He looked at Ethan again. "How did you know his initials?" Ethan took a breath. "Because they're my initials, too," he said.
"Victor Ryder was my father." The blueprint dropped from Joker's hands. It didn't fall far. He caught it before it hit the ground, a reflex faster than thought, but the dropping of it said everything.
Joker straightened up slowly, and the man who stood before Ethan now looked older than he had 30 seconds ago. Not weaker, just older. Like years had settled onto his shoulders in the space between one heartbeat and the next. "Ghost had a son," Joker said quietly, not to Ethan, to himself, to something only he could see.
"He told me once, said he'd left someone behind when he was young and stupid, and he couldn't go back because going back would destroy what little dignity the woman had managed to build without him." He paused. "He said he thought about that child every single day. Every single day for 20 years."
His voice had something raw in it now that Ethan didn't think the man would want him to notice. "He put your name in the blueprint. He put five words," Ethan said. His own voice was steady.
He needed it to be steady. "For the son who finds this." Joker didn't speak for a long time. When he did, his voice was back under control, not fully, but enough.
"He died 14 months ago, heart attack, working on this bike." He nodded at the Harley. "He'd been trying to finish the calibration for the last 2 years of his life. He ran out of time."
Ethan nodded slowly. He had known somewhere between finding the blueprint and the dawn coming up under the door that he would hear those words. He had braced for them the way you brace for cold water, knowing it's coming doesn't make the cold less real, but it keeps you from going under. "Okay," he said.
Just the one word. Joker picked up the blueprint from where he'd almost dropped it and held it out to Ethan. "Finish what he started," he said. Ethan took it.
"I'm going to need three things," he said. "I need privacy, and whoever has access to that parts cabinet needs to be locked out while I work." Joker's eyes sharpen. "You think they'll try again?"
"I think they already know someone's getting close. The four wrong parts weren't old, they were put there recently, which means whoever did it was reacting to something, maybe the latest mechanic, maybe just the passage of time. But they're watching, and when they hear that I found something," he stopped. "They'll move," Joker said.