"Hold on to my belt, Lily," Hank said, lifting her onto the pillion seat behind him. "Whatever you do, you don't let go of the leather. Understand?"
"I won't let go, Grandpa," she whispered, her tiny arms wrapping around his waist, burying her bruised face directly against the back of his cut, right between the shoulder blades where the embroidered wolf stalked across the leather.
Hank swung his heavy leg over the frame, turned the fuel petcock, and brought his boot down hard on the kickstarter.
The 80-cubic-inch engine roared to life with a deafening, chest-rattling bark. Smoke belched from the straight pipes into the freezing air as the machine settled into a low, violent idle that vibrated straight through the frame. Hank kicked the transmission into first gear, eased the clutch out, and tore out of the gravel parking lot, spraying sharp stones across the ditch as the bike rocketed onto Route 375.
The wind was a howling wall of ice. The highway sliced through the black void of the Basin and Range like a scar across charcoal. Hank kept the throttle pinned at eighty miles an hour, his weathered face taking the brunt of the freezing slipstream without a flinch. His aviators kept the gravel from his eyes, but his tears froze against the rough grey hairs of his beard.
For twenty years, Hank had told himself that staying away was an act of mercy. He was a violent man, born of a violent war and forged in the lawless backrooms of roadside clubhouses. He had believed that his blood was poison, that anyone who stayed near him would eventually end up broken, bruised, or buried.
Now, staring down the white dashed lines of the highway, he knew the truth: his absence hadn't protected Rose from the world’s wolves. It had only left her defenseless against them.
Mile Marker 30.
The engine screamed as Hank pushed the thirty-year-old machine harder than it had run in a decade. Behind him, he could feel Lily’s tiny fingers clutched like iron hooks into his heavy leather belt. She didn't cry. She didn't complain about the biting cold. She held on with the desperate, stubborn will of a child who knew that the man carrying her was her only bridge back to life.
Mile Marker 40.
Hank eased off the throttle, tapping the rear brake pedal. Ahead, silhouetted against the jagged outline of the Monte Cristo Range, the rusted skeleton of a decommissioned municipal water tank rose from the brush like a dead sentinel. Just beneath it, barely visible through the swirling desert dust, sat a low, wooden shack built from weathered railway ties and corrugated tin sheets.
Hank killed the headlight three hundred yards out. He coasted the motorcycle into the dry wash beside the road, using the high sagebrush to conceal the machine. He dropped the kickstand, swung off the bike, and lifted Lily down into the sand.
"Stay behind this boulder," Hank whispered, kneeling beside her. "Don't make a sound until I come back for you."
Lily looked at the dark shack, her eyes filling with terror. "Is she in there?"
"I'm going to bring her out," Hank promised. He reached out and touched the wolf patch on his chest. "The wolf doesn't leave his pack behind, Lily. Not anymore."
The night was dead silent except for the wind whistling through the rusted seams of the tin roof.
Hank moved toward the shack with the silent, predatory tread of a combat scout. In his right hand, he carried a heavy fourteen-inch steel tire iron pulled from his saddlebag. In his jacket pocket rested Carl’s tactical blade.
The front door of the cabin was secured from the outside: an iron hasp pulled tight and wedged with a heavy wooden railway spike. Padlocked around the doorframe was a rusty length of towing chain. Carl hadn't just tied the door; he had sealed it like a tomb.