“They didn’t come to call an ambulance, Maya,” Marcus whispered, his voice failing. He braced his hands behind him, trying to push himself upright, but his crushed leg buckled, dropping him back into the dust. “They came for the past.”
The leader stopped twenty feet away.
He didn’t pull a weapon. He didn’t shout. He simply stood on the yellow dividing line, thumbs hooked into his belt loops, staring down at Marcus. The roaring of the burning sedan filled the silence, popping and hissing as the flames consumed the upholstery.
“Well, well,” the leader said. His voice was a low, gravelly drawl that carried effortlessly over the sound of the fire. “Look at what the desert finally coughed up.”
Maya stepped forward, keeping herself directly between the man and her father. “I said stay back!”
The man looked at her for the first time. His eyes were entirely dead.
“You’re out of your depth, little girl,” he said quietly. He tipped his head, looking past her to Marcus. “Ain’t she out of her depth, Reaper?”
Maya froze.
Reaper.
She looked back down at her father. Marcus was staring at the man, his chest heaving, his face drained of all color.
“Vance,” Marcus spat the name out like a curse. He reached down to his boot, fumbling for the small hunting knife he always carried, but his hands were shaking too badly. “Don't you look at her. You keep your eyes on me.”
“Hard to ignore her,” Vance said, taking a slow step closer. The three men behind him mirrored the movement, tightening the half-circle. “Last time I saw her, she was small enough to fit in a saddlebag. Now she’s out here deadlifting a Heritage Softail to save your miserable life. She grow up thinking you were a hero, Marcus?”
Maya’s mind spun.
Last time I saw her?
“I don't know who you are,” Maya said, her voice dropping, the panic hardening into something colder. “But you caused that wreck. You ran us off the road. That's attempted murder. The highway patrol is already on the way.”
It was a bluff. There was no cell service out here, and her phone was smashed somewhere under the bike.
Vance smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. “Nobody’s coming, sweetheart. And even if they were, they wouldn’t care about a couple of ghosts. Your daddy knows that. Why don't you ask him why you’ve moved fourteen times in your life? Ask him why he only pays in cash.”
Maya felt a cold spike of dread pierce through the sweltering desert heat.
She looked at her father again. Marcus had never talked about his past. Not before she was five. She knew he had been in a motorcycle club, a rough crowd he left to raise her. She knew they never stayed in one state for more than two years. She knew he meticulously checked the locks on their doors every night, sometimes standing by the window for hours in the dark.
She always thought it was PTSD. An old veteran's paranoia.
“Maya,” Marcus choked, spitting a line of blood into the dirt. “The box. Pick up the box.”