Santa Carla had a peculiar way of welcoming its visitors. The sun shone brilliantly over the Pacific, the boardwalk glittered with gaudy lights and painted signs, and the air was thick with the smell of saltwater, fried food, and the exhaust of passing cars. It ought to have been charming. It ought to have been the sort of place where a girl could begin again, provided she had enough money in her purse and a reasonable tolerance for the noise.

And yet, as she stood on the pavement with her luggage at her feet, watching a procession of motorcycles roar past, she found herself wondering whether she had made a terrible mistake.

Santa Carla was loud. Santa Carla was crowded. And Santa Carla, she was beginning to suspect, was not particularly interested in making anyone feel welcome.

Still, there was something undeniably captivating about it. The boardwalk was alive with people well into the evening, teenagers gathered in unruly clusters, couples strolling beneath the neon signs, and arcade machines chiming incessantly from behind open doors. Somewhere, a band was playing, its music nearly drowned out by the crashing waves and the delighted shrieks of children on the nearby rides. It was a town that seemed determined to squeeze every last minute of life out of the summer.

She adjusted the strap of her bag and started down the boardwalk, determined not to look quite so much like a stranger as she felt.

It was then that she noticed the motorcycles.

Four of them, parked in a loose formation near the edge of the crowd, their riders possessing the sort of casual arrogance that suggested the entire boardwalk had been constructed for their personal amusement. They were an odd-looking collection, even by the standards of Santa Carla. One was a broad-shouldered blond with a grin that seemed permanently on the verge of becoming a sneer. Another, tall and dark-haired, leaned against his bike with an air of languid indifference, his attention drifting over the passing crowds as though he were searching for something to relieve his boredom. A third, smaller and fair-haired, appeared to be in the middle of an argument with the fourth, a young man whose face was framed by blonde curls and whose expression suggested that he found the whole affair enormously entertaining.

She might have passed them without a second glance, had the blond not turned his head.

She looked from one to the other, taking in the leather, the jewelry, the motorcycles, and the curious sense of familiarity that seemed to bind the four together. They were undoubtedly trouble. She had met boys like them before, or thought she had. The sort who laughed too loudly, stayed out too late, and regarded rules as something invented for other people.