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The boy was sobbing. Hysterical. Clinging to this man we’d just arrested for stalking his mother.
“Son, step back,” I said gently. “This man has been—”
Everything stopped.
I looked at the biker. Looked at the boy. Looked at the mother who had frozen on the lawn, her hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her face.
“What is he talking about?” I asked.
The old biker’s voice cracked. “Officer, I served with Danny Morrison in Desert Storm. He was my brother. When he became a cop, I told him if anything ever happened to him, I’d watch over his family. He made me promise.”
He took a shaky breath. “Danny was killed in the line of duty eight months ago. Shot during a traffic stop. And I’ve been keeping my promise ever since.”
I felt my stomach drop. “You’ve been… protecting them?”
“Every day,” another biker said. He was younger, maybe fifty, with tears running into his gray beard. “We take shifts. Someone’s always here. We watch the house. Make sure nobody bothers them. Make sure Danny’s family is safe.”
“We never approached them because we didn’t want to scare them,” the oldest one continued. “We just wanted to be here. In case anything happened. In case they needed us.”
The biker looked at the ground. “Because she didn’t know us. Danny never told her about his Army buddies. He kept that part of his life separate. We didn’t think she’d believe us. Didn’t think she’d trust five old bikers showing up claiming to be her dead husband’s brothers.”
The little boy was still clinging to him. “He came to my daddy’s funeral,” the boy said, his voice small and broken. “He was the one who gave me daddy’s flag. He told me he’d always protect us. Just like daddy did.”
I looked at my fellow officers. Every single one of them had the same expression. The same sick realization of what we’d almost done.
