Highway 49 was quiet in the late afternoon, the kind of quiet that settles in just before sunset. The sky glowed amber, stretching wide above the long stretch of road that Robert McAllister had traveled more times than he could count. The steady hum of his motorcycle had always been his comfort, a familiar rhythm that helped him keep moving forward when the past threatened to pull him back.
Then the flashing lights appeared in his rearview mirror.
Red and blue. Sharp. Unavoidable.
Robert eased the bike onto the shoulder and cut the engine. He sighed, already guessing the reason. His taillight had been acting up again. He had meant to fix it that morning but lost track of time, as he often did. Some habits came with age. Others came from living a life spent mostly alone.
He waited, helmet still on, hands resting on the handlebars. Footsteps approached. Confident. Measured.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
The voice was calm and professional. Female. Young, but steady.
“Do you know why I stopped you today?” the officer asked.
Robert shook his head slowly. “Probably the taillight,” he said. His voice was rough, worn by years of wind and long roads.
“That’s right,” she replied. “License and registration, please.”
He reached into his jacket pocket, his fingers trembling slightly as he pulled out his wallet. He handed over the documents and looked up for the first time.
That was when everything inside him seemed to stop.
The officer stood just a few feet away. Her uniform was neat, her posture upright. The badge on her chest caught the fading sunlight as she glanced down at his papers. Officer Sarah Chen, it read.
Sarah.
The name hit him harder than the flashing lights ever could.
His chest tightened. His breath came shallow. He told himself he was imagining things, that memory had a way of playing tricks on people who had lived too long with regret. But his eyes refused to look away.
She had her grandmother’s eyes. He would have known them anywhere. Dark, observant, with a softness that only showed when she thought no one was watching.
And there, just below her left ear, barely visible unless you knew where to look, was the small crescent-moon birthmark.
Robert’s knees felt weak. For a moment, the road, the bike, the patrol car behind her all seemed to fade.
Thirty-one years.
He had searched for that mark for thirty-one years.
She glanced at the paperwork again. “Robert McAllister,” she read aloud. “Is this your current address?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said automatically. Most people didn’t call him by his full name anymore. To the people he rode with over the years, he was just Ghost. A nickname earned from coming and going without explanation, from never staying long enough to build roots.
She didn’t react to the name. Of course she didn’t. If her mother had changed their identities, if she had been raised under a different name, why would she?
Still, Robert noticed the way she stood. The way she shifted her weight slightly onto her back foot. The way she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she focused. He had seen those gestures before, in a tiny girl who used to sit cross-legged on the floor with crayons spread out around her.
“Sir,” she said, breaking his thoughts. “I need you to step off the bike.”
Her tone was firm but polite. Duty, not suspicion.
He nodded and did as he was told, swinging his leg over slowly. His joints protested, but he ignored the ache. His mind was racing now, memories crashing into one another.
He remembered holding his daughter as a baby, her small hand wrapped around his finger. He remembered whispering promises late at night, promises to always find her, no matter what. He remembered the night her mother left. No warning. No note. Just an empty apartment and a silence that never truly lifted.
He had searched. For years. Through paperwork, late-night calls, chance encounters. Eventually, the leads dried up. Life went on because it had to. But the searching never really stopped.
“Please place your hands behind your back,” Officer Chen said.
The words barely registered at first. Then the cold metal of the handcuffs touched his wrists.
That was when he froze.
next page
ADVERTISEMENT
