Chapter 1
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Riker heard him before he saw him.
A high, thin voice cut through the convoy’s exhaust roar, cracking with effort in the way a child’s voice cracks when it is being pushed past what it was built to do. Then, he saw the shape in the right mirror. A small boy on a rust-eaten bicycle was standing up on the pedals, pumping with everything he had. His face was tilted upward, his mouth wide open, screaming something the wind shredded before it reached them.
Riker Cross had twelve years of Army Ranger training and fifteen years of riding point for the Steel Saw Chapter. In all that time, he had developed exactly one rule about his instincts.
Never dismiss them. Not once. Not for any reason.
Right now, his instincts were telling him the boy was screaming something that mattered. Riker hit the brake. Eleven sets of brakes answered behind him in a controlled, synchronized deceleration. The column moved like a single organism, each rider reading the one ahead. Twelve choppers settled to a ragged standstill on Tulain Mountain Road, their engines holding at a patient rumble.
Then came silence.