Brix’s hand tightened around the canvas bag.
“There’s something else about that man.”
Odom lowered his phone. Reed stopped halfway across the shop.
“What else?” Odom asked.
Brix looked toward the front windows, as if checking whether anyone had followed him. Then he glanced at the running motorcycle and seemed to make a decision.
“He wasn’t just angry because I was sleeping there,” Brix said. “He kept asking me about this shop. About Reed. About the motorcycle.”
Reed’s expression changed.
“What did he ask?”
“He wanted to know if I’d been inside before. He asked whether Reed had talked to me. And he asked what I’d seen on the motorcycle.”
The room went still.
Odom slowly set his phone on the workbench.
“Why would a diner cook care about a motorcycle?”
Brix swallowed.
“I don’t know. But the night before he hit me, I heard him talking to another man behind the kitchen. They were arguing about something being found before Saturday.”
Reed looked at the Shovelhead.
Saturday.
The memorial ride.
Forty-nine hours away.
For the first time that morning, getting the motorcycle running no longer felt like the end of the problem.
It felt like the beginning of one.
Odom asked Brix exactly what he had heard. The boy remembered only fragments: a name he didn’t recognize, a reference to the memorial ride, and one sentence that had stayed with him because the cook had sounded frightened when he said it.
“If Reed finds that before Saturday, we’re finished.”
Reed stared at him.
“You’re sure those were the words?”
Brix nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Reed walked back to the Shovelhead.
He had spent eleven weeks rebuilding the motorcycle because he wanted his brother’s final ride to be perfect. He had trusted specialists, replaced expensive parts, and nearly convinced himself that the problem was simply a stubborn electrical fault.
But now another detail bothered him.
The motorcycle had failed repeatedly even though the engine, ignition system, and other components appeared to be functioning. The ground strap had been hidden beneath a layer of fresh powder coat, a tiny mistake that had defeated three experienced mechanics.
Whoever had been interested in what Brix saw on the motorcycle might not have known about that mistake.
But somebody had apparently been watching the bike closely enough to fear what Reed might discover before Saturday.
Odom picked up his phone again.
“I’m calling the sheriff’s office,” he said. “And I’m calling the diner. Not to threaten anyone. I want this documented.”
Brix immediately shook his head.
“Please don’t call them yet.”
Odom stopped.
“Why?”
Brix opened his canvas bag.
Inside were a few clothes, a battered screwdriver, several small electrical components, and a folded piece of paper protected inside a clear plastic sleeve.
He pulled it out carefully.
“Because I took this before I left.”
Reed reached for it.
The paper was not a letter. It was a handwritten list of dates, times, and motorcycle-related notes. Most of it was difficult to understand, but one line was unmistakable.
Cormac Halvorson.
Reed’s brother’s name.
Reed looked up sharply.
“Where did you get this?”
Brix pointed toward his bag.
“I found it in the diner trash.”
Odom moved closer.
“When?”
“The morning after the man hit me.”
Reed read the page again.
One date was circled.
Friday.
The day before the memorial ride.
Underneath it was a short instruction.
Check the motorcycle before Reed does.
Reed felt the room tighten around him.
For eleven weeks, he had believed the Shovelhead was simply refusing to start.
Now he had to consider something much more disturbing: someone else had been interested in that motorcycle before Brix ever walked through his shop door.
And Brix had not come looking for a motorcycle.
He had come looking for a bathroom.
Yet within minutes, he had found the one tiny electrical problem that three specialists had missed.
Odom folded the paper back into its sleeve.
“We’re going to do this carefully,” he said. “First, we find out who wrote this. Then we find out what they were looking for.”
Reed nodded.
But Brix was still staring at the Shovelhead.
“Sir,” he said quietly, “there’s one more thing.”
Reed turned.
Brix pointed beneath the motorcycle’s seat.
“I don’t think that ground problem was the only thing they changed.”
Reed immediately reached for the seat latch.
The memorial ride was forty-nine hours away.
And whatever was hidden beneath that seat had been there long enough for someone to be afraid of Reed finding it first.
