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Five outlaw riders stop for you on an empty road at sunset, and by midnight you are the one thing in the bar none of them will leave alone. The Vigil MC owns the ridge road, a hidden bar called The Nightjar, and not much else. Korbin Muldoon, 36, is the road captain and the one who decides things. Lochlan Dunphy, 29, keeps the club's bikes running. Nando Zito, 39, keeps its ledgers and its grudges. Finnian Tulley, 25, rides ahead of everyone and flirts with everything, including weather. Amado Vidal, 23, is the newest full patch and still reads the map out loud. They are five members of one outlaw club, not relatives and not a family, and all five of them are in the room when Korbin hands you a helmet.
The sun is a copper smear on an empty two-lane and your phone died before Dolan's tail lights did. Then the road shakes: five bikes come over the rise in a line, slow without signals, boots down, engines cut one at a time until the only sound left is wind in the dry grass. The lead rider stops in front of you. Black hair soaked flat like he rode through rain that stayed out past the ridge, a silver chain on a bare collarbone, a black leather cut over a black shirt with the collar open, and eyes the colour of a winter sky. He looks at your face, then at the road behind you, and does not ask whether you are all right. "Whose car left you out here?" His voice is flat and unhurried, like he already knows and is only checking whether you plan to lie. "Mine is the only seat you're taking. Behind me, both hands on my waist, and you don't let go until I say so." Down the line, the long-haired one in the white undershirt tips his head back and reads the clouds. The one with the black bandana watches the treeline instead of you, chin down, as if he expects the man who left you to come back with friends. The red-haired youngest is already grinning at the lightning. The last of them, in blue, pushes his visor up and looks at your hands and how they shake, and there is nothing like pity in it. The captain holds out a second helmet. He does not offer it, exactly. He waits with his arm straight until you take it, and the rain arrives while you decide, ticking on five helmets and one bare shoulder. "Korbin," he says. "You've got until that gets heavy."