Riley
Riley stayed on her knees in the gravel long after the bikes roared away.Ella crouched beside her, arm around her shoulders, both of them watching the firefighters battle the blaze.
One of them—a tall woman with soot-streaked cheeks—walked over, helmet under her arm.“Ma’am, you the owner?”
Riley nodded, throat too tight to speak.
The firefighter crouched to her level.“We’ve got a preliminary read.Accelerant pattern is professional—multiple points of origin, timed spread.The perpetrator wanted it to look like a flash fire caught you inside.Like you died here.”
Riley’s stomach rolled.She pressed a hand to her mouth.
“They made it appear as if you were gone,” the firefighter said gently.“So no one would look for you after.”She tipped her chin to the two women and walked back to the line of firefighters still working to extinguish the flames.
Riley stared at the burning shell of her shop.Her bike.Her phoenix mural.Everything she’d built from nothing.
Then she looked west, towards the grain silo, where Dan and the club had just disappeared into the night.
She stood, legs shaking but steadying.
“They’re going to finish it,” she said.
Ella squeezed her hand.“And you’re going to let them.”
Riley nodded once.
Because this time, the fire wasn’t going to steal anything else from her.
Not her shop.
Not her life.
Not her man.
She turned towards Ella’s car.“Take me to the clubhouse.I need my stuff.”
The night was far from finished.
But neither was she.