"We didn't come hunting you," Jack said. "We came looking for him. That doesn't mean you need to be afraid of us, but I understand if you are."
Chloe glanced at the broad arc of bikes. "You told me you had ten seconds."
Jack's face changed. He looked toward Mace, then back at her. "I did," he admitted. "I saw that vest, and for a minute I was angry at anybody who might've touched it. I shouldn't have threatened somebody I couldn't even see. That's on me."
She had never heard Richard admit fault without immediately explaining why the fault was really hers. The absence of an excuse left her unsure what to say. Jack did not demand forgiveness. He stood and returned to the motorcycle, giving her room to think.
Under the light of several flashlights, the Shovelhead revealed details that had been hidden beneath rust and dirt. A small brass marker bore initials Chloe could barely make out. Jack recognized them immediately. "D.H.," he said, touching the air above the letters without placing his fingers on them. "Preacher made that piece himself. He used to call it the one good thing he'd ever learned to polish."
Mace pointed to the thick gray filler along the frame near the lower fuel-tank mount. "That's not factory," he said. "And it sure isn't a repair anybody who loved this bike would leave looking like that."
Jack stared at the patch for a long moment. "Preacher bought new parts whenever the budget allowed," he said. "He used to say you could carry old scars but you shouldn't hide fresh damage. Somebody wanted this scar hidden."
He took a small tool from the motorcycle's already damaged trim and carefully loosened a flaking section of filler near the mounting bracket. Chloe looked away when the metal scraped. She expected nothing more than rust and a repair somebody had done badly. Instead a tiny misshapen object appeared beneath the gray material, wedged into a cavity that had been filled and painted over.
Mace leaned in. Jack raised a hand, preventing anyone else from reaching toward it. In the flashlight beam, the object looked like a flattened piece of dull metal, with a narrow copper-colored band visible along one side. Jack's eyes narrowed as he recognized what it might be. The desert went very quiet again.
"That looks like a bullet," Chloe whispered.
"It does," Jack answered. "Which means the crash story needs another look. We don't know what it proves yet. A lab will have to tell us that."
Mace stood with his hands folded tightly across his chest. "If he was shot, they lied to us about everything."
"Maybe," Jack said. "Maybe more than we know. But we don't get to invent the parts we haven't proved, even if Croft is guilty as sin. We make sure nobody can bury the facts twice."