Chapter 6 - The Rumbling Highway
The heavy roar of multiple heavy-displacement engines vibrated through the floorboards of the barn, growing louder with every passing second.
Maeve jumped to her feet, her hand instinctively dropping back to the cold fender of the blue motorcycle.
"Is that the suit's backup?" she asked, her voice tight with renewed panic as she looked toward the open sliding doors.
"Did he call in more corporate thugs?"
Jax shook his head slowly, his gray eyes narrowing as he listened to the distinctive cadence of the approaching exhaust pipes.
"No," Jax said, stepping out into the fading evening light to scan the gravel drive.
"That ain't corporate. That's a twin-cam Harley block running straight pipes. Sounds like Reno and the boys from the state line."
Cole stepped out beside his mentor, resting his heavy iron wrench against his shoulder.
"Reno? What's he doing all the way out here this late in the week? Last I heard, he was running parts up through the mountain pass."
Three heavy cruisers crested the rise of the dirt road, their chrome headlights cutting through the twilight dust before killing their engines in a synchronized roar.
The lead rider cut his ignition, hoisted his helmet off, and shook out a mane of graying hair lined with road dust.
It was Reno—older than Jax, with a face like cured leather and a scar running from his left ear down to his collarbone.
"Miller!" Reno bellowed, swinging his heavy leg off the custom chopper with surprising agility.
"I got your message about the Apex suit sniffing around your yard. Thought you might need some heavy muscle to keep the vultures from picking your bones."
Jax walked out to meet him, offering a firm, weathered handshake that spoke of decades of shared asphalt and broken bones.
"You got here just after he left, Reno," Jax replied, gesturing toward the barn.
"The suit tried to muscle the kid for her old man's notebook, but we sent him packing with his tail between his legs."
Reno looked past Jax, his piercing blue eyes landing directly on Maeve standing by the barn entrance.
"So this is Arthur's girl," Reno murmured, walking slowly past the two older men until he stood just a few feet away from her.
He looked her up and down, taking in the red curls, the freckles, and the fierce, defiant posture.
"You've got his eyes, kid. Stubborn as a mule and twice as hard to kill."
Maeve crossed her arms, refusing to shrink away from the towering, intimidating biker.
"If you're here to lecture me about staying out of the garage, save your breath," she snapped.
"I'm helping rebuild this bike whether you old timers like it or not."
Reno threw his head back and let out a booming laugh that echoed off the wooden rafters of the barn.
"Hear that, Jax? She's got his mouth too!" Reno clapped a heavy hand on Maeve's shoulder, nearly knocking her off balance before steadying her with a grin.
"Good. Because you're gonna need that fire if we're going to pull this off."
Cole walked up, wiping grease from his hands onto his jeans.
"Pull what off? The kid just told us the fuel-injection system needs a digital module we don't have and can't buy."
Reno's smile faded into a serious, conspiratorial expression as he reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a heavy, grease-stained burlap sack.
He dropped it onto the workbench with a dull, metallic thud.
"We aren't buying anything," Reno said, peeling back the burlap to reveal a pristine, hand-tooled brass carburetor assembly that gleamed under the overhead work light.
"I didn't ride fifty miles through the pass for nothing. Found this sitting in a dead man's estate sale up in Prescott. It's an experimental mechanical fuel distributor designed back in ninety-four."
Jax picked up the brass unit, turning it over in his hands with mounting disbelief.
"I'll be damned," Jax whispered, tracing the intricate linkage with his thumb.
"This is the exact prototype Arthur and I abandoned when the shop burned down."
Maeve stepped closer, staring at the brass machinery with wide eyes.
"Can we fit it to the engine?" she asked breathlessly.
"We can," Jax said, looking up at her with a renewed intensity in his eyes.
"If we work all night."
As the group gathered around the workbench to begin the grueling assembly, Reno leaned in close to Jax and lowered his voice.
"Hope you're right about that corporate suit staying gone, Miller," Reno muttered quietly.
May you like
"Because I saw two unmarked black sedans parked down at the crossroads when I came through."
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