Chapter 1 - The Ghost in the Gold
The wind howling over the interstate didn’t rattle Amos as much as the silence that fell over Jesse Mercer.
A motorcycle club doesn't stop for a flat stare, but when Jesse hit his turn signal, pulled his Harley onto the gravel shoulder of Route 60, and killed the engine, the entire column of forty bikes cascaded behind him in a synchronized wave of chrome and leather. I pulled the support van in right behind Jesse's rear tire, stepping out before my boots even hit the dirt.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice cutting through the steady rumble of idling exhausts.
Jesse didn't look at me. He was staring at Amos, who sat inside the van’s side door, his thumb clamped rigidly over the scratched steel case of his military field watch. The young rider’s face had lost all its color, the morning sun highlighting the fine sweat beads dotting his upper lip.
“That name on the back,” Jesse said, his voice shaking. He pointed a trembling finger toward Amos’s clenched fist. “Arthur Mercer. That’s... that was my grandfather.”
Amos slowly lifted his head. His milky blue eyes, clouded by age and a relentless disease, bore into the young man. For a second, the roar of the V-twins seemed to vanish, leaving only the sound of a distant crow and the heavy breathing of a man running out of time.
“Arthur was a stubborn fool,” Amos muttered, his voice like dry leaves scraping across concrete. “Always getting into arguments he couldn't win. He gave me this watch the night before the bridge blew at Samra. We thought we were both going to die in the mud.”
Jesse stepped closer, ignoring the stares of the other club members who had shut off their engines and gathered around. “My grandfather died when I was six. My mother told me he lost everything in the war. She said his best friend—the only brother he ever had—disappeared into the smoke and never came back.”
Amos opened his fist. The watch caught the pale morning light, the engraved initials A.M. to A.B. catching our eyes.
“He didn't disappear,” Amos whispered, a tear finally cutting a clean path through the dust on his cheek. “He just forgot where he parked.”
The tension in the air snapped like a dry pine branch. Grady, our club president, pushed his way through the circle of leather-clad riders, pulling off his tinted riding glasses. He looked from Amos to Jesse, then down at the watch.
“Well, I'll be damned,” Grady muttered, rubbing his rough jawline. “Looks like you didn't just hire a ride for an old man, Hammer. Looks like you brought a bloodline back from the dead.”
“We’re not stopping here,” I said, checking my watch. The sun was climbing, and we still had hundreds of miles of asphalt ahead of us. “Bellweather is still four hundred miles out. Get back on your bikes.”
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“Wait,” Jesse said, his voice hardening with a sudden, desperate edge. He looked directly at me, his eyes wide. “You don't understand, Hammer. Bellweather isn't just an old town. My mother told me never to go back there. She said someone in that town killed my grandfather’s family, and if we show up asking questions, we won't make it out alive.”
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