Chapter 26 Twenty six

Chapter 26 Twenty six
"That's Rivera's current assessment." Dax picked up a printed page from her desk a map of the region with several locations marked. "She's working from the assumption that Kane will establish a position within communications range of the championship circuit but outside domestic federal jurisdiction." She paused. "There's a property twenty kilometers from the final circuit that transferred to a Nevada holding company six weeks ago. Rivera missed it in the initial property search because the transfer predated the warrant and the holding company name is different from the others."

"But it's Kane's," I said.

"Rivera believes so. She's working on confirming it now." Dax set the map down. "The point is that Colt's contract is almost certainly still active and Kane intends to observe its completion from a position of safety."

Reaper came back in. "Cole is rerouting to Murphy's Garage. Stone confirmed, ETA twelve minutes."

"Good." Dax looked at the room. "The compound goes to full security posture from now. Nobody goes anywhere alone. All external meetings require a minimum of two people. The championship preparation continues but every session is treated as a potential exposure point." She looked at me. "Stone's circuit tonight?"

"I need it," I said. "Colt has changed his preparation pattern and I need to understand what that means for his approach to the final. If he's been preparing for one circuit and Kane tells him to change his positioning, his familiarity with specific sections changes."

"Take Reaper," Dax said.

"Stone's circuit access was for one rider," I said.

"Stone will accommodate a modification." She turned to Reaper. "You ride the outside. You're not there for the circuit, you're there for the perimeter."

Reaper nodded.

I put the folder from Carver on Dax's desk.

She looked at it. Then at me.

"Carver brought this to Murphy's Garage this morning," I said. "Read it before Rivera gets here. There's something in it you need to know before anyone else tells you."

She picked up the folder and opened it and I watched her read the first page, then the second, then stop at the third and read it again. I watched her face do what it always did with difficult information nothing immediately, then a small controlled shift, then nothing again.

She read Dutch's handwritten note for a long time.

"She knew who I was from the beginning," I said.

"Yes." Dax closed the folder. Her voice was entirely flat.

"The whole thing was constructed. The race, the debt, the exposure. She engineered the situation that brought me to your door."

"Yes." She set the folder on the desk with a precision that was the controlled cousin of force. "And everything that happened after you came through that door the drive, the Polk files, the Briggs evidence, the qualifier none of that was part of her plan. All of that was yours." She looked at me directly. "She set up the board. You changed every piece on it."

I looked at the folder. At Dutch's handwriting visible through the top page.

"She underestimated both of us," Dax said.

"She underestimated what we'd do with what we found," I said. "Different thing."

Dax looked at me for a moment. "Yes," she said. "It is."

Rivera arrived at nine-thirty with Carrow and a third agent I hadn't met, and the next two hours were a formal debrief that covered Carver's folder, Kane's escape, Colt's location change, and the property twenty kilometers from the final circuit. Rivera confirmed the property was Kane's by the end of the first hour. By the end of the second she had a surveillance team positioned around it.

Kane wasn't there yet. But his utilities had been activated forty-eight hours ago.

He was coming.

"He'll arrive before the final," Rivera said. "We'll have him before or during. Either way the net closes." She looked at me. "Your job doesn't change, Zed. Win the race. Everything else we manage."

She left at noon with her team and the compound settled back into its post-debrief quiet, and I went to the garage and sat with the Ducati and the circuit map and Colt's lap data and thought about everything that had changed since seven in the morning.

The scored clasp. Dutch's note. Kane in the wind. Colt moved and recalibrating.

My father's name in the margin of a document that was now in a federal evidence folder.

I picked up my tools and started working, because the work was the thing that organized everything else, the practice that made the rest of it possible, the habit my father had built into me with twenty years of patient example before Dutch Steele decided his garage was worth less than a territory line.

Hitch appeared at two o'clock with the afternoon's coffee and his quiet competence and his ten years of knowledge about Kane's organization that he'd been spending carefully and well.

"The final circuit's chicane complex," he said, sitting on his stool. "Kane's riders always run the middle apex option. It's faster on paper but it compromises the exit for the following straight."

I looked up. "You raced that circuit."

"Three times. Won twice." He turned his coffee cup in his hands. "The outside apex option looks slower but it opens up the exit line by about four meters. At the speeds the final runs, four meters of exit width is worth approximately eight tenths of a second on the following straight."

Eight tenths of a second. In championship racing, eight tenths was a different category.

"Colt will run the middle apex," I said.

"If he runs what Kane's riders run, yes." Hitch shrugged. "Whether he knows the outside option exists depends on who prepared him. Kane's organization has been using the middle apex for twelve years. It's institutional."

I looked at the circuit map. At the chicane complex in the third sector. At the outside apex option that was worth eight tenths of a second to anyone who knew it was there.

"Hitch," I said. "Have you ever told anyone else about the outside apex option?"

He considered that. "Stone," he said. "About four years ago. She'd been trying to figure out why my lap times on that circuit were consistently faster than anyone else's despite similar qualifying speeds."

"Stone knows."

"Stone knows." He looked at me. "Which is why she offered you her circuit for five weeks instead of three."

I sat back and looked at the map and thought about a woman with silver-streaked hair who ran the cleanest MC in four hundred miles and had been collecting evidence on Kane for three years independently and had found Colt on her own circuit and called us the moment she did.

"She's been preparing for the final longer than we have," I said.

"Stone prepares for everything longer than everyone else," Hitch said. "It's why her club is still standing."

My phone buzzed. A message from the number Carver had used that morning.

One more thing I forgot this morning. The scored clasp on your helmet was done by someone who'd raced against you at the airstrip before Ghost Rider started winning. Someone who knew your equipment specifically.

I typed back: How many people fit that description?

The reply was immediate.

One. He raced you four months ago under the name Viper. Finished third. He's been with the Iron Wolves for eight months.

I read the message twice.

Then I put my phone down and looked at Hitch and said: "Where is Cole right now?"

Hitch looked up. "Murphy's Garage. Dax sent him to cover for Gravel. Why?"

"Because Cole has been at the Steel Riders for how long?"

"Stone said he was placed three months ago." Hitch's expression shifted as the calculation completed. "The airstrip race was four months ago."

"Before Cole was at the Steel Riders," I said. "Before he was anywhere we could account for him."

The garage was very quiet.

I picked up my phone and called Dax.

She answered on the first ring.

"Dax," I said. "Get someone to Murphy's Garage right now. Not Cole. Anyone but Cole."

A beat of silence. Then: "Why."

"Because I think Cole is the one who scored my helmet strap," I said. "And right now he's alone in a building with Murphy.”