He checked what Wyatt’s shop had replaced.
Excellent work.
That bothered him.
At 2:40, Caleb reinstalled enough components to run the motorcycle safely and rolled it onto Ray’s old dynamometer.
The machine had been purchased used from a race shop in 1985.
The control panel looked prehistoric.
Its steel rollers were scarred.
But it worked.
Caleb strapped the motorcycle carefully.
Then he stood beside it and started the engine.
The Knucklehead settled into a deep irregular idle that vibrated through the building.
Caleb closed his eyes.
He listened.
Healthy.
At least at idle.
He increased load gradually.
Forty miles per hour.
Fine.
Fifty.
Fine.
Sixty.
Nothing.
Sixty-eight.
Caleb watched the gauges.
Seventy-two.
Still clean.
Seventy-four.
Then seventy-five.
The motorcycle changed instantly.
The frame shuddered.
The ignition faltered.
The engine coughed and recovered.
The whole machine began oscillating against the restraints in a way Caleb did not like at all.
He shut it down immediately.
The silence afterward rang against his eardrums.
Caleb stared.
Then he did it again.
Not all the way to full failure.
Only enough to confirm the threshold.
Same result.
Nearly exact speed.
He shut it down.
“Why?”
He said the word aloud.
The empty shop offered nothing.
Caleb walked slowly around the motorcycle.
Speed-specific problems often pointed toward load, vibration, airflow, or resonance.
But the behavior did not feel like ordinary fuel starvation.
The misfire and chassis instability arrived too closely together.
Which one came first?
Everyone before him had assumed the engine failed and caused the wobble.
Caleb began wondering whether that was backward.
He lowered the motorcycle.
Removed the straps.
Then ran his fingers over the frame.
The recently painted finish was almost flawless.
Almost.
Near a rear mounting point, beneath a section most people would never inspect closely, Caleb noticed dust.
Not road dust.
Metal.
Tiny bright particles.
Fresh.
He touched them.
Something had been moving.
Caleb got a flashlight.
He spent twenty minutes examining every accessible joint.
Then he found a subtle irregularity beneath the paint.
His stomach dropped.
Someone had been inside this frame.
Not repair work.
Not normal fabrication.
Something hidden.
Caleb stood slowly.
He looked toward the telephone.
He could call Grip.
Tell him the bike was unsafe.
Stop.
That was the sensible decision.
But Grip needed an answer.
And Caleb needed certainty before accusing anyone of deliberately tampering with the motorcycle.
At 4:35, he began disassembly.
Not recklessly.
Methodically.
Every removed part went onto a labeled tray.
Every connection was marked.
Bolts were grouped by assembly.
Photographs were taken with Ray’s old Polaroid camera where routing could become confusing.
Caleb had rebuilt motorcycles quickly before.
Never under a deadline like this.
Never one whose owner had threatened his shop.
And never a machine with this history.
At 5:02, Caleb exposed enough of the frame to confirm his suspicion.
He stared at the hidden alteration.
His mouth went dry.