The cynical side of him, the side that had kept him alive in prison, the side that navigated the violent politics of the club, screamed at him to get on the Harley, rev the engine, and disappear.
It was a domestic mess.
Dangerous.
Pointless.
“Who’s he?” Dutch asked.
“Frank,” Leo whispered. “My mom’s boyfriend. He drinks. He gets mad. My dog, Buster… Buster bit him yesterday when Frank was yelling at my mom. Frank locked Buster in the shed. He said when he gets home from work today, he’s getting his gun.”
Dutch looked at the kid’s duct-taped shoe.
He looked at the fading bruise on his cheek.
He remembered a time, decades ago, before the leather, before the brotherhood, when he was just a skinny kid with a broken nose, hiding in a closet while the house tore itself apart.
Dutch shoved the note into his pocket.
“Where do you live, Leo?”
The boy pointed down the avenue.
“Four blocks down. The green house with the dead grass.”
Dutch did not smile.
He did not offer a comforting platitude.
He just nodded.
“Go home. Sit on your front porch. Wait.”
Leo hesitated. His eyes darted to the massive black motorcycle, then up to the towering bearded man standing beside it.
“Are you going to help?”
“I said wait on the porch,” Dutch repeated, turning his back to the kid.
It was a dismissal, clear and final.
He heard the rapid scuffling footsteps of the boy running off toward the avenue.
Dutch waited until the sound faded completely before he reached into his denim cut and pulled out his cell phone. The screen was cracked. He dialed a number from memory.
It rang twice.
“Yeah,” a voice rumbled on the other end.
“Bear, where are you?” Dutch asked.
“Shop. Me and Reno are replacing a clutch on the Softail. Why?”
“Put the wrenches down. Get on your bikes. Meet me at the diner.”
“We got club business?” Bear asked.
The casual tone dropped instantly, replaced by a cold, professional edge.
“No,” Dutch said.
He looked down at his heavy boots.
“Got a pest control problem. Might need to look scary.”
There was a brief pause.
“Ten minutes,” Bear said.
Then the line went dead.
Dutch stood in the parking lot while the sun beat down, baking the asphalt.
He did not want to do this. The club had enough attention from local law enforcement without sticking their noses into domestic trouble.
But the image of that kid’s shoe, the desperation of jamming a torn piece of paper onto an outlaw’s bike, lodged in Dutch’s throat like a fishbone.
You did not ask the devil for help unless heaven had completely turned its back on you.
Twelve minutes later, the air split with the concussive roar of twin V-twin engines.
Bear and Reno pulled into the lot.
Bear was a mountain of a man, wide as a refrigerator, his beard a tangled gray mess over his chest. Reno was younger, wiry, with a map of prison ink crawling up his neck and a volatile energy that crackled around him like static.
They kicked their stands down in unison.
“Talk,” Bear said, pulling off his leather gloves.
Dutch gave it to them straight.
No embellishments.
The kid.
The note.
The dog in the shed.
The boyfriend named Frank.
Reno spat on the ground.
“We’re running an animal rescue now, Dutch? I got half a transmission sitting on the floor.”
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to adopt a puppy, Reno,” Dutch said, his voice dropping into a register that made the younger biker shut his mouth. “I told you to ride out. You want to go back to the shop, go back to the shop.”
Bear looked at Dutch.
They had ridden together for twenty years. They had bled in the same dirt.
Bear did not ask questions.
He just strapped his gloves back on.
“Four blocks down,” Dutch said. “Green house. Dead grass.”
They mounted up.
The three Harleys roared to life, a deafening, unified thunder that shook the windows of the diner.
They pulled out onto the avenue, riding side by side.
Traffic parted for them.
It always did.
The neighborhood shifted quickly from commercial strips to residential decay. Houses with peeling paint, sagging porches, and chain-link fences holding in dirt yards.
They spotted the green house easily.
It looked exactly as Leo had described.
The siding was rotting. The front yard was a patch of baked mud and weeds.
And sitting on the top step of the concrete porch, knees pulled to his chest, was Leo.
When the three massive bikes pulled up to the curb, the noise was absolute.
Curtains in the neighboring houses twitched.
Doors locked.
The Angels had arrived on Elm Street.
Dutch cut his engine.
Bear and Reno followed.
The sudden silence was heavy, broken only by the ticking of the cooling exhaust pipes.
Dutch swung his leg over the saddle and walked up the cracked concrete path. Bear and Reno flanked him, a wall of leather, denim, and bad intentions.
Leo stood up, his eyes wide, terrified all over again.
He had not expected three of them.