Road families were chosen.
Elias had chosen him.
The Eylian patch was created after a rescue ride gone wrong. The club had been hired to escort a witness across state lines — a mechanic who had evidence against a private security crew laundering stolen vehicles through charitable auctions.
The ride should have been quiet.
It was not.
Someone leaked the route.
Two trucks blocked the desert road.
Gunfire erupted before the riders could scatter.
Elias was the one who got the witness out.
Kuda remembered the last time he saw him clearly.
Dust.
Smoke.
The smell of burning rubber.
Elias pushing the witness toward Kuda’s bike and shouting:
“Ride!”
Kuda shouted back:
“Get on!”
But Elias shook his head.
He had blood on his sleeve.
A grin on his face.
That stupid, impossible grin.
“Somebody’s gotta keep their eyes on the road.”
Then he turned back toward the smoke.
By the time backup came, Elias was gone.
They found his bike burned.
They found blood.
They found his ring.
No body.
But men like Kuda learned the hard way that sometimes no body did not mean hope.
Sometimes it meant someone wanted questions to die slowly.
The club buried an empty coffin.
They stitched the Eylian patch into memory.
And Kuda spent twelve years trying not to wonder why Elias’s last message never made sense.
All watched.
That was what Elias had written on a scrap of cloth before the run.
Kuda thought it meant they were being watched.
Now, looking at the young girl, he wondered if Elias had meant something else.
All watched.
All waited.
All lied.
Kuda looked at the girl again.
“What’s your name?”
“Mara.”
She was fifteen.
His throat tightened.
Elias had once said if he ever had a daughter, he would name her Mara, after his grandmother.
“You Elias’s girl?”
She nodded.
“My daddy said I shouldn’t tell people unless I had to.”
“Where is he?”
Her face crumpled.
“At the motel.”
“What motel?”
“The one with the broken horse sign.”
Kuda stood so fast the girl flinched.
He immediately softened.
“Hey. No. You’re okay.”
He turned toward his men.
“Ghost. Keys.”
A thin biker with a shaved head tossed him a set of keys without asking.
Another rider stepped forward.
“Kuda…”
Kuda looked at him.
The man’s face was pale.
“You think it’s him?”
Kuda held up the vest.
The patch hung from his fist like evidence.
“I think a dead man just sent his daughter to us.”
Mara tugged his sleeve.
“Will you buy it?”
Kuda looked down.
“What?”
“The vest,” she whispered. “The lady at the office said if I don’t pay, we have to leave. Daddy won’t wake up, and I don’t know what to do.”
A sound moved through the bikers.
Not pity.
Something rougher.
Shame.
Because this fifteen-year-old girl had not run to them asking for rescue.
She had run to sell the only proof of her father’s life.
Kuda crouched again.
“I’m not buying your daddy’s vest.”
Her eyes filled with panic.
“But I need—”
He placed one huge hand gently over hers.
“I’m bringing it back to him.”
She stared at him.
“And I’m bringing you with me.”
The motel sat six miles outside town, where the highway bent toward dry hills and old gas stations.
Its sign had once shown a rearing horse.
Now only two cracked legs remained lit, flickering red in the afternoon heat.
Kuda’s bike roared into the lot first.
Behind him came six more riders.
Not a parade.
A storm.