Colter Vance and his fellow riders had stopped their charity convoy after a terrified barefoot girl burst from a wooded trail and begged them to help her mother.
The child led several bikers into the trees, where Colter discovered fresh tire tracks heading deeper into the woods and an unsettling object beside the trail.
Before he could decide what it meant, a sharp sound echoed somewhere ahead, and the frightened girl became certain that someone else was nearby.
With daylight fading and her mother still missing, Colter realized that turning back was no longer an option.
Colter held up one gloved hand, and every rider behind him stopped.
The woods seemed to stop with them.
No birds called from the branches.
No insects buzzed above the weeds.
Even the distant highway had faded until it seemed impossibly far away.
The little girl stood beside Colter, hugging herself and staring toward the dark tunnel of trees ahead.
“What was that?” asked Tess Moreno quietly.
Tess rode a blue touring motorcycle and worked weekdays as a paramedic in Bowling Green, which meant she had learned long ago how to sound calm even when she was anything but.
“I don’t know,” Colter said.
He looked again at the object lying beside the tire tracks.
It was a small brass disk attached to a broken chain.
Mud covered most of it, but when Colter rubbed his thumb across the surface, stamped letters appeared beneath the dirt.
T.
MERCER.
Tess leaned closer.
“That looks old.”
“It is.”
A voice came from behind them.
Dale Whitaker, the oldest rider in the group, removed his sunglasses and squinted at the disk.
“My father carried one almost like it when he worked underground.”
“A miner’s tag?”
Colter asked.
Dale nodded.
“Used to identify men going into a shift.”
The little girl stared at it.
“That’s Grandpa Thomas.”
Colter turned toward her.
“What did you say?”
The girl pointed at the disk.
“My grandpa.”
Her voice dropped.