She knew that in about 10 seconds, Reese was going to reach down and thumb that starter and the engine was going to catch and it was going to sound like nothing any of them had heard from it in years. And she knew there would be no hiding what she'd done. Not from the sound. The sound would tell on her. The machine, which had spent three days telling the truth to men who couldn't hear it, was about to tell the loudest truth of all.
Reese swung a leg over the Harley. He reached for the starter, and across the garage, unnoticed, as always, the woman nobody ever saw set down her pen and quietly, gently braced one hand against the counter, bracing not for the pain in her leg this time, but for whatever was coming next.
Reese's thumb came down. The engine turned over once and roared to life. And every single man in that garage froze where he stood because that sound was not the sound of a dying motorcycle. It was not the choking, sagging, half strangled thing they'd been fighting for 3 days. It was strong.
It was smooth. It was deep and even and right the way it had sounded a quarter century ago, rolling off the showroom floor the way it had sounded on every good road on every good day of Cole Walker's life.
Reese's mouth fell open. He rolled the throttle on and the engine climbed clean and steady with no hitch, no sag, no catch. Pure power top to bottom. "What did you," Cole started? "I didn't touch it," Reese said, staring down at the bike like it had come alive under him.
Raven, I swear to God I didn't touch it. We just got back. I haven't done a thing since this morning.
Marcus stepped forward, his face gone pale. That's That's not possible. It was bogging an hour ago. I heard it bogging an hour ago. Cody just stood there with his hands hanging at his sides, saying nothing at all.
And Cole "Raven" Walker walked slowly up to his motorcycle and he leaned down and he listened to it run. Really listen the way a man listens for a heartbeat. And his whole face changed because he heard it too.
He heard that it wasn't a patch. It wasn't a lucky guess. Whatever had been done to his bike had been done by somebody who understood it all the way down better than any of the three men standing in front of him. The engine wasn't just running. It was healed.
Cole straightened up and a cold, terrible stillness came over him. The stillness of a man in whose world an unforgivable line had just been crossed. Someone had touched his Harley, his bike, the one thing he trusted no one else to lay a hand on without his says so. Someone had gone into it into the machine that carried his whole life and they'd done it behind his back. His hands curled slowly into fists.