Rusty's hands went cold. Dave stared at the floor, Tommy stopped breathing for a moment, and Pete frowned toward the motorcycle as if trying to remember every reading he had taken. Behind Jim, the riders shifted restlessly, their boots scraping against concrete. The black FXR sat motionless beneath its polished tank, looking once again like a monument rather than a machine.
Jim let his thumb fall away from the control. His shoulders lowered, not with anger but with a disappointment so complete that Rusty almost wished he would shout. "We were close," the big man said quietly. "I could feel it."
"You forgot," Leo said.
The small voice came from beside Nora. Jim turned toward him, puzzled and weary, while Rusty searched his face for the fear he expected to see. Leo was not smiling, and he did not look triumphant. He was simply pointing toward the left side of the fuel tank, where a hidden feature had been the center of so many hours of work.
"Mr. Dutch's trick," Leo reminded him. "You haven't used his switch."
Jim stared at the boy, then at the old black tank beneath his hands. For a heartbeat, he looked almost offended that an eight-year-old had found the explanation before he had, and then the expression softened into a stunned recognition. He remembered Dutch laughing as he told his friends that nobody would ever borrow the FXR without permission. Jim had assumed the remark referred to an ordinary steering lock or an old habit of keeping the keys hidden, not to a deliberate secret built into the motorcycle itself.
"Of course," Jim whispered.
He looked toward Pete, who gave a small nod confirming that the hidden feature had been inspected and was ready to be used. Jim reached beneath the left side of the tank and felt for the tiny switch, finding it only after a moment of searching. He moved it into the position Pete had shown him, then looked back at Leo. The boy's face was serious, his blue eyes fixed on the motorcycle as though he were waiting for an old friend to answer a knock on the door.
Jim placed both hands on the bars. The room fell silent, and even Bobby, who could usually find something to say in the worst moment, stopped moving. Rusty watched the machine with a mechanic's concentration, hoping to hear evidence that the carefully checked engine was finally ready to behave as intended. Nora put her arm around Leo's shoulders, not because he was frightened now, but because she wanted him to know that whatever happened, they would face it together.
Jim pressed the starter again.
The first sound was the clean turn of the motor, followed by a rough cough that traveled through the frame. Then the engine caught, struggled for a breath, and settled into a deep, uneven rhythm that filled the garage from floor to roof. The exhaust thundered through the open bay doors, rattling a loose sign above the parts counter and sending a faint tremor through the metal drawers along the wall. The black Harley-Davidson FXR, silent for months and dismissed as hopeless by the people who knew it best, was running.