Chapter 2 - The Oath on Highway 50
The rain continued to hammer down, but the harsh glare of a hundred headlights turned the stretch of Highway 50 into something resembling an illuminated island.
The man kneeling before Emery pulled off his heavy leather riding gloves. His hands were calloused and tattooed across the knuckles, yet when he reached out, his movement was agonizingly slow and deliberate, giving the terrified girl plenty of time to pull back if she wanted to.
"My name is Bear," he said softly, keeping his voice steady under the low roar of idling engines. "I'm with a group called the Guardian Knights. We ride to keep kids safe, little one. Nobody's going to hurt you here."
Emery swallowed hard, her throat raw from the icy air. "Are... are you police?"
Bear let out a soft, warm chuckle that seemed to vibrate right through the wet gravel. "Not police, no. Just a bunch of softies who like loud bikes and don't take kindly to seeing a child left out in a storm." He looked down at her feet, noticing the awkward angle of her toes. "Your shoes are on the wrong feet, sweetheart. That's gotta hurt real bad."
A tear finally escaped Emery's eye, hot against her frozen cheek. The admission of her physical pain broke the dam holding back her terror. "I... I panicked," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Valerie told me to get out. She said I needed to learn."
Behind Bear, a tall woman with silver-streaked hair and a heavy leather jacket stepped forward. She carried a thick, dry wool blanket from one of the bike saddlebags. Her patch read Doc.
"Mind if I wrap this around you, hon?" Doc asked gently. "That foil sheet isn't doing much against the mountain wind."
Emery nodded weakly. Doc moved in smoothly, wrapping the heavy, warm wool over Emery's soaked shoulders and gently taking the flimsy emergency blanket away. The sudden warmth made Emery burst into quiet, helpless sobs.
Bear stayed on his knee, unaffected by the cold water pooling around his boots. "Who is Valerie, Emery?"
"My stepmother," Emery hiccuped, clutching the wool blanket around Charlotte's Web. "She said I was bad. She said I had to stand here until she came back."
A heavy, dark stillness fell over the dozen or so riders who had dismounted and gathered in a protective semicircle behind Bear. These were men and women with road-worn faces, battle-tested scars, and rough exteriors, but every single one of them looked at the shivering nine-year-old with absolute, unfiltered rage toward whoever had put her there.
A lean rider with sharp eyes and a radio harness on his chest—a man they called Hawk—stepped up to Bear. "Chief, state patrol is about twenty minutes out due to the mudslide near Montrose. But I ran the plate on the local county grid based on the kid's last name. Quinn."
Bear's eyes flicked up to Hawk. "And?"
"Her dad is Arthur Quinn," Hawk said, lowering his voice slightly, though Emery still caught every word. "He's the lead developer for the valley land expansion. But here's the kicker—Arthur Quinn filed an emergency missing person's report three hours ago from his office in Grand Junction. He thinks his daughter is at home with her stepmother."
Emery blinked through her wet eyelashes. "My dad thinks I'm home?"
Bear's jaw set into a hard, stone line. The gentleness in his eyes remained when he looked at Emery, but underneath it, a cold, dangerous resolve ignited.
"Your stepmother didn't leave you here to teach you a lesson, Emery," Bear said, his tone dead serious. "She lied to your dad. She told him you were safe while she brought you out here to the middle of nowhere."
Emery's heart hammered against her ribs. All those times Valerie had threatened her, all those quiet comments about how much simpler life was before Emery was around—it hadn't just been mean words.
Doc knelt beside Bear, unlacing Emery's wet sneakers with practiced, gentle fingers. She carefully swapped them to the correct feet, pulling thick dry wool socks from her medical pack over the child's purple toes.
"Why would she do that?" Emery whispered, her voice small against the roaring wind. "Why would she leave me?"
Before Bear could answer, Hawk’s satellite phone buzzed loudly in his pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the encrypted screen, and felt his breath catch in his throat.
"Bear," Hawk said, his voice dropping an octave. "We just intercepted an automated ping from the Quinn family asset trust. Someone just attempted an emergency guardianship transfer using an abandonment clause."
Bear stood up slowly, all six-foot-four of him towering against the stormy night, though he kept his back turned to Emery to keep from frightening her.
"Spell it out, Hawk."
"If a child is declared abandoned or missing under suspicious circumstances for more than twenty-four hours without the biological father's direct knowledge, Valerie's pre-nuptial trust triggers an immediate buyout of the late mother's estate," Hawk read from the small screen. "It's worth forty million dollars in mineral rights on the river basin. But the trust only activates if Emery is declared legally lost or dead."
A collective growl went through the assembled bikers.
Valerie hadn't just left a little girl on the side of the road because of a dirty cereal bowl. She had dumped Emery in a mountain storm on a dangerous stretch of highway, hoping the hypothermia—or a passing truck—would finish what her greed started.
Bear turned back to Emery. He knelt once more, extending his giant, calloused hand.
"Emery," Bear said softly. "You're coming with us. We're going to go get your dad, and then we're going to settle this once and for all. Nobody leaves a child on my highway. Do you trust me?"
Emery looked at the giant man, then at the wall of leather-clad riders standing like an impenetrable fortress between her and the cold black storm. For the first time since her mother died, she felt safe.
May you like
She reached out her tiny, trembling hand and placed it in Bear's giant palm.
"I trust you," she said.
