The little girl wiped her tears and clutched the crumpled bills tightly.<\/p>\n
The biker smiled gently.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat’s your name, sweetheart?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEmma,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd where’s your mom?\u201d<\/p>\n
The smile vanished from the big man’s face.<\/p>\n
The child pointed toward the distant desert hills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took her.\u201d<\/p>\n
His eyes narrowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBad men.\u201d<\/p>\n
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a worn photograph.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey drive this truck.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biker froze.<\/p>\n
Because he recognized it.<\/p>\n
A black pickup.<\/p>\n
And the men standing beside it.<\/p>\n
His expression darkened instantly.<\/p>\n
One of them had been thrown out of his motorcycle club years ago.<\/p>\n
Violent.<\/p>\n
Cruel.<\/p>\n
Dangerous.<\/p>\n
The little girl looked up hopefully.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know them?\u201d<\/p>\n
The biker slowly removed his sunglasses.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
His voice became cold.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tears filled Emma’s eyes again.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you bring Mommy back?\u201d<\/p>\n
The big man knelt and gently placed her ninety-three dollars back into her tiny hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep your money, sweetheart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he stood.<\/p>\n
Pulled out his phone.<\/p>\n
And made one call.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrothers,\u201d he growled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need every rider on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within minutes, the sound of engines thundered across the desert.<\/p>\n
Motorcycles.<\/p>\n
Dozens of them.<\/p>\n
Then hundreds.<\/p>\n
Dust swirled beneath the blazing sun as leather-clad bikers rolled into the gas station from every direction.<\/p>\n
Emma stared in amazement.<\/p>\n
The gray-bearded biker smiled down at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou came looking for one man.\u201d<\/p>\n
He glanced toward the growing army of motorcycles.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you’re getting all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
And somewhere far beyond the desert hills\u2014<\/p>\n
the men who had taken her mother had no idea that an entire brotherhood was already coming for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The little girl wiped her tears and clutched the crumpled bills tightly. The biker smiled gently. \u201cWhat’s your name, sweetheart?\u201d \u201cEmma,\u201d she whispered. \u201cAnd where’s your mom?\u201d The smile vanished from the big man’s face. The child pointed toward the distant desert hills. \u201cThey took her.\u201d His eyes narrowed. \u201cWho?\u201d \u201cBad men.\u201d She reached into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}