt, gravel spraying into the ditch. The convoy behind him stopped in perfect synchronization, the roar of engines dropping to a menacing idle.
Ahead of them, two local police cruisers were parked diagonally across the road, their lightbars flashing crimson and blue against the darkening trees. Mile Marker 15 was just beyond them.
"Blockade," Diesel yelled over the engines, pulling his bike up next to Hawk's. "They're trying to buy Miller time to get to the cabin."
Four deputies stood behind the open doors of the cruisers, shotguns leveled at the bikers.
"Turn around, Reynolds!" the lead deputy shouted, his voice cracking slightly as he looked at the thirty angry men facing him. "Road's closed for emergency maintenance!"
Hawk didn't say a word. He reached down and killed his engine. Thirty engines died immediately after. The silence of the mountain rushed in, deafening and tense.
Hawk swung his leg over the bike and stood up. He unzipped his jacket, deliberately keeping his hands away from his waist, and started walking toward the barricade.
"Stop right there!" the deputy yelled, racking his shotgun.
Hawk kept walking. "You pull that trigger, son, and my brothers will make sure there isn't enough left of you to fill a shoebox. Lower the weapon."
The deputy hesitated. He was a local kid, maybe twenty-two, playing a deadly game for a corrupt boss. He looked at Hawk, then at the sea of leather and steel behind him. Slowly, the barrel of the shotgun dipped toward the asphalt.
"Move the cars," Hawk ordered, his voice like grinding stone.
Before the deputy could respond, a gunshot echoed from the woods above them. A sharp, loud crack of a hunting rifle. Then, two rapid shots from a handgun.
Emily’s blood ran cold. "The cabin."
"Diesel, take the girl!" Hawk roared, sprinting toward the hidden logging trail that snaked up the mountain.
Emily didn't wait. She scrambled off the bike and ran after Hawk, ignoring Diesel’s shouts. She tore through the underbrush, branches whipping her face, the steep incline burning her lungs.
She broke through the tree line into a small clearing. There it was. The blue cabin with the yellow door.
But the door wasn't yellow anymore. It was splintered open, hanging off its hinges. On the porch, a deputy lay groaning, clutching a bleeding leg.
Emily ran inside, Hawk right behind her. The living room was destroyed. Furniture overturned, glass shattered. And sitting in the middle of the room, on a overturned rocking chair, was Chief Miller.
He was holding his service weapon. But he wasn't pointing it at them. He was pointing it at a woman with burn scars on her arms, who was clutching a terrified, dark-haired boy to her chest.
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"You're too late, Hawk," Miller panted, a dark stain spreading across his shoulder where the hunting rifle had clipped him. "I found the ghost."
But Emily wasn't looking at Miller. She was staring at a heavy, blood-stained leather jacket draped over the back of the sofa. It was her father’s jacket. And stitched onto the back, faded but unmistakable, was the winged death head of the Hells Angels.
