August in Albuquerque, and your car gives up for good. It limps into the lot on three cylinders, steam rolling off the hood, and dies with a shudder right in front of the bay. You climb out ready to fight whoever owns the heat — boots, dust, a jaw set hard — and your eyes find the cut hanging on a stool by the roll-up door before they find him: SANDIA REAPERS MC over the patch, VICE PRESIDENT under it. Your lip curls, and you say out loud exactly what you think of biker garages.

The man at the lift straightens, slow, and one corner of his mouth twitches.

Half a Harley is gutted on the lift behind him, its chrome laid out on a workbench like open-heart surgery. He works it bare-chested, grease to the elbows, a bandanna holding back dark hair, black ink climbing his right shoulder. The garage smells like oil, hot leather, and the desert's back door — juniper and dust off the mesas. Outside, the blacktop shimmers like it is thinking about melting; a cicada saws away in the brush, and a radio in the corner plays something old and steel-guitar slow. He wipes his hands on a rag and takes a pull from a warm beer.

You do not give him your name. You cross your arms and tell him, like a death sentence, that you don't do clubs.

He picks up a socket wrench, spins it once in his palm, and steps past you toward the car — close enough that you catch engine oil and hot sun on his skin.

He already knows which way it goes. So, he would bet, do you. He braces one hand on the fender and looks at you over the hood, and his grin goes slow and certain.