Chapter 28 Twenty eight

Chapter 28 Twenty eight

I understood what she meant immediately.

We walked to her office without discussing it further the yard had ears even now, possibly more than before and she closed the new door that Tank had sourced and hung himself with the specific guilt-driven competence of a man who felt responsible for the previous one.

Reaper was already there, back from Murphy's Garage, with the tracker in a sealed evidence bag and the contained energy of someone who had been thinking hard on a forty-kilometer ride and had arrived at conclusions.

Dax laid it out simply.

Cole had been feeding information to Kane's network for three weeks. He'd filmed Stone's circuit for Colt. He knew our preparation, our approach, our specific advantages. Running the same plan now was running it against an opponent who had seen it in advance.

"Unless," Dax said, "what Cole filmed wasn't the real plan."

Reaper looked between us. "You knew about Cole before this morning."

"I suspected," Dax said. "Not Cole specifically a secondary asset inside the compound. The compound security breach after Dutch's arrest was too clean for Briggs to have managed alone from outside. Someone inside was still active." She looked at Reaper. "I didn't know who. I needed to let them operate long enough to identify themselves."

"So the preparation sessions at Stone's circuit," Reaper said slowly.

"Were real," I said. "My preparation is genuine. The outside apex is real and I'm running it." I looked at Dax. "What's not real is everything Cole filmed three nights ago."

Reaper processed that. "He filmed you running a specific line."

"He filmed me running the line I wanted him to see," I said. "Not the line I'll run on race day."

The office was quiet for a moment while Reaper completed the calculation.

"Colt prepares for a rider running the outside apex," he said. "You run something different."

"Colt prepares for a rider running the outside apex at a specific entry speed with a specific braking point," I said. "I run the outside apex at a different entry speed with a different braking point. His defensive positioning is wrong by the time he realizes it."

"That's a half-second gap," Reaper said. "At a hundred and thirty that's "

"Enough," I said.

Dax looked at the whiteboard. "We need Cole to film one more session. Something specific enough that it commits Colt to a defensive approach that I can exploit." She turned. "Can you run a false session tonight? Something that looks like a final preparation run the kind of session a rider does three days before a race when they're locking in their approach?"

I thought about what a genuine final-preparation session looked like. The specific rhythms of it, the particular way a rider moved through a circuit when they were confirming rather than exploring, the small adjustments that signaled commitment to a specific plan.

"Yes," I said. "But it has to be on a circuit Cole can access. Stone's is burned he won't go back there now that he knows we've made him."

"The compound's back track," Reaper said. "Cole has filmed it before I found traces of a camera mount on the tree line post during my perimeter check last week. I didn't know what it meant at the time." He looked at Dax. "He'll come back to it. It's his established position."

Dax nodded slowly. "Tonight. Full session. Zed runs the compound track with the approach he wants Colt to prepare for." She looked at me. "How different does the false line need to be from your real approach?"

"Different enough that Colt's defensive positioning is wrong by two meters at the apex," I said. "Similar enough that it looks like genuine preparation rather than theater."

"Can you do that."

I thought about three weeks on Stone's circuit. About running the outside apex at fifty different variations of entry speed and braking point until the options were as familiar as breathing.

"Yes," I said.

Reaper stood. "I'll set up on the tree line tonight. Opposite side from Cole's position. If he comes back to film I'll have him on camera Rivera can add it to the evidence file."

"Do it quietly," Dax said. "We want the footage. We don't want him spooked before he films."

Reaper left and the office settled into its working quiet. Outside, the compound was doing its afternoon things ordinary sounds, ordinary movements, the surface of a place that had been through three weeks of upheaval and was still finding its new normal.

Dax sat at her desk and looked at the whiteboard and I could see her running the whole structure Kane at the property twenty kilometers out, Colt somewhere in Coldwater with four weeks and Stone's circuit footage and a contract, Cole in the wind with three weeks of compound intelligence, Rivera closing the net from the outside.

"When Rivera finds Cole," I said, "what happens to the case."

"Cole's testimony could be significant," she said. "He's been inside both operations Kane's network and the compound. If he cooperates he potentially knows things about Kane's organization that our existing witnesses don't." She paused. "But he's also the person who scored your helmet strap. He put you at genuine risk on that track." Her voice was careful and completely flat. "That's not a small thing."

"No," I said. "It isn't."

She looked at me. "How do you want to handle that?"

I thought about the airstrip. About the helmet coming off at the finish line and thinking it was a cheap clasp and bad timing. About three weeks of operating in a compound where someone was watching everything and reporting it and I hadn't known.

"I want him to testify," I said. "Fully. Everything he knows about Kane's network and Dutch's operation and every other thing he was part of." I met her eyes. "Justice, not revenge. We've been doing it that way the whole time."

Dax held my gaze for a moment. Then she nodded.

At eight o'clock I took the Ducati to the compound's back track.

I ran twelve laps.

The first four were genuine my real approach, the outside apex at my actual entry speed, the line I'd been building for five weeks burned into muscle memory and confirmed one more time in the dark.

The last eight were theater.

I ran a convincing version of a different plan slightly different entry angle, slightly earlier braking point, the outside apex run at a speed that was fast enough to look committed but different enough from my real approach that anyone using it to prepare a defensive position would be wrong by exactly the margin I needed.

I rode it like I meant it, because the difference between convincing theater and obvious performance was commitment, and commitment on a motorcycle was a physical thing that cameras could read.

When I came off the track Reaper was waiting at the fence line with his phone.

"He was there," Reaper said. "Eastern tree line, same mount as before. He filmed all twelve laps." He paused. "I have him on camera. Clear facial identification. Rivera has it."

I covered the Ducati and stood in the dark compound for a moment.

Somewhere in Coldwater, Cole was reviewing footage of twelve laps that would tell Colt exactly the wrong thing about how I was going to race in four weeks.

And Kane, at his property twenty kilometers from the final circuit, was watching his operation from what he thought was a safe distance.

My phone buzzed. Rivera.

Cole located. Attempting contact now. He's at a motel on the north highway checked in under a false name but the vehicle matches. Stand by.

I stood by.

Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.

Then Rivera's second message arrived and I read it twice because the first reading didn't fully resolve into meaning.

Cole wants to talk. Not to us. To you. Says he'll only speak to Zed Chen directly. Won't give a reason. What do you want me to tell him?

I looked at the dark track behind me and the covered Ducati and the compound lights through the trees.

Then I typed back: Tell him yes. Tomorrow morning. Neutral location, your choice. And Rivera find out when he first met my father.

A pause long enough that I thought she wasn't going to respond.

Then: Why?

I looked at the circuit map in my pocket. At Carver's note about the scored clasp. At the specific detail that had been sitting at the edge of my thinking since this morning, the detail I hadn't said out loud yet because I wasn't ready to be right about it.

Because I think Cole knew my father, I typed. And I think that's why he wants to talk to me instead of you.