Ethan looked him straight in the eye.
“You want to bet a fraud investigation on maybe?”
For one heartbeat, nobody moved.
Then the lead man laughed.
It was short and ugly.
He pulled out his phone.
“Boys, take the box.”
The other men shifted.
“Take the kid’s phone. Take whatever he’s got.”
He looked at Ethan, and something cold settled into his expression.
“And maybe take the kid for a drive so he learns to mind his own business.”
That was when they all heard it.
Faint at first.
A low rumble.
Like weather rolling in from a long way off.
The men glanced toward the open bay.
The sound grew louder.
Closer.
Then it was under their feet.
Then everywhere.
A sound none of them could immediately place.
The whole road outside seemed to have come alive.
The four men turned toward the garage entrance.
Jack didn’t.
He looked only at Ethan.
And for the first time since a soaked boy had knocked three times on his door on a rainy night, the old biker smiled.
Slow.
Certain.
And just a little dangerous.
“You boys,” Jack said quietly, “have got no idea who you just walked up on.”
The rumble became a roar.
Every man in the garage turned.
The road outside was disappearing beneath headlights.
One after another.
Engine after engine.
Motorcycles.
More motorcycles than any of the four men had ever seen gathered in one place.
They came from both directions.
The gray afternoon seemed to break apart beneath the sound.
The men in the garage stood frozen as riders filled the road.
Headlight after headlight.
Machine after machine.
Until nearly two hundred engines settled into a heavy idle outside Jack Sullivan’s garage.
Then, all at once, silence.
Engines cut.
Boots hit pavement.
Nobody inside the garage breathed.
The lead man, the one who had been laughing less than a minute earlier, was not laughing anymore.
“Who are these guys?”
His voice had gone thin.
Jack did not answer.
He walked past all four men as though they had stopped existing.
He stepped to the mouth of the bay and lifted one hand.
A rider near the front of the group removed his helmet.
He was older than Jack.
A gray beard fell almost to his chest, and his face looked carved out of weathered leather.
He stared at Jack.
Then the hard line of his mouth broke into something almost gentle.
“Heard a man was having trouble,” the rider called.
Jack stood with his arms at his sides.
“Heard the man was you, Bear.”
The rider looked around.
“Figured that couldn’t be right.”
His gaze moved toward the four men standing inside the garage.
“Nobody’s dumb enough to lean on you.”
He paused.
“And yet...”
“Hey,” the lead man interrupted, raising his hands. “Hey, this is a private business matter. We’re just here on behalf of...”
“I didn’t ask you to talk,” the gray-bearded rider said.
He didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t need to.
Behind him, nearly two hundred men shifted their weight at once.
The sound alone was enough to make the lead man swallow whatever sentence had been coming next.
Ethan remained beside the workbench.
The box was still clutched against his chest.
His heart was pounding so violently he could feel it in his teeth.
He had seen Jack be many things during the past two months.
Patient in his own rough way.
Stubborn.
Gruff.
Kind in ways he would never admit.
But Ethan had never seen Jack be this.
Whatever this was, these men had ridden hundreds of miles for it.