Leo was not worried about being punished for missing school or riding his bicycle too far. He was worried about what would happen to his mother when Darren discovered the boy had escaped his control.
“Does Darren hurt your mother?” Riker asked.
Leo said nothing.
He didn't need to.
Riker felt anger rise, but he forced it down. Anger could wait. The boy needed someone who would not frighten him with promises or turn his life into another battlefield.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “We're going to make sure your mother is safe. We are not going to leave her alone with somebody who scares you. But you cannot go back to that house right now.”
Leo's eyes filled with tears.
“You don't understand.”
“Then help me understand.”
“Darren said if I ever told anybody about the things he does, he'd make my mom lose everything. He said she would lose her job, her house, and me.”
Riker held the boy's gaze.
“People who threaten children often depend on those children believing they have no other choices.”
“What if he can really do it?”
“Then we'll find out what he can actually do instead of believing everything he says.”
Leo rubbed his face with both hands.
For a moment, he looked even younger than nine.
Riker stood and addressed Moose.
“Take him to the clubhouse. Give him food, water, and a phone. Get a trusted adult to contact his mother through the hospital's official number. No one goes to their house without a proper safety plan.”
Moose nodded.
“And you?”
“I'll find out whether the road ahead is a trap.”
Leo grabbed Riker's sleeve.
“Don't go.”
The words were so quiet that only Riker heard them.
He looked down at the small hand gripping his vest.
“I'm not leaving you,” he said. “I'm making sure the men who want to hurt us don't get to choose what happens next.”
“Promise?”
Riker had learned long ago to be careful with promises. He had made them beside hospital beds, in dusty compounds, and beneath skies where the stars looked impossibly distant. Some had been kept. Others had been shattered by circumstances no human being could control.
He did not promise the impossible.
“I promise I'll do everything I can to keep you and your mother safe.”
Leo released his sleeve.
That was enough for the moment.
Moose guided the boy toward his motorcycle, then stopped and reconsidered.
“Actually, no,” he muttered. “We're not putting him on the back of my bike after that shoulder injury. Evan, bring the support vehicle.”
Evan grinned faintly.
“You mean the van you insist isn't part of your motorcycle lifestyle?”
“It's an emergency vehicle.”
“It's a van.”
“An emergency van.”
“Of course.”
Their familiar bickering eased the tension by a fraction.
Leo climbed into the passenger seat of the support vehicle with his bicycle secured in the rear compartment. Before Evan closed the door, the boy leaned forward.
“Mr. Cross?”
Riker turned.
“What?”
“The man with the speaker knew your name.”
“I heard you.”
“He said you would come.”
Riker's face became still.
“Tell me exactly what you remember.”
Leo swallowed.
“He said, 'When Cross rides point, the rest will follow. Nobody leaves the mountain.' Then another man asked if he was sure. The speaker man said, 'The mayor has already approved it.'”
Riker stared at the boy.
“Did you recognize the speaker man's voice?”
“No.”
“Anything else about him?”
Leo thought for a moment.
“He had a silver ring. I saw his hand when he picked up a cup.”
“Anything on the ring?”
“A bird, maybe. Or a wing.”
Riker glanced at Evan.
The other man had stopped smiling.
“Get him to the clubhouse,” Riker said. “Now.”
The van pulled away.
Riker watched until it disappeared around the bend.
Then he turned toward his eleven remaining riders.
“Gentlemen, somebody has built a plan around the assumption that we are predictable. They know our route. They know who's leading us. They know where they want us to stop.”
Dale returned from the road.
“What do we do?”
Riker looked at the map.
“We stop being predictable.”
He pointed toward a narrow service track that climbed behind the ridge, connecting to an old maintenance road above the abandoned factory.
“Dale, take two riders and find out whether that track is passable. No confrontation. No heroics. If you see people, vehicles, or anything that looks like a prepared position, you turn around.”
Dale nodded.
“Evan is taking the boy to safety. Moose will coordinate the clubhouse. The rest of us are going to establish what we know, what we can prove, and what we still need to discover.”
Evan's voice crackled over the radio from the departing van.
“One more thing, Riker.”
“Go ahead.”
“I checked the club's public ride announcement. Somebody changed the meeting point this morning.”
Riker's eyes narrowed.
“Changed it to where?”
“Here. Tulain Mountain Road. The edit came through an account linked to the chapter's old event page.”
Nobody spoke.
Riker felt the cold certainty of betrayal settle over him.
Someone had not merely anticipated their route.
Someone had helped create it.
And that meant the threat might not be confined to a corrupt mayor, a few armed men, or a criminal operation hidden in an abandoned factory.
It might be sitting inside the Steel Saw brotherhood itself.
Riker turned toward the mountain.
“Let's find out who invited us to our own funeral.”
The old maintenance track began behind a stand of pine trees and climbed toward the ridge in a series of sharp turns. It had been built decades earlier to give railway workers access to signal equipment and drainage channels. Since the railway closed, the road had gradually disappeared beneath weeds, fallen branches, and loose stone.
Riker had ridden it once, years earlier, during a charity event organized by the county's volunteer fire department. He remembered the sharp descent on the other side, the ruined signal station, and the way the mountain concealed everything happening below.
He also remembered something else.
The maintenance track connected to an old quarry access road that ran almost directly to the industrial district.
If the men at the factory intended to trap the Steel Saw riders on the main road, they might not have considered the possibility that their targets could approach from above.
That was an advantage.
It was not a guarantee of safety.
Riker pulled his phone from his vest and examined the message announcing the ride. The event had originally been organized to raise money for a children's rehabilitation center in the county seat. Twelve riders had volunteered to escort a donation truck through several rural communities before returning to the clubhouse for a fundraising dinner.
The route had been agreed upon three days earlier.
The revised meeting point had appeared on the event page at 9:42 that morning.
Riker had not seen it.
Neither had Moose.
Neither had Evan.
Someone had changed the location and relied on the fact that most of the riders would check the announcement only briefly before leaving.
Riker opened the event's administrative history.
The change had been made through an account labeled Steel Saw Events.
It was an old account, created when the chapter first began using social media to advertise community activities. Only four people had ever possessed administrative access: Riker, Moose, the chapter secretary, and a former officer who had left the organization two years earlier.
Riker stared at the list.
Three names were familiar.
The fourth belonged to a man he had not spoken to in months.
Derek Voss.
Derek had once been one of Riker's closest friends.
He had ridden beside him through three states during a winter storm, slept on the floor of a hospital waiting room when Riker's younger brother underwent emergency surgery, and stood beside him at the funeral of a Steel Saw member who died in a highway accident.