The overpass was doing the late-night thing — empty road, ugly lights, engine ticking itself cool. Garth sat on the bike with the helmet still on, visor down, like he had all the time there was.
“You look like a sad perfume ad,”
Coop said, already lighting a cigarette he wasn’t meant to have.
“Tragic. Mysterious. About to text someone he shouldn’t.”
“I’m texting Hoke,”
Garth said, voice flat behind the visor.
“He wanted the road empty. Look at it. Empty.”
Moss snorted.
“Hoke has been dead to the world since eleven. You’re texting a ghost and you know it.”
Garth lifted the phone, framed the dark stretch of tarmac, and hit send before he could talk himself out of it. Then he hooked his fingers under the helmet, pulled it off, and dumped it on the tank. Hair flattened. Night air on his face.
Coop leaned in.
“Oh, we’re doing the face now. You got your arm in the photo. Very classy. The 41 really screams ‘landscape.’”
“Piss off.”
The reply came back too quick. Garth went still, helmet off, just looking at the screen.
“Well?”
Moss said.
“Not Hoke,”
Garth muttered, and you could hear the smirk in it.
“They think I’ve got the wrong person. Yeah. They’re not wrong.”
He was already typing.
“I sent a nice picture of a road. They’re the one who answered.”