The rain turned to needles by the time the roar began. It didn’t sound like a car. Car engines had a tight, hurried whine, like trapped insects.

The rain turned to needles by the time the roar began. It didn’t sound like a car. Car engines had a tight, hurried whine, like trapped insects. This was deeper, rolling off the asphalt a full mile before she could see it—a slow, tectonic grinding that made the loose gravel under Emma’s boots vibrate.

She didn't look up from her lap. She was trying to keep her chin from shaking. Her sneakers were soaked through, the canvas heavy and cold around her toes, and the cardboard cover of Charlotte's Web had gone soft in her arms like wet bread. She didn't care about the book anymore; she only cared that the rain was getting inside her collar, running in cold little fingers down her spine.

Then the lights appeared around the curve.

They didn't come in pairs. They came in a wall.

Headlight after headlight swept across the grey field, cutting through the curtain of Montana rain like yellow knives. The noise hit her chest before the shapes did—a heavy, resonant thrum of tuned pipes and massive displacement engines that made the air smell of burnt gasoline, hot oil, and wet leather.

Emma shrank back against the fence post, her teeth clicking together. She had seen bikes in town, of course. Her father had muttered about them sometimes on Saturday mornings when they sat on the porch, calling them "nuisances" or "trouble." But these weren't the teenagers who stripped their mufflers on Main Street.

The lead bike took the shoulder ten yards wide, spraying a fan of mud that missed her by inches. It was a massive, matte-black Harley-Davidson with high ape-hanger handlebars and a front wheel that looked like a steamroller. The rider sat tall, draped in a heavy leather cut with the unmistakable skull-and-wings insignia across the back. Behind him came another. And another. And another.

They didn't slow down because they saw her. They slowed down because the lead bike had killed its engine with a sharp, pneumatic pop, and the entire column behind him concertinaed to a halt in a deafening crescendo of mechanical sighs.

Emma pulled her knees up to her chin, her small fingers digging through the soaked fabric of her jeans until her nails hurt. Don't look at them. Don't give them a reason.

A heavy boot hit the gravel. Then another. The sound of metal clicking against metal—zippers, buckles, spurs.

"Well, look what the wet cat dragged in."

The voice was like grinding stones, loud enough to cut through the hiss of the rain. A man was walking toward her. He was broad-shouldered, with a thick grey beard that dropped past his collar and eyes the color of old ice behind grease-splattered aviator glasses. He didn't look like a storybook villain; he looked like something carved out of the mountain itself—rough, grey, and entirely immovable.

Emma buried her face against her knees. "I'm sorry," she whispered into the dark wool of her sleeve. "I'm going. I'm moving."

The heavy footsteps stopped right at the edge of her vision. A pair of scarred, oil-stained boots filled her sight.

"Hey now," the big man said, his voice dropping an octave, losing the gravelly edge. "Kid. Look at me."