“Plate?”
“Can't see it.”
The sedan left.
Kuda didn't wait for a third pass.
Within an hour, Mara had been moved from the hospital to June and Buck's ranch outside town. Only six people knew the location.
Kuda also called someone he had avoided for eleven years.
Special Agent Sofia Reyes.
Reyes had been a junior investigator on the Eylian case. She had never believed Elias's disappearance was simple, but the investigation collapsed after evidence vanished, witnesses recanted, and Daniel Sutter entered federal protection.
Now Reyes ran an organized-crime task force in Las Vegas.
She listened without interrupting.
When Kuda finished, she said, “Do not touch the ledger.”
“We don't have it.”
“Good.”
“You believe me?”
“I believed something was wrong twelve years ago.”
“Then why didn't you do anything?”
“I did. My supervisor buried it.”
Kuda went silent.
Reyes continued.
“He retired three years later. Six months after that, he bought a $900,000 house in Scottsdale.”
Kuda's jaw tightened.
“Voss?”
“I could never prove it.”
“Elias might.”
“Then keep him alive.”
Kuda almost laughed.
“That was already the plan.”
“No, Kuda. Listen to me. If Adrian Voss has spent twelve years protecting whatever happened at Eylian, this isn't a biker grudge. It's a criminal conspiracy. If you and your friends decide to play vigilante, you'll contaminate evidence and possibly get people killed.”
Kuda thought about Mara.
“No revenge.”
“Say it again.”
“No revenge.”
“Good. I'll be there tonight.”
That evening Elias was stable enough to speak for longer.
Reyes sat beside his bed with a recorder.
Elias told the story.
After the ambush, Voss's men had taken him to an abandoned mining property. They interrogated him for six days.
On the seventh night, a guard underestimated how badly Elias was injured.
Elias escaped.
He walked nearly fourteen miles through desert before reaching a small roadside chapel run by Father Tomas Alvarez.
He gave the priest a sealed metal cylinder.
Then he disappeared.
“Why not go to the FBI?” Reyes asked.
“I tried.”
“What happened?”
“The first number I called belonged to an agent named Keating.”
Reyes's expression hardened.
Her former supervisor.
“He told me to stay where I was.”
Elias looked at her.
“Thirty minutes later, a black SUV came up the road.”
Reyes stopped the recorder.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then she turned it back on.
“What did you do?”
“Ran.”
That one betrayal shaped the next twelve years.
Elias used cash.
Changed names.
Worked temporary jobs.
Avoided old friends.
Then he met Lena Marlowe, a nurse in New Mexico who treated him after a construction accident.
She learned the truth slowly.
Instead of leaving, she helped him build a life.
Mara was born three years later.
For a while, Elias allowed himself to believe the danger had passed.
Then a photograph arrived in the mail.
Mara at a playground.
No message.
No return address.
Just the photograph.
So they moved again.
And again.
Kuda listened with his hands clenched.
“You should've called me.”
Elias looked exhausted.
“And what would you have done?”
“Helped.”
“How?”
Kuda opened his mouth.
Nothing came.
Because twelve years earlier, he would have done exactly what Voss expected.
He would have gathered riders.
He would have gone looking for blood.
And perhaps Voss had counted on that.
Elias saw the answer in his silence.
“That's why.”
Reyes leaned forward.
“Where is the ledger?”
Elias looked at Kuda.
“The brass key opens a compartment at Father Tomas's chapel.”
“And the silver one?”
“A locker at the old Greyhound terminal in Ely.”
“What's in it?”
“Insurance.”
“What kind?”
“Enough to tell you who inside our circle gave Voss the Eylian route.”
Kuda felt the room tighten.
“Inside our circle?”
Elias nodded.
“One of us sold the route.”
For the first time since Mara appeared at the fairground, Kuda felt something worse than grief.
Distrust.
The old bus terminal in Ely had been converted into a storage facility years earlier.
Locker 214 still existed.
Kuda and Reyes went together.
No bikers.
No club convoy.
No spectacle.
The silver key turned.
Inside was a battered metal toolbox.
Reyes photographed it before touching anything.
Inside they found a disposable camera, an old cassette recorder, several photocopied documents, and a sealed envelope.
Kuda recognized Elias's handwriting.
IF KUDA IS READING THIS, I WAS RIGHT TO BE AFRAID.
Reyes opened it with gloved hands.
Inside was a photograph.
Seven bikers standing beside their motorcycles the morning of the Eylian Run.
Someone had drawn a circle around one face.