Ghost Riders (A Dark MC Romance)

Cutter’s Garage

The garage held the thick stench of grease, solvent, and oxidized sheet metal. Jason pushed through the side door with his heavy canvas tool bag and stood still for a second, letting the familiar grit settle into his lungs.

Cutter’s scuffed work boots stuck out from beneath a Dyna up on the second lift; nothing else of the man showed. Over on the wooden bench, a portable radio played a low country track, barely rising above a murmur.

Jason gave no greeting. He walked over to the far bay, mounted the Panhead on the frame stand, and dragged an iron stool beneath the motor. Three hours out in the yard meant three hours cataloging camera angles, tire ruts in the gravel, and the angle Victor parked his truck beneath the security arc. The sentries had asked no questions at the gate. Nobody had spoken a word to him out there, and only now, with the weight of cold steel in his reach, did his neck loosen.

He lifted a valve wrench and went to work.

For forty minutes, the shop held only the tinny broadcast, the dry clatter of sockets, and Cutter shifting beneath the Dyna. Then an open-end wrench dropped against the concrete floor.

"Intake clearance on these Evos runs tight," Cutter called out. Just that. The boots stayed flat, and the voice struck the frame rails above him.

"Thirty-six thousandths," Jason said, adjusting his grip.

"Thirty-four if it sat out in the yard through the cold."

"Thirty-four, then."

"Feeler gauge is on the cabinet tray," Cutter said from beneath the chassis. "Clean the grit off before you seat it."

"Already wiped," Jason said.

"Then set it down and check the timing chain slack after."

Cutter slid back under the pan. Jason worked the chrome rocker box loose and measured the valve lash, and neither man spoke for the next stretch. The silence stayed functional and dense; Cutter remained under his Dyna, Jason worked on the Panhead, and both kept to the simple certainty that the metal mattered and questions could wait.

The music droned on. Jason reached into the casing, measured the link slack, found it within tolerance, and tightened down the cover bolts.

He stood up to pull a clean shop rag off the parts wall, but his boot caught on an uneven seam, and he stopped.

The wall beside the exit door drew his gaze. It was a narrow strip of drywall, lit by an unshaded work bulb hanging above the bench. Pinned in four uneven lines were roughly a dozen photographs of men wearing patches, men astride bikes, and men squinting into dry desert glare. The older prints had curled and turned yellow along the borders.

Marcus’s photograph hung at the right edge of the bottom run. Fresh paper. Someone had aligned the corners squarely with level pushpins, unlike the older shots left to tilt on the board.

Jason raised his right hand and held it steady. His knuckles hovered three inches from the print. He noted the fray along Marcus’s leather collar, and the flat, unblinking glare Marcus gave whenever someone aimed a lens at his face.

Behind him, Cutter’s boots shifted against the concrete, then settled.

The radio muttered. Jason kept his fingers suspended in the light.Two hours later, Jason was torquing down the Panhead's primary chain when the radio volume spiked hard. No warning came from under the Dyna. Cutter's arm simply reached out, found the dial, and cranked it until the heavy guitars filled every corner of the bay, bouncing off sheet metal and concrete in a wall of distorted sound. It was classic rock, loud enough that Jason felt it vibrate in his back teeth. He kept working, checking the chain tension without pausing.

"Clubhouse," Cutter said, the flat syllables cutting through the blast of guitars. "And the office." Jason set the main jet down, then picked up the emulsion tube. "Victor's got mics in the ceiling tiles," Cutter said. "You think he just lets people talk?"

"Every room?" Jason asked.

"Every room where men sit down," Cutter said. "He had them wired before the drywall went up."

The radio blared overhead. Jason turned the emulsion tube between his fingers and checked the ports for varnish buildup. It was clean; he set it on the rag beside the jet.

His mind ran back through the gate, the welcome, and the long walk across the yard. Every word spoken in the clubhouse since he arrived, every exchange in the office doorway when Victor watched him from behind the desk with that flat, patient expression, was sitting on tape somewhere. All of it had already been heard.

"Not in here," Cutter said. "Victor never ran wire in the garage."

"Why leave this bay open?" Jason asked.

"He does the work himself," Cutter said. "A man don't wire his own confession booth."

That was all. The boots shifted once on the concrete floor and went still.

Jason found the carburetor body and began threading the main jet back into its seat; his grip stayed steady as he gave it one turn, then two. He checked the torque by feel and moved to the needle clip, seating it into the middle groove without rushing. The guitars crashed overhead. He ran back through every word he'd spoken in the clubhouse, the office, the yard gate. Every room had ears except this one. He checked the chain for a weak link. He found nothing yet.

The carburetor went back onto the intake. Jason started the mounting bolts by hand, brought the wrench up, and tightened them down in sequence.

The last bolt seated.

The radio kept blaring. Jason set the wrench on the bench, straightened up, and looked at nothing in particular on the far wall. The garage was the only room Victor had left unwired, and he stood inside it.Cutter moved.

The dolly wheels scraped concrete as he cleared the motorcycle frame, one hand braced on the lower rail, the other gripping a soiled shop cloth. He sat up slowly, wiped his palms in two flat strokes, and dropped the cloth onto his knee.

Then he looked straight at Jason.

The work lamp cut a hard line across his jaw, casting the rest of his features in grease-stained shadow. Jason stayed near the worktable; the carburetor was seated, bolted, and tight. Above them, a cheap speaker rattled with distorted guitar and heavy drums, filling the bay with enough static noise that speech stayed trapped inside four walls.

Cutter reached out, pressed a scarred palm against the warm chrome exhaust, and hauled himself upright. He stood solid, never checking his boots or glancing down.

Jason laid the open-end tool across the steel tabletop.

"Welcome home, kid," Cutter said, his tone dry as lime dust. "Now forget I said any of that."

"Forget which part?" Jason asked.

"Every word since you walked in." Cutter kept his stance rigid. "Marcus thought he could outrun the tape reels; he ended up in the dirt."

"I heard you the first time."

"Then keep your teeth together," Cutter said. "Thursday run is thirty-six hours out, kid. Five-minute blind spot on the back gate, that is all you get. You miss the window by ten seconds, nobody pulls you out." "I know the timing." Thirty-six hours. Jason felt the count tick behind his temples. One full day and a single night to map the yard arcs, memorize the gate patrol rotation, and figure out how to pull what he needed without tripping Victor's tripwires. It was almost no runway at all. "Good." Cutter held the stare a second longer; then he reached over and gave the radio knob a quarter turn.

The guitar fuzz faded into a dull, low-frequency hum. The bay settled into basic garage sounds: cooling metal ticks, oil drips, and the distant drone of exterior perimeter arcs.

"Check the torque on that intake before you leave it," Cutter muttered, already dropping back down beside the front wheel. He grabbed a socket wrench off the rubber floor mat, found the bolt head by feel, and shoved an arm beneath the primary drive. The shop resumed its rhythm; iron against iron.

Jason stood beside the table, surrounded by the smell of stale solvent and dry sage blowing through the corrugated siding.

Marcus's photograph remained pinned to the drywall board, held tight by four level pushpins. The unshaded bulb caught the faded paper; the frayed denim collar, the dead-level stare, the work of an older brother who had marked this layout long before Jason ever picked up a wrench. This was the only unwired square footage in the shop compound. It belonged to Jason now.

He took a clean cotton square from the hanging peg. He dragged the cloth across the oil-slicked galvanized sheet, wiping away fingerprints and metal shavings in long, quiet passes, letting the cold iron sink into his knuckles until the surface was clear.