Chapter 1 - The Man Who Dropped to His Knees

"GET DOWN! NOW!"

The biker's shout ripped through Miller's Diner just as twelve-year-old Owen Bell reached for his sister's orange juice.

Every fork stopped. A trucker at the counter turned. The woman at table six clutched her purse like it might stop a bullet.

"Don't touch that glass," the biker said.

Owen's mother, Rachel, pulled six-year-old Lily against her cream cardigan. "Stay away from my children."

The man wore a patched leather vest over a gray shirt. His beard was dark, his shoulders broad enough to block the aisle. He didn't look at Rachel's face. He stared at the bright yellow straw rising from Lily's glass.

"Please," he said. "Just move away from the window."

"Mom," Owen whispered, "he's the man from the gas station."

Rachel's stomach dropped. A silver SUV had followed them for twenty miles. At the last stop, she'd seen the biker standing beside the ice machine, watching their car.

Rachel had learned to read danger in hospital waiting rooms: a husband's too-calm voice, a child's silence, a patient who stopped making eye contact. But the man in the leather vest was harder to read. He looked dangerous, and he was the only person asking them to move toward safety. She hated not knowing which instinct to trust. Owen noticed that her hand was shaking and put his own over it without a word.

"You followed us?" she demanded.

"Yes. And if I'm right, someone else followed you first."

A sharp ticking started behind the booth. The biker's expression changed. He ducked between the metal chairs, dropped onto one knee, and stretched an arm toward the floor.

"Everybody away from the windows!"

Rachel put both arms around Lily. Owen stayed beside them, fists clenched, trying to look brave.

Then the biker snatched a small black object from beneath their booth. A green light blinked inside its cracked plastic case.

"What's that?" Rachel asked.

He looked up, and for the first time she saw fear in his eyes.

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"It's a tracker," he said. "And whoever planted it just switched it on."

Across the parking lot, the silver SUV's headlights flashed twice.