Chapter 10 - The Last Ride on Highway 12
A year to the day after she had sat in the gravel on the shoulder of Highway 12, Emma Walker stood on the front porch of the Bozeman bakery, watching the morning fog burn off the valley.
A low, familiar sound began to roll off the asphalt down the interstate—a slow, tectonic grinding of tuned pipes and massive displacement engines that made the air vibrate with power.
She didn't run inside. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a yellow crayon, and rolled it between her small fingers.
Around the curve they came—not fifty bikes this time, but nearly two hundred. Headlights cutting through the morning mist like a wall of yellow suns. At the front, riding the massive matte-black Harley with the high ape-hanger bars, was Bear, his grey beard catching the wind, his leather cut worn soft and dark by ten thousand miles of open road.
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They didn't stop at the bakery; they slowed down just enough to roar their pipes in a deafening salute that shook the windows of every shop on the block.
Bear raised one massive, scarred hand from the handlebars, two fingers extended in a casual, wordless greeting, before accelerating down the long, empty highway toward the mountains.
