His hands were scored with small cuts from hours of careful work on precision components. His eyes were burning from concentration and no sleep. He looked at the Harley. "I know what you need," he said quietly to the machine his father had built.
"I know what you've been waiting for." And from somewhere in the compound, maybe from outside, maybe from the world at large, the sound of boots on concrete approached the door. A fist knocked twice. "Time's up for today," Tank's voice came through.
"Boss wants a report." Ethan looked at the disassembled engine spread across the floor, at the hidden blueprint in his jacket, at the initials on the inside of the casing. "Tell him I found something," Ethan said through the door. "Tell him this bike isn't broken.
He paused. Tell him someone's been lying to Bowser for 20 years." A long silence from outside the door. Then Tank's voice quieter now, carrying something in it that wasn't quite fear, but lived in the same neighborhood.
"What did you say?" "You heard me," Ethan said. He turned back to the bike and began the next phase of the work. Tank didn't answer right away.
That silence, the kind that has weight to it, the kind that presses against a closed door lasted long enough for Ethan to hear the man on the other side shift his footing on the concrete. A big man suddenly uncertain of where to put his feet. That told Ethan everything he needed to know about what his words had landed on. "I'm going to need you to say that again," Tank said finally.
"Slowly." "Someone in this compound has been sabotaging the bike," Ethan said. He kept his voice level factual, the same tone he'd used to read a repair estimate. "Not recently, for years.
Every time someone got close to fixing her, something made sure they didn't get there." He paused. "And I can prove it." Another silence.
Then the sound of the radio crackling to life. Ethan couldn't make out the words, but he could make out the urgency, that specific frequency of a conversation where someone is being told something they didn't want to hear at 7:00 in the morning. The door opened. Joker walked in alone.
He looked at the engine spread across the floor. He looked at Ethan. He didn't look at the bike itself, which was interesting. A man who owns something doesn't avoid looking at it unless looking at it cost him something.
Joker's jaw was set, and his eyes were doing the careful work of a man who had learned long ago not to show his hand before he understood the table. "Talk," Joker said. Ethan crouched beside the laid-out components and pointed to a series of four small parts near the end of the row. "These four pieces were replaced recently.