“Did you know her?”
Jonah answered too quickly.
Grant stood.
“Brick.”
“I said no.”
Grant’s eyes hardened.
“Outside.”
They disappeared through a side door.
Eli waited three seconds.
Then he slid from his chair.
A biker named Ray caught him.
“Where’re you going?”
“Bathroom.”
“That’s the pantry.”
Eli stopped.
Ray pointed to another door.
“Right.”
Eli went inside, waited until he heard conversation resume, then cracked the door open.
Through the narrow gap, he could see Jonah and Grant outside the window.
He could not hear everything.
Only pieces.
“…same age…”
“…could be coincidence…”
“…Mara isn’t…”
Then Grant said something clearly enough for Eli to understand.
“If that boy is who I think he is, forty-eight hours is the least of our problems.”
Eli quietly closed the bathroom door.
His appetite was gone.
The motorcycle was older than Eli had expected.
Jonah called it Mercy.
“Why Mercy?” Eli asked.
“No idea.”
“That’s not true.”
Jonah gave him a look.
“You always this suspicious?”
“Yes.”
That earned the faintest smile.
The smile disappeared when Jonah looked at Mercy.
“It belonged to someone who mattered.”
“Who?”
“The man who started this place.”
“Where is he?”
Jonah turned away.
“Gone.”
Eli understood that word.
Gone could mean many things.
Usually all of them hurt.
He crouched beside the motorcycle and began inspecting it without touching anything.
Fuel system first.
Old gasoline had been drained long ago. Carburetor rebuilt. Spark plugs replaced. Battery new. Wiring looked mostly original but clean.
Someone had spent serious time trying to start the machine.
“What happens when you turn it over?”
Jonah rolled the bike outside.
The afternoon sun made every scratch in the black paint visible.
Eli noticed one immediately.
Near the fuel tank was a tiny etched bird.
Not factory decoration.
Handmade.
His breath caught.
He leaned closer.
A bird with one wing raised.
“Something wrong?” Jonah asked.
Eli shook his head.
He had seen that bird before.
Not on a motorcycle.
On a small brass wrench that had belonged to his mother.
The wrench was currently wrapped in a sock at the bottom of his backpack.
Jonah pressed the starter.
The engine cranked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Nothing.
Eli listened.
“Again.”
Jonah did.
Eli closed his eyes.
Engines had voices.
His mother had taught him that.
Don’t listen for what the engine is doing, she used to say. Listen for what it’s trying to do.
Again.
The starter turned.
Eli raised one hand.
“Stop.”
“Well?”
“Compression sounds okay.”
“Already tested.”
“Spark?”
“Good.”
“Fuel?”
“Getting fuel.”
Eli frowned.
“Then one of those answers is wrong.”
Grant, standing near the doorway, folded his arms.
“Six mechanics have worked on it.”
“Then six mechanics missed something.”
Grant’s eyebrows lifted.
Jonah almost laughed.
Eli pulled a screwdriver from his backpack.
Grant pointed toward the club tools.
“You can use ours.”
“I like mine.”
He began carefully removing a side cover.
His hands stopped shaking.
This was the only place in life where Eli never felt thirteen.
Inside an engine, he understood what to do next.
For three hours, he checked connectors, fuel lines, timing, grounds, ignition coils, and every obvious failure point.
At sunset, he sat back on the concrete.
Mercy remained silent.
Grant passed behind him.
“Forty-four hours.”
Eli looked up sharply.
Grant kept walking.
That night Eli slept on a cracked leather couch in the club room.
Or tried to.
Jonah had given him a blanket.
Ray had found a clean T-shirt still in plastic from some charity event three years earlier.
Someone else left a toothbrush beside the bathroom sink without mentioning it.
Tiny acts of kindness frightened Eli more than hostility.
Hostility made sense.
Kindness could disappear.
He lay awake staring at the ceiling.
At eleven thirty, voices came from the garage.
Jonah.
Grant.
Eli slid quietly off the couch.
He stopped behind the partially closed door.
“You should’ve called social services immediately,” Grant said.
“I did.”
Eli froze.
His first instinct was to grab his backpack.
Jonah continued.
“They’re sending someone tomorrow.”
“That kid will run.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t have offered the bike.”
“I needed him to stay.”
“Why?”
Silence.
Then Grant lowered his voice.
“Because of Mara?”
Another silence.
Eli pressed closer.
Jonah sighed.
“You saw the wrench?”