Mara rode in the sidecar of Ghost’s bike, wrapped in someone’s spare jacket, clutching a bottle of water with both hands.
She had stopped crying.
That worried Kuda more than tears would have.
Teenagers who stopped crying too early had learned adults might punish the noise.
At the motel office, a woman with bleached hair looked up from behind the counter and immediately stiffened.
Kuda stepped inside.
“What room?”
The woman swallowed.
“I don’t want trouble.”
“Then answer.”
Her eyes flicked toward Mara.
“Room twelve.”
Kuda turned.
The riders moved before he gave another order.
Room twelve was at the far end of the motel, under a buzzing light, curtains drawn.
The door was unlocked.
That was the first bad sign.
The second was the smell.
Sweat.
Medicine.
Old blood.
Kuda pushed the door open.
The room was dim.
A man lay on the bed beneath a thin blanket.
Beard overgrown.
Hair streaked with gray.
Face hollowed by exhaustion and pain.
For a moment, Kuda saw only the ruin time had made.
Then the man’s eyelids fluttered.
His lips moved.
Kuda stepped forward.
“Elias?”
The man’s eyes opened.
Cloudy at first.
Then focused.
Barely.
Recognition struck like lightning.
“Kuda…”
The room seemed to tilt.
Behind Kuda, one of the riders cursed softly.
Ghost whispered, “Jesus.”
Mara ran to the bed.
“Daddy!”
Elias tried to lift his hand.
Couldn’t.
Kuda reached him first and gripped his shoulder.
Not gently.
Not roughly.
Like a man trying to prove flesh was real.
“You’re dead,” Kuda said.
Elias’s mouth twitched.
“Bad habit.”
Kuda let out something that was almost a laugh and almost a sob.
Then he saw Elias’s side.
A bandage soaked through under his shirt.
His anger came back hard.
“What happened?”
Elias’s eyes moved toward the door.
“They found us.”
“Who?”
Elias swallowed.
His voice came thin.
“Same men.”
The air in the room changed.
Twelve years vanished.
The desert came back.
Smoke.
Blood.
Burning rubber.
Kuda leaned closer.
“Who, Elias?”
Elias’s gaze shifted to Mara.
Then back.
“Voss.”
Kuda froze.
Colonel Adrian Voss.
The man tied to the Eylian ambush.
The man they could never prove existed beyond whispers.
The man who built a private security empire on stolen vehicles, missing witnesses, and dead men who knew too much.
Kuda’s jaw locked.
“You should’ve come to me.”
Elias closed his eyes.
“I tried.”
Elias did not tell the story all at once.
He couldn’t.
His body was too weak.
His fever too high.
So Kuda called Doc Lane, an old combat medic who owed the club too many favors to count.
While they waited, Elias drifted in and out.
Mara sat beside him, holding his hand.
Kuda stood near the window with the vest in his arms.
He wanted to rage.
He wanted to break something.
He wanted to ask why his brother had stayed gone while they buried an empty coffin.