No body.
No footprints.
No evidence that she had survived the desert heat.
Her name had been Elise Ward.
Dean stood carefully.
Nora’s smile faded when she saw his expression.
“Did I say something bad?”
“No.”
He lowered himself into the empty stool beside her, remaining far enough away not to crowd her.
“What did you say your mother’s name is?”
“Elise Wren.”
“Has she always been Wren?”
Nora considered the question.
“I think so.”
“Where was she born?”
“Kansas.”
The answer came too quickly, the way recited information adults had practiced with them.
Dean glanced toward Maggie.
She had moved closer.
“Nora,” Maggie said, “is everything okay?”
“Yes. His tattoo is like Mom’s.”
Dean looked at Maggie.
“How long has she been coming here?”
“Elise?”
“Yes.”
“Almost three years. Why?”
“Do you know where she lived before Red Mesa Junction?”
Maggie’s expression sharpened.
“She keeps to herself.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“It is the answer I have.”
Nora watched the adults.
Dean softened his voice.
“Does your mom ever tell you stories about ”
“She doesn’t like them.”
Mo closed his eyes briefly.
That sounded like Elise.
After the night at Cinder Ridge, she had sworn never to sit on one again.
Nora continued.
“She says they’re loud.”
“Sometimes.”
“She said one saved her once.”
Dean’s throat tightened.
“Which one?”
“A black one.”
Curtis pushed away his plate.
Dean removed his phone.
“May I show you a picture?”
Nora nodded.
He opened an encrypted photo archive he had not viewed in years.
The picture had been taken beneath the rusted sign of a service station near Bitter Creek.
Seven people stood beside four motorcycles.
Dean was thirty-nine, with darker hair and no scar on his throat.
Mo’s beard was black.
Curtis stood without a limp.
Warren’s younger brother, Nathan, leaned against a bike wearing a grin wide enough to make the years hurt.
At the center stood a woman in a white paramedic shirt stained with grease and blood.
Her hair was tied beneath a red bandanna.
She wore the skull-and-wings tattoo fresh on her wrist, skin reddened around the ink.
Elise Ward was twenty-four in the photograph.
Nora touched the screen.
“That’s Mommy.”
Nobody at the table spoke.
She zoomed in.
“She had different hair.”
Dean’s eyes remained on the woman who had once saved his life.
“We knew her a long time ago.”
“Were you friends?”
Mo turned toward the window.
Curtis rubbed both hands over his face.
Dean answered.
“She was braver than any of us.”
Nora beamed with uncomplicated pride.
“She still is.”
Across the parking lot, a black Chevrolet Tahoe sat beneath the dark sign of an abandoned gas station.
Its lights were off.
The engine was running.
Eli Mercer noticed it because the exhaust formed a faint cloud in the cold air.
He had seen the same SUV when the riders arrived.
At the time, he assumed the driver was using a phone.
Now he watched the dark windshield.
A small red light appeared near the dashboard.
Then disappeared.
Someone had taken a photograph.
Eli leaned toward Dean.
“Black Tahoe across the lot.”
Dean did not turn.
“How long?”
“Since we arrived.”
“Plate?”
“Can’t see it.”
Mo looked toward the diner’s convex security mirror instead of the window.
The Tahoe sat at an angle giving its driver a view of Nora and the riders.
“Maybe waiting for somebody,” Curtis said.
“Maybe,” Eli replied.
Dean looked at the wall clock.
Elise was now twenty-six minutes late.
Nora noticed too.
“Mom is never this late.”
Maggie picked up the diner phone.
“I’ll call the motel.”
Nora’s face became uncertain.
“She might be cleaning.”
“She won’t mind me checking.”
Maggie dialed the Cinder Ridge Motor Lodge.