I'm saying I don't know. Ethan said, I'm not a lawyer, but I know the difference between a stolen part and an original one that happens to look similar from the outside and what's sitting under that seat looks a lot more like the second thing to me. Denise was already typing something into her phone, and Marcus caught the motion, felt a flicker of old instinct kick in. "What are you doing?" "My job," she said, not looking up.
"If there's a version of this story where a company's trying to strongarm a settlement out of a viral news cycle instead of an actual legitimate claim, that's a story, too. Bigger one, honestly." She glanced up at him. "You want my advice off the record? I'm listening.
Get a lawyer of your own on the phone in the next 10 minutes. Not to fight them yet, just to make sure whatever happens next, you're not the only one in this yard who understands what's legally at stake. She looked past him at Ethan. And whatever this kid was about to do to that bike, I document every second of it. If Precision Dine Technologies is bluffing, having proof that the repair used entirely different engineering than their patent could kill their whole claim before it starts.
Marcus stared at her for a moment, then turned to Dutch. Get Marlene on the phone now. Dutch was already moving phone press to his ear before Marcus finished the sentence. Reaper, meanwhile, had drifted closer to the bike, studying Ethan with an expression that had shifted somewhere in the last 10 minutes from open hostility to something more complicated, grudging, wary respect mixed with the stubborn refusal to admit it out loud. "You really think you can prove this thing was built clean?"
"I think the engine can prove it," Ethan said. I just have to show people how to read it. And if you're wrong, if some part of this really was stolen, Ethan met his eyes. Then Mr. Hail deserves to know that, too.
I'm not here to tell anybody what they want to hear. I already said that once today. Reaper studied him for a long moment, and then for the first time since Ethan had walked through that gate, something like the ghost of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah," he said. "You did."
Marlene Vasquez arrived 40 minutes later and she came the way good lawyers always did. Fast, sharp, and entirely unimpressed by the chaos surrounding her. She was a small woman with steel gray hair, pulled back tight and a voice that cut through noise without ever needing to be raised. And within 5 minutes of stepping out of her car, she'd already read the Precision Dine Technologies statement twice, made three phone calls and reduced Reaper to uncharacteristic silence just by the sheer efficiency of her presence. "Okay," she said, snapping her phone shut.
Here's where we stand. Precision Dine Technologies filed for an emergency injunction 40 minutes ago. A judge could rule on it as early as tomorrow morning, which means as of right now, you are legally permitted to continue working on this motorcycle. But the second that injunction is granted, everything stops. No more testing, no more repair, nothing until this gets sorted out in court, which could take months.
Months. Marcus repeated the word landing like a stone, possibly longer. Marlene's eyes flicked toward Ethan, sizing him up with the quick assessing look of someone used to evaluating witnesses. "Who is this?" "Ethan Carter.