CHAPTER 1
I had been nursing a black coffee for over an hour when the peace finally broke.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and the Dusty Skillet Diner sat like an isolated island of neon and aluminum on a lonely stretch of Route 66 in western Arizona. The air conditioning inside rattled with an asthmatic wheeze, but it was a welcome reprieve from the hundred-and-ten-degree furnace outside. I sat in a faded red vinyl booth near the front window, perfectly positioned to keep an eye on my motorcycle parked near the pumps.
It was a 1941 Indian Scout. I had stripped the frame, rebuilt the carburetor, and painted it a deep, matte black. Tied securely to the rear fender, wrapped in a thick wool blanket and heavy leather straps, was a heavy brass urn. It held Sarah.
I traced the rim of my thick ceramic mug with my thumb, feeling the worn, chipped edge. Sarah used to love diners like this. She loved the smell of stale grease, brewing coffee, and lemon cleaner. She loved the lonely, wandering souls you found sitting in the corner booths. When the cancer finally took her three weeks ago, my world went entirely silent. Without her gentle hand on my shoulder, without her constant reminder to breathe, I felt untethered. She was the only thing that had kept the monster inside me locked in a cage for the last ten years.
“More coffee, Leo?”
I looked up. Maria, a waitress in her fifties with tired eyes and a kind smile, stood by my table with a glass pot. She had been working here for twenty years. We were on a first-name basis now, simply because I had eaten breakfast and lunch here for three days straight, trying to work up the courage to finish the final leg of my journey to the Grand Canyon to scatter Sarah’s ashes.
“Please,” I said softly.
As she poured the steaming liquid, her gaze flicked to my left hand resting on the table. Specifically, to the thick, heavy silver ring I wore on my index finger. It bore a deeply engraved emblem—a gavel surrounded by laurels—worn smooth by decades of friction.
“That’s a unique ring,” Maria noted casually. “Military?”
“Something like that,” I lied smoothly. I pulled my hand off the table, slipping it into my jacket pocket. “Just a reminder of a past life.”
My burner phone buzzed in my chest pocket. It had been vibrating intermittently all morning. I pulled it out and glanced at the cracked screen. A text message from a contact saved simply as Dutch.
Heard you were spotted out near Kingman. The roads are getting messy these days. Do you need an escort? The network is yours.
I typed back a fast, blunt reply: I travel alone. Do not contact me again.
I powered the phone off completely and shoved it away. I didn’t want the escort, and I certainly didn't want anything to do with Dutch's 'network'. When I left the National Biker Syndicate a decade ago, I made it perfectly clear that I was retiring my cut. I had surrendered my power. I was no longer the man who kept the peace through calculated, unrelenting terror.
Before I could take a sip of my fresh coffee, the low, throaty rumble of heavy engines bled through the diner’s single-pane glass windows.
It wasn't just one or two bikes. It sounded like a small army. The building began to vibrate. Dust shook loose from the ceiling fan above me. I looked out the window. A pack of about fifteen heavily modified Choppers roared into the dirt parking lot, kicking up massive clouds of brown dust that coated the few civilian cars parked outside.
They parked haphazardly, intentionally blocking the exits and taking up multiple spaces. These weren’t the gritty, road-worn outlaws of my generation. These were the new breed. Young, affluent, reckless, wearing spotless, expensive leathers adorned with shiny studs. On their backs, they wore a heavy, embroidered patch: The Iron Kings.
My jaw tightened.
The Iron Kings. It was a charter I had personally authorized twenty-five years ago when I drafted the Syndicate's bylaws. But the men wearing those patches now looked nothing like the men who had bled to earn them.
The diner door slammed open, hitting the diner bell so hard it shattered the small clapper inside.
They flooded into the small restaurant, a chaotic wave of loud voices, heavy boots, and arrogant laughter. At the front of the pack was their leader. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, with a jagged tattoo snaking up his neck and a diamond stud piercing his left eyebrow. He moved with the exaggerated swagger of someone who had watched too many movies about gangsters but had never actually taken a bullet for one.
“Alright, listen up!” the kid yelled, clapping his hands loudly. “My boys are hungry and we want the whole place. Finish your meals and get out!”
The diner fell into a tense, terrified silence. An elderly couple in a booth across from me immediately stood up, leaving their half-eaten sandwiches, and scurried toward the door. A trucker at the counter kept his head down, dropped a twenty-dollar bill, and hurried out.