Give me one minute. Marcus Hail had ridden through hurricanes, buried three brothers, and stared down men with guns pointed at his chest.
And none of it had shaken him the way those four words did, spoken by a 17-year-old boy in a gas station uniform, standing in front of the one machine that had humiliated the entire Hells Angels nation for four straight days. $5.9 million sat on the table.
The best mechanics in the country had already failed one after another in front of the cameras.
And now this kid, barely old enough to vote, wanted 60 seconds alone with a motorcycle that had broken grown men. Nobody in that parking lot would ever forget the sound the Black Phantom made when it died. It wasn't a sputter. It wasn't a cough the way engines usually protested before they gave out. It was a full, clean, healthy roar.
And then exactly 61 seconds later, silence. Total silence. The kind that made 3,000 bikers stop talking at once. Marcus Hail had felt it happen underneath him. He'd felt the engine drop out like the floor of an elevator falling away.
And for one terrifying second, he thought he was going to lay the bike down right there in front of the biggest charity ride Phoenix had ever hosted. He didn't. He wrestled it to a stop, boots down, chest heaving, and sat there for a long moment, just staring at the dashboard like it had betrayed him personally. Dutch Riley, his VP, was off his own bike and jogging over before the dust even settled. Marcus, you good?
I'm good. Marcus didn't sound good. He sounded like a man who just watched eight years of his life go quiet in under a minute. She just stopped. Stopped how?
Stopped like somebody reached in and turned her off. Marcus swung his leg off the bike and stood there hand resting on the tank like he was checking a pulse. Get Sal. Get Hutch. Get everybody who's ever touched an engine over here right now.