Then the socket rolled off the bench. The floor began to tremble, a sound like a distant freight train gathering speed. Caleb raised his head and listened as that rumble thickened into hundreds of separate engines moving together. His first thought was that Grip had brought his two prospects and a few friends. His second came when the headlights appeared in the office window and continued appearing long after a few friends should have passed. At 8:05 p.m., the entire industrial road was filling with motorcycles.
Caleb had seen large charity rides on television, and he had seen a dozen bikes arrive at a diner together. This was neither. The motorcycles came in disciplined groups, flowing around the corners of warehouses and filling empty lots with their headlights. Some riders parked along the fence while others continued down the road to make room for those behind them. The pavement beneath the shop seemed to take on its own pulse. Every instinct Caleb possessed told him to drop his tools and run, but he had no desire to become a frightened teenager fleeing a problem he had worked all afternoon to uncover.
He stepped to the crack beside the bay door and saw Grip at the front of the column on another man’s motorcycle. Beside him rode an older man with a silver beard and an expression of perfect, cold composure. Both wore leather cuts bearing the club’s colors. As the riders killed their engines, the sound drained from the street in waves until only the last few idling motors remained. The sudden stillness made Caleb aware of his own heartbeat.
Behind him, the red Knucklehead stood incomplete beneath the fluorescent lights. He had found the truth and begun the right repair, but the motorcycle was not ready to ride. Caleb looked at the sealed evidence bag on the workbench and at the photographs on his phone. He washed his bloody fingers as best he could, dried them on a clean rag, and put the rag beside the bank notice. Then he walked toward the bay doors before anyone had to come looking for him.
The door lifted with an ugly scream of metal against metal. Warm twilight spilled across the floor, outlining Caleb in the pale light from the shop’s ceiling fixtures. Five men stood beyond the threshold, and beyond them were ranks of motorcycles that seemed to extend through the entire industrial park. Their engines were quiet now. Somewhere a cooling exhaust pipe ticked, and Caleb could hear a dog barking behind the warehouse across the street.
Grip stepped inside first. He was wearing the same dark glasses he had worn earlier, though the sun had almost disappeared. The older man beside him was broader through the chest, his silver beard neatly trimmed above a black shirt. The patch on his cut identified him as president, and there was something in his unhurried manner that made the men around him keep silent. Caleb guessed this was the man the valley knew as Iron Jack Crowley.