Victor Ryder.
His father.
For nineteen years, Ethan had known only fragments.
A name.
An old photograph.
A story his mother never finished.
His father had left when Ethan was two months old.
That was all anyone would say.
Victor Ryder had disappeared.
Ethan had grown up with the knowledge that somewhere in the world there was a man whose blood ran through his veins.
A man who had chosen not to come back.
Ethan had hated him.
Then he had stopped hating him.
Then he had stopped thinking about him.
At least, that was what he told himself.
His fingers traced the letters.
There was a seam nearby.
He pressed it.
Nothing.
He pressed again.
Click.
A hidden panel opened.
Inside was a rolled piece of oil-stained paper.
Ethan carefully removed it.
He unfolded it.
Blueprints.
Not ordinary blueprints.
The motorcycle had been designed around a system of interdependent mechanical responses.
A calibration system unlike anything Ethan had ever encountered.
And in the corner were five handwritten words.
For the son who finds this.
Ethan stopped breathing.
He sat on the concrete floor.
For several minutes, he simply stared.
His father had known.
Maybe not when.
Maybe not where.
But Victor Ryder had believed that someday his son might find this machine.
His hands began to shake.
He pressed them against his knees.
He remembered being fourteen.
Sitting beside a highway.
Everything he owned inside a backpack.
His mother had been gone.
His home was gone.
He had decided that crying wouldn't solve anything.
So he stopped.
Now, nineteen years old, sitting beside a motorcycle in a Nevada compound, he almost cried again.
But he didn't.
Instead, he stood.
He put the blueprint inside his jacket.
Then he returned to work.
By dawn, Ethan understood the problem.
The Harley wasn't broken.
It had been improperly calibrated.
Worse than that, someone had deliberately installed incorrect components.
Four of them.
New.
Much newer than the rest of the engine.
Ethan examined one.
Then another.
The tolerances were wrong.
Not accidentally wrong.
Deliberately wrong.
Someone knew exactly how the system worked.
Someone had sabotaged the motorcycle.
The door opened.
Joker entered.
“What did you find?”
Ethan pointed to the components.
“These were replaced recently.”
“How recently?”
“Six months. Maybe less.”
Joker frowned.
“They shouldn't be.”
“They're wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“They force the engine into shutdown.”
“Could a mechanic make that mistake?”
“Not four times.”
Joker became very still.
Ethan looked at him.
“Someone did this on purpose.”
Joker's jaw tightened.
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
Then Ethan handed him the blueprint.
Joker unrolled it.
The older man's face changed.
“Where?”
“Inside the engine.”
Joker looked at the initials.
“VR.”
Ethan nodded.
“You knew him.”
Joker stared.
“Victor Ryder.”
“Yes.”
“Everyone here knew Victor.”
“No.”
Ethan looked directly at him.
“Not like I mean.”
Joker's eyes narrowed.
“Who was he?”
Ethan took a breath.
“My father.”
The blueprint nearly slipped from Joker's hands.
He caught it.
Then he stared at Ethan.
“Ghost had a son.”
“You knew?”
“He told me once.”
“When?”
“Twenty years ago.”
Joker sat down.
“He said he'd left a woman behind.”
Ethan looked away.
“He said he regretted it.”
“Did he ever come back?”
“No.”
Joker's expression softened.
“He wanted to.”
“That isn't the same thing.”
“No.”
Joker looked at the motorcycle.
“He worked on that machine for years.”
“Why?”
“He said he was building something nobody else would understand.”
Ethan looked at the blueprint.
“Maybe he was building something for me.”
Joker didn't answer.
After a moment, he said:
“There's someone you need to know about.”
“Who?”
“Rex Malone.”
The Man Who Hated Ghost
Rex Malone had known Victor Ryder for fifteen years.
They had been brothers.
Then enemies.
Rex entered the repair room just after noon.
He was almost sixty.
Tall.
Lean.
Powerful.
His face carried the kind of lines created by years of anger held in the jaw.
Ethan immediately recognized something.
Rex was grieving.
Not recently.
Old grief.
The kind that had been carried so long it had become part of the body.
“You're the mechanic,” Rex said.
“You're Rex.”
“Joker told you about me?”
“He mentioned you.”
Rex looked at the Harley.
Then at Ethan.