Chapter 1 - THE TANGLED TRACKS
The cold mountain wind howled through the towering pines of Route 81, carrying the sharp scent of damp earth and pine needles.
Boone Mercer remained motionless on one knee, his broad hands resting palms-up on his jeans. Beside him, twelve engines rumbled down to a gentle idle before the riders clicked off their ignitions one by one, plunging the highway into a heavy, watchful silence.
"Sweetheart," Boone repeated, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register that seemed to anchor the frantic atmosphere. "Take a breath. Nobody’s going to hurt you."
The little girl didn't stop until her muddy knees nearly touched Boone’s worn boots. She was shaking so violently that her teeth chattered audibly. Her pale blue eyes were wide with a terror so raw it hit Boone straight in the chest.
"They... they took him," she sobbed, her tiny fingers clutching the lapel of Boone’s faded leather vest. "They took my daddy! Please, mister! The big men with the guns... they came through the cabin door, and daddy hid me under the floorboard, but they found him! Please!"
A ripple of sudden tension snapped through the line of bikers behind Boone.
Hank "Bear" Callahan, Boone’s second-in-command—a six-foot-four veteran with a thick grey beard and shoulders like a draught horse—stepped forward, his boot heels crunching softly on the wet gravel.
"Boone," Bear muttered, his hand instinctively hovering near his belt line. "Child saying 'men with guns' in these woods... that ain't local hunters."
"I know," Boone replied without breaking eye contact with the girl. He gently cupped her freezing, muddy hands in his own calloused palms. "What’s your name, little one?"
"L-Lily," she gasped, her chest heaving as tears cut clean streaks through the mud on her cheeks. "Lily Vance. My daddy is Thomas. He told me to stay under the floor, but I heard them... I heard a loud pop, and daddy stopped talking! Then I heard them dragging something!"
Boone’s jaw tightened until the muscles along his cheeks throbbed. The ghost of his own past—the memory of turning away from family when help was needed—flashed through his mind. Not today. Not on his road.
"Lily," Boone said softly, looking her dead in the eye. "Look at me. Look at my vest. See this bird emblem here? That’s a Raven. And where we go, nobody hurts children. Do you hear me? Nobody."
He turned his head slightly toward the group. "Jax! Get the med kit and a wool blanket out of the saddlebag. Doc, check her feet. She’s been running bare-soled on jagged granite."
Jax, a lean thirty-year-old former Army medic, rushed forward with a heavy-duty thermal blanket. He wrapped it snugly around Lily’s shoulders while Doc, an elder member with silver hair tied in a pony tail, knelt to inspect her bleeding soles.
"No time!" Lily shrieked, struggling against the warm blanket. "They’re going to take him across the river! They said the truck was waiting at the old logging mill!"
Boone stood up to his full six-foot-two height. The gentle demeanor he used with the child vanished in a fraction of a second, replaced by the lethal focus of a leader who had commanded men in the toughest corners of the country.
"Bear," Boone ordered, his voice ringing over the mountain road. "Establish a perimeter here. Put Two-PIpe and Grizzly on road watch. If any non-local vehicle comes down Route 81 from the north, block the asphalt. Nobody leaves this mountain."
"What about us?" Bear asked, pulling a heavy tactical flashlight from his saddle pouch.
"You, me, Jax, and Doc are following her trail into the woods," Boone said. "The rest of the Ravens stay with the bikes and keep radio comms open on Channel 4."
"Boone," Doc warned, shining his flashlight toward the dense forest line where the pine branches hung like heavy green curtains. "Those woods lead into the Blackwood Ridge ravines. It’s six thousand acres of unmapped timberland full of abandoned moonshine stills and old coal shafts. If whoever took her father has firearms, we’re walking into an ambush without cover."
"Then we move fast, and we hit hard," Boone growled, zipping up his heavy leather jacket. He looked down at Lily, who was holding tightly to Jax’s arm. "Lily... can you show us where you came out of the trees?"
Lily pointed a trembling finger toward an overgrown drainage ditch twenty yards up the road, where the mountain brush was snapped and trampled.
May you like
"Right there," she whispered. "Daddy’s cabin is past the weeping willow... near the creek."
Boone pulled his heavy hunting knife from his belt shear and checked the flashlight strapped to his shoulder. "Keep your eyes open, boys. Let's go bring Thomas home."
