The Harley caught cleanly. It settled into a deep, steady idle, and the tiny rhythmic stumble that had haunted the room for three days was gone. Reese held the throttle at a controlled setting and listened, frowning in confusion as the engine responded evenly. Cole stepped closer, head tilted, his expression changing from surprise to relief and then to something much darker as he realized the machine had not healed itself.
"What did you do?" he demanded.
"Nothing," Reese said at once. "Raven, I haven't touched it since before lunch."
Marcus came around the workbench and stared at the engine with the stunned concentration of a man confronted by a result he cannot explain. Cody looked from the bike to Reese and back again, searching their faces for a joke nobody had told him. But the sound filling the shop was not a joke, and it was much too steady to dismiss as a momentary improvement.
Cole killed the engine before anyone could suggest a road test. His relief had been overtaken by the knowledge that someone had opened his machine without telling him, and the fear beneath that knowledge came out as anger. He put his helmet on the workbench harder than he intended and turned to the men who worked for him. The noise echoed through the building, leaving a silence into which he spoke the words Emily had dreaded hearing.
"Who fixed my Harley?"
No one answered Cole immediately. Reese held the rag he had been using as though he had forgotten what to do with it, Marcus studied the floor by the front tire, and Cody stared at the work cart with the stubborn concentration of someone hoping the evidence would rearrange itself. Cole waited, giving each man the opportunity to speak. His silence was more intimidating than his raised voice because it made clear that he expected the truth and did not intend to leave without it.
"Was it you?" he asked Reese.
"No, Raven. I would tell you. You know I would."
"Marcus?"
"I told you I thought the engine needed deeper work. Whatever happened while we were gone wasn't me."
Cole faced Cody, who raised both hands. "I wasn't even inside the building. Ask Dutch, ask anybody."
The owner looked at the service cart again. He could see it had been moved, and someone had placed a clean pad beneath the motorcycle's engine. The evidence made his stomach tighten because any careless work inside that machine could have created a danger worse than the fault it had developed. He was relieved to hear the motor run smoothly, yet he could not shake the knowledge that the most important decision had been made without him.
"Then who?" he asked, almost to himself.
Reese's eyes moved past Cole toward the parts counter. He had been thinking about the question Emily asked on the first evening, about the timing components nobody had inspected, and about the way she lingered near Marcus on the second day. He had dismissed those moments because he had dismissed the woman who created them. Now they returned together, forming a possibility he found difficult to say aloud.