Chapter 3 - FOUR MINUTES
"You've got three minutes and fifty-nine seconds," Logan said, his voice a low gravel that sent a shiver through the crew members standing nearby.
"Are you out of your mind, Logan?" Ray hissed, grabbing his friend's leather vest. "This is a kid from a pump station. He touches that bike, he voids the insurance. He messes with the ECU, we could fry the whole harness!"
"Look at the compass, Ray," Logan said, never taking his eyes off the boy.
Ray looked down. The needle on the tarnished silver compass Leo was holding against the engine block wasn't just spinning. It was vibrating, locking onto specific points along the aluminum casing, moving in a deliberate, unnatural rhythm.
"Magnetic interference," Leo said, unrolling his canvas tool kit. It wasn't filled with expensive snap-on tools. It was filled with old, meticulously cared-for wrenches and a digital multimeter that looked like it had been run over by a truck. "The engineers who built this used an electronic immobilizer tied to the ignition coil. It’s supposed to be state-of-the-art. But Daniel’s original blueprints didn't call for state-of-the-art. They called for raw power."
Leo grabbed a socket wrench and slid entirely under the bike, his back against the hot wooden stage.
"Kid, how do you know about Daniel's blueprints?" Logan asked, taking a step closer. His fists were clenched.
"Because my dad drew them with him," Leo's voice echoed from under the heavy metal frame. "Montana. Nineteen ninety-eight. Before the lumber yard. Before the club."
Logan stopped breathing. Montana. 1998. The year Logan and Daniel had lived in a rusted-out trailer, dreaming of building the perfect engine. There had been a third guy. A quiet drifter named Marcus who welded like an artist and vanished before the year was out.
"Marcus is your father?" Logan asked, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Was," Leo corrected, the wrench clicking rapidly. "Died three years ago. Heart gave out. But he left me his notebooks. He told me if I ever saw the Iron Beast in person, to watch out for the secondary ground wire."
"There is no secondary ground wire," Ray argued, though he was now leaning over, trying to see what the kid was doing. "We stripped this bike to the frame. I wired it myself."
"You wired the harness they gave you, Mr. Dubois," Leo grunted, struggling with a bolt. "But you didn't wire what's inside the custom starter relay."
With a sharp crack, Leo loosened a hidden housing behind the primary drive. He slid out from under the bike, holding a small, black plastic box no bigger than a matchbook. It had been wedged deep inside the frame.
Logan looked at it. "What the hell is that?"
May you like
"That," Leo said, his grease-stained face completely unreadable, "is a GPS tracker and a remote kill switch. Somebody didn't want this bike starting today."
Leo turned the plastic box over. Stamped on the back, in tiny white letters, was the logo of the very charity foundation they were riding for.
