“Twelve years of building cases against people exactly like him. I have contacts. People who owe me favors. People who’ve been waiting for someone to finally go after Wade Prescott with something more than a restraining order.”
I closed the folder and met his eyes.
“He’s not taking Colton. Not while I’m still breathing.”
Something passed between us in that moment. Not quite understanding—we were too different for that, our worlds too separate. But recognition. The recognition of two people who had found something worth fighting for and had no intention of losing.
“You need to call the sheriff,” I said.
“I need to what?”
“Call the sheriff. Tell them what happened at the diner. Tell them about Wade Prescott. Tell them everything.”
His expression hardened. “I don’t call cops. Cops are the people who’ve been trying to put me away for twenty years. Cops are the ones who look at my vest and see a target.”
“I know. That’s exactly why you need to call them.”
He stared at me like I’d just suggested he set himself on fire.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Wade Prescott is going to use the fact that you’re an outlaw to discredit everything we say. He’s going to stand up in court and point at your patches and tell the judge that the only reason Colton is with us is because a criminal took him. But if you’re the one who reports the crime—if you’re the one who calls the police and says ‘this man attacked us, here’s the evidence, here’s the witness, here’s everything’—then you’re not the criminal. You’re the victim. And victims have rights.”
He was silent for a long time. I could see the war playing out behind his eyes. Everything he’d spent his life believing about law enforcement, about the system, about the lines that couldn’t be crossed, fighting against the possibility that maybe—maybe—things could be different.
“If this goes wrong,” he said finally, “my men pay the price.”
“It won’t go wrong.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’ve been preparing for this my entire career. Every case I’ve built, every system I’ve learned to navigate, every fight I’ve fought with judges and bureaucrats and agencies that would rather process children than protect them. It all led here. To this moment. To this boy.”
I reached out and took his hand. It was warm and rough, the skin calloused from years of gripping handlebars and whatever else a man like him gripped. He didn’t pull away.
“Trust me,” I said. “Just this once. Trust me.”
He looked at our joined hands, then at Colton, then back at me. Something in his face shifted. The walls he’d built over decades—the walls that had kept him safe, that had defined his life, that had cost him his daughter and almost cost him everything else—began to crack.
“All right,” he said. “We do it your way.”
THE CALL
Harlon made the call at 8:00 the next morning. I stood beside him in the warehouse kitchen, watching his face as the dispatcher answered. His voice was calm, measured, the voice of a man who had spent decades learning to control everything about himself.
“I need to report an armed assault,” he said. “At Hagert’s Diner in Ridgeline. Yesterday afternoon. A man named Wade Prescott opened fire in a crowded restaurant.”
He paused, listening.
“A woman was shot. Multiple times. A social worker named Lena Whitfield. She’s currently in my care recovering from her injuries. The shooter is still at large and has made additional threats against her and a minor child.”
Another pause. His jaw tightened.
“I’m Harlon Decker. I’m the president of the Hell’s Angels chapter in this county. And I’m asking for your help.”
The words cost him something visible. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his hand tightened on the counter. He was giving up something he’d protected his whole life—the distance between his world and theirs, the freedom that came from being outside the system.
But he did it. For Colton. For Jolene. For me.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be here. All day.”
He hung up and stood in the kitchen for a moment, not moving. Then he turned to look at me.
“They’re sending detectives. Want to take statements. Want to see the warehouse.”
“I’ll handle them.”
“They’re not going to like what they see. Twenty bikers. Weapons. A setup that looks less like a safe house and more like a fortress.”
