Chapter 8 Eight

Tank almost smiled at me on Wednesday, It didn't make it all the way to his face. But something shifted when I walked into the garage and went straight to the Ducati without being told, and he watched me work for a few seconds before turning back to his own bike without saying anything hostile. For Tank, that was practically a welcome party.

Three days inside the compound and the temperature had dropped maybe two degrees. Not warm But the kind of cold that had stopped being aggressive and started being something you could work in.

Reaper was the harder read.

He watched me the way Dax watched me, quiet and calculating, but where Dax's watching felt like assessment, Reaper's felt like something else. Like he was waiting for me to do something specific. Every time I looked up from the Ducati, he'd already looked away. Every conversation he had near me dropped in volume when I got close.

I filed it and kept working.

The Ducati was ready for the course by Thursday morning. I'd gone through every system twice, rebuilt the suspension geometry from scratch to suit the championship surface, and retuned the fuel mapping for the cold morning temperatures the race would run in. She was faster than she'd been at the airstrip. Not by a little. By enough that the first time I opened her up on the private track, even Dax straightened up from the fence post she was leaning on.

She didn't say anything. She wrote a number in the small notebook she'd started carrying and went back to watching.

I was down to three and a half seconds.

Friday came with a problem.

I was under the Ducati doing a final check on the front brake caliper when I heard voices in the yard. Two of them, low and close together near the side wall of the garage. I couldn't see them from under the bike but I could hear them clearly enough through the corrugated metal.

"He's been in the office twice this week." Reaper's voice.

A second voice I didn't recognize. Younger, shorter sentences. "She showing him the files?"

"Has to be. Dutch is going to want to know."

I didn't move. Didn't make a sound. The caliper in my hand stayed exactly where it was.

"She find out, you're done," the second voice said.

"She won't find out." Reaper, flat and certain. "Just make the call."

Boots on gravel, moving away. Two sets, different directions.

I lay under the Ducati for another thirty seconds before I moved. I came out slowly, wiped my hands, set the caliper down on the workbench. Tank was on the other side of the garage with his back to me, working on a stripped carburetor. If he'd heard anything, he gave no sign.

I walked out of the garage like I was heading to the kitchen.

I went straight to Dax's office.

She opened the door before I knocked, which meant she'd heard my boots in the hall. She stepped back and I walked in. She closed the door behind me.

"Reaper," I said.

Her face didn't change. Not surprise, not satisfaction, just that still, careful expression she used when she was processing something she'd already half-expected.

"Tell me exactly what you heard," she said.

I told her. Every word, exact order, the second voice I couldn't place. She listened without interrupting, standing with her arms crossed and her eyes on the floor between us. When I finished she was quiet for a moment.

"The second voice," she said. "Age? Accent?"

"Young. Maybe mid-twenties. Local, no accent to speak of."

She walked to the filing cabinet on the left wall and opened the second drawer. She pulled out a folder and laid three photographs on the desk in front of me. Club members, all younger, all Iron Wolves patches.

"Any of them?"

I looked at all three. Pointed to the one on the right. "Him. I think."

Dax looked at the photograph for a long moment. "Lenny. Prospect. Been with the club eight months." She closed the folder. "He came recommended by a Death Dealer associate. I flagged it at the time and Dutch overruled me."

"What do you do now?"

"Nothing yet." She put the folder back and closed the drawer. "If I move on Reaper now, Kane knows we're onto him and he goes quiet. I need him to keep making contact so I can trace it back." She turned to face me. "You said nothing in the garage?"

"Nothing." "Good." She looked at me steadily. "Act normal. Work the bike. Don't change anything about how you move around this compound. Reaper is watching you to see if you're a threat. Right now you're just a mechanic who's good on a track. Stay that."

"And if he figures out what I heard?"

Dax picked up the burner phone from the desk and held it for a second, thinking. "He won't do anything inside the compound. Too much risk." She set it down. "Outside is a different question, which is why your practice runs don't happen without me present from now on."

"You think he'd come at me on the track?" "I think Cage isn't the only one who removes problems before race day." She said it the same way she said everything difficult, straight and without decoration, like softening it would insult both of us.

I thought about the private track at midnight. The trees on both sides, the dark beyond the floodlamps, how easy it would be to lose a rider in that kind of black and call it an accident.

"The championship is in five weeks," I said. "Five weeks is long enough for a lot to happen." She crossed to the window and looked out at the yard below. Whatever she saw, she kept to herself for a moment. Then, "You did the right thing coming straight to me."

It was the closest thing to thank you I'd heard from her in four days. I recognized it for what it was and didn't push it.

I stood up to leave.

"Zed." Her voice stopped me at the door, the same way it had in the garage the night of the track session. "Be careful in the garage. Reaper is patient. Patient people watch for longer than you think before they move."

I looked back at her. She was still at the window, not looking at me.

"So are you," I said. She didn't answer.

I walked back to the garage, picked up my tools, and got back under the Ducati. Tank glanced at me once when I slid back under. I caught the look in the half-second before he turned away. His next move is not yet clear but I know it's going to be tough