Something moved through Rex's face at that quick, controlled but there. The twitch of a man calibrating in real time. "Joker told you about me." "He mentioned you," Ethan said carefully.
He set down the component he was holding and stood up slowly keeping his hands visible keeping his posture open. Everything about his body language designed to communicate I am not a threat. I am not afraid. I know something but I am not telling you yet what I know.
"He said you were close to the builder." "Victor Ryder." Rex was silent for a moment. He looked at the bike and when he looked at the bike his face did something complicated and involuntary the way a face does when it's caught between love and hatred so old they've braided themselves together into something that isn't either anymore.
"We were close," he said finally. "A long time ago." "What happened?" Ethan asked.
Rex looked back at him. "That's not your business." "It might be," Ethan said. "If it's connected to what's wrong with this bike."
The quality of the silence changed. Rex's eyes went to the parts laid out on the cloth moved across them in a way that was impossible to read from a single direction. Was he looking for what Ethan had found? Was he checking what Ethan had done?
Was he calculating how much Ethan knew? All of the above, none. "You found something." Rex said quietly.
It wasn't a guess. The certainty in it, the flatness, the absence of any interrogative, told Ethan that Rex wasn't asking whether he'd found something. He was telling Ethan that he knew something had been found, which meant he'd been watching. Which meant he had a way of knowing what happened in this room that Ethan hadn't yet identified.
"I found a lot of things," Ethan said. "This is a complicated engine." Rex studied him. "You look like him," he said suddenly.
"Around the eyes, in the way you hold yourself when you're thinking. He used to go very still." He paused. "You're his son, aren't you?"
It wasn't a question either. Ethan held Rex's gaze. "Does that bother you?" Rex laughed.