They came running. Sal Vitali who'd built race bikes for two decades. Hutch, who could diagnose a knock just by listening through a stethoscope pressed to a cylinder head. Six men who between them had 60 years of experience crowding around the Black Phantom like doctors around a patient who'd just flatlined. "Turn her over," Sal said.
Marcus hit the starter. The engine caught, roared to life, beautiful and strong, exactly the way it always had, and Marcus felt his stomach unclenched for half a second before, right on schedule, it died again. Clean, total, like someone had cut the ignition with a knife. Sal's face went pale. That's not a fuel problem.
Then what is it? I don't know yet. Those four words, I don't know yet, would become the theme of the next four days. By sundown that first evening, the news had already spread through the club faster than Marcus could control it. Word does that.
It doesn't ask permission. By the time he got back to the clubhouse, 40 members were waiting in the yard, and every single one of them wanted to know the same thing. Is it true? Big Reaper Owens was standing near the fire pit arms crossed over a chest the size of a refrigerator. His voice carrying the particular flatness of a man who already suspected the worst and wanted someone to confirm it.
"The Phantom's dead." "She's not dead," Marcus said. "She's not running. There's a difference." Is there?
Reaper's eyes didn't blink because from where I'm standing, we just got humiliated in front of every camera in Phoenix. Bike stops after a minute. A minute. Marcus, in front of the news, in front of everybody who's ever doubted this club had anything real to show for itself. I know what happened, Reaper.
I was on the bike. Then you know how bad it looks. Marcus didn't answer that. There wasn't a good answer. Reaper wasn't wrong.
And that was the part that stung. The Black Phantom wasn't just a motorcycle. It had never been just a motorcycle. It was eight years of Marcus' life. Hundreds of thousands of dollars pulled from club funds.
In his own pocket, a custom-built engine that three separate specialists had told him couldn't be replicated anywhere else in the country. It was proof that the Hells Angels weren't just outlaws on loud bikes that they could build something no factory, no billionaire, no racing team could touch. And now it sat in the garage like a corpse, and every rival club in the Southwest already knew. "We'll fix it," Marcus said mostly to himself. "With what money?"