Before anyone could react, Mason flipped the heavy wooden table sideways as the young man reached into his jacket.
“GET DOWN!” Mason roared.
Customers screamed.
Coffee mugs shattered across the floor.
The little girl hid behind Mason’s massive body while the stranger backed toward the exit.
Mason charged him like a truck.
The man barely escaped outside into the storm.
Rain poured across the empty highway parking lot.
Lightning flashed.
Mason grabbed the man by the collar and slammed him against a pickup truck.
“WHERE IS ROSE?!”
The man laughed through bloody teeth.
“You still don’t get it, do you?”
Mason punched him again.
The man spit blood onto the pavement.
“She never left you willingly.”
Mason froze.
For ten years he believed Rose abandoned him.
But now…
Now something felt horribly wrong.
The diner door burst open.
The little girl stood there crying.
“Mister Mason!”
Suddenly headlights appeared at the end of the road.
Black SUVs.
Three of them.
Fast.
Too fast.
The stranger started smiling again.
“Oh no…” he whispered. “They found her.”
The SUVs screeched into the parking lot.
Armed men jumped out.
One pointed directly at the little girl.
“That’s the child! Take her!”
Mason instantly stepped in front of her.
Something primal awakened inside him.
Not biker.
Not outlaw.
Father.
One of the armed men suddenly froze while staring at Mason’s wolf patch.
His eyes widened in horror.
“Wait…” he whispered nervously. “That’s him.”
Mason cracked his knuckles slowly in the pouring rain.
“Big mistake,” he said.
Lightning flashed across his face.
Then he charged straight at them.
