Chapter 4 - Ghost of a Broken Ring
The desert stretched out in barren waves of red dirt and sagebrush. Inside the rattle of the old van, the silence between the men was thicker than the dust settling over the dashboard.
Bones drove with his jaw set like concrete, checking the rear-view mirror every three seconds. Dutch sat with his gun resting on his knee, his eyes darting between Gabriel and the girl huddled in the back.
"You want to explain this, Chief?" Dutch asked quietly, his tone devoid of judgment, carrying only the grim weight of reality. "We came into this county for a parts run. Now we're dodging carbine rounds and carrying a shadow."
Gabriel sat on the floorboards beside Maya. He pulled a clean bandanna from his pocket, wetting it with bottled water, and gently dabbed the speck of blood from the girl's cheekbone. His rough hands had snapped necks and rebuilt engines, but they hovered now, terrified of breaking her.
"Her mother was Sarah," Gabriel said simply.
Bones cursed softly from the front seat. "Sarah? You told us she ran off with a corporate suit back in Chicago before you patched in."
"I lied," Gabriel murmured, never taking his eyes off Maya. "I left her. Because the club was going to war with the Syndicate, and anyone near me was a target. I made her promise to run, change her name, disappear. I swore I’d never look for her."
"She didn't disappear," Maya spoke up, her small voice cutting through the rumble of the worn-out transmission. She pulled the locket from Gabriel's hand and clasped it tightly around her own neck. "She waited. We lived in the cabin near the creek. But three days ago, bad men came. Mom hid me in the floorboards under the pantry."
Gabriel’s lungs seized. "Where is she, Maya? Where is your mother?"
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Maya looked down at her scuffed sneakers, her lip trembling for the very first time. "Mom told them she didn't know where you were. Then the tall man said... they didn't need her anymore, because you’d come looking for me."
A radio on the dashboard crackled to life, picking up an open frequency. A cold voice whispered through static: "Ten miles out, Gabriel. Check the tracker in her sweater."
