I slammed the biker’s face into my patrol car hard enough to dent the hood. My knee pressed into his back, 220 pounds of force crushing him against hot steel as I twisted his arms behind him. I heard something crack—maybe ribs, maybe shoulder—and I didn’t care.
“You people think you own the road,” I snarled. Blood dripped from his nose onto my cruiser.
He didn’t resist. Just grunted. “Officer, I wasn’t speeding.”
“Don’t talk back,” I snapped, cranking his arm higher. “You were weaving. Reckless driving.”
It was a lie. He’d done nothing wrong. But I was Officer Marcus Chen, and I hated bikers.
When I was nineteen, my younger brother Danny had been killed by a drunk biker. Since then, I’d spent twelve years as a cop making every biker I could find pay.
This man—James Sullivan, leather vest, gray beard, tattooed arms—hadn’t broken any laws. He’d just ridden past me. I followed him for six miles until I could manufacture a reason to pull him over. Charged him with crimes he didn’t commit. Jailed him. Impounded his bike. I went home feeling like justice had been served.
Eighteen months later, my five-year-old daughter, Emma, vanished in a rainstorm. Forty-seven hours of searching 4,000 acres of forest followed. Temperatures plummeted to 38 degrees, and she wore only a t-shirt and shorts. Every hour that passed made survival less likely.
On the second day, soaked to the bone and covered in mud, I saw him: James Sullivan. Thirty bikers surrounded him, all veterans of these woods, all drenched but moving with purpose. My stomach sank. I assumed he was there for revenge.
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