A short pause loaded with history. "Rival club. Been bad blood for 15 years. Rex has been their back channel contact for the past eight months.
We didn't know the depth of it until last night." Another pause. "Rex sold them information. Specifically, he told them about the bike, about its value, about today's ride."
The words landed on Ethan like a physical blow. He processed them in the second and a half he had before the next corner, reorganizing everything he thought he understood about the previous 12 hours. Rex's change of heart in the repair room. The apology to his brother.
The small nod in the formation lineup. All of it still true, all of that had been real. He was certain of it. And also a man who has spent eight years making catastrophic decisions doesn't become new overnight.
Rex had told him about the ride before the conversation that changed him. The Iron Wolves already knew. "How many total?" Ethan asked.
"They had a secondary group waiting north of the pass," Crow said, and his voice had gone flat with the specific flatness of a man reporting a situation he doesn't like, but isn't panicking about. "Maybe eight bikes total. They're going to try to box us at the narrowest point. It's about 2 miles ahead."
"2 miles. At current speed, 90 seconds. Options?" Ethan said.
"Turn back," Joker said. "Full formation controlled reversal. We have the numbers and they know it." "They'll be between us and the reversal point in 60 seconds," Crow said.
"Then we go through," said a third voice, Tank, somewhere in the middle of the formation. Flat, certain. "We've gone through worse." For 1 second, 1 full second, Ethan thought about the rational choice, the reasonable choice, the choice a person makes when they have not spent 2 days finding their dead father's hidden message inside a legendary motorcycle and then ridden it for the first time at the head of an 80-bike formation at dawn.
The choice a person makes when the thing behind them is just a thing and not a life's worth of meaning made physical and mechanical and finally, finally running. "Nobody touches this bike," Ethan said. His voice came out steady, surprised him how steady. "I'm not turning around."