Page 27 of Redline Baby

"I am, a little. You used to need three days' notice before you'd leave the shop on a Saturday."

"Things change," I say, and Ni gives me a look that says he knows exactly what he thinks changed them and has the good sense not to say his name out loud in a parking lot full of people still waking up.

King's up front on a wide, low cruiser that suits his big build, going over the route with two of the newer prospects—north on the county road, up through the switchbacks past the reservoir, out to the diner near the state line for breakfast, back before noon.

Simple.

Familiar to everyone but me.

Dex and Sol are near the back, already deep in an argument about tire pressure that I suspect started before either of them got out of bed. Sol is not wearing a helmet yet, so his bald head is shining, and Dex still looks like Bad Bunny. Ni's long hair is in a braid, and he has braided his beard to match.

Kit pulls in last, the way he usually does, his neon-green Yamaha cutting a showy line into the lot before he settles it into the row beside mine. He's got his hair pushed back under the helmet, sunglasses on despite the weak early light, and there's an ease in the way he swings off the bike that I recognize now as the good kind—not the manufactured looseness he wears at the bar, but something closer to the version of him I got at the bowling alley, over fries, laughing about a stranger's near-miss with a bowling ball.

"Morning," he says, dropping into the space beside me while King finishes talking. "You look suspiciously well-rested for a man who apparently used to hate Saturdays."

"I had a good week."

"Yeah?" He glances at me sideways, a small, private smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, like he knows exactly why. "Good. Me too."

King raises a hand, calls out the order of the formation, and the whole lot fires to life at once, engines catching in a rolling wave down the line.

Then we're moving, Kit peeling off two positions ahead of me, the bike answering him like it's an extension of his own spine.

The road opens up fast once we clear the last stretch of town—flat, wide, empty at this hour, fields on either side going gold and brittle with the season, the mountains a blue smudge on the horizon that gets less smudged the farther we ride.

I keep a controlled position in the pack, watching the group's rhythm, noting who rides tight and who rides loose, who brakes early and who trusts the corner.

Kit brakes late.

Every time.

Committed all the way to the edge of the possible, same as always, but there's a discipline underneath it I hadn't clocked before. He's not reckless exactly, not out here, not with eleven other riders depending on the group holding formation.

He's precise.

Fast, but precise.

It's the first time I've watched him ride in daylight, sober, with an audience that isn't performing back at him, and it's a genuinely beautiful thing to see.

We hit the switchbacks an hour in, climbing into the low hills that fold up toward the reservoir, the road narrowing and curling back on itself in long, graceful S-turns that the whole pack takes with the loose, practiced confidence of people who've ridden this exact stretch a hundred times before.

I fall a little behind on the tightest curve, giving myself room, and that's when I see it—off to the side, in the gravel pull-off at the base of the switchback, a single bike down.

Not one of ours.

King's already braking, the whole formation slowing and peeling off the road in a ragged line behind him, engines dropping to idle one by one, boots coming down on gravel.

I bring my own bike to a stop near the back of the group and kill the engine.

In the sudden quiet, I can hear a man's voice, thin and strained, coming from somewhere near the downed bike.

He's maybe thirty, in gear that looks new—the kind of new that means recently bought, a jacket still stiff at the shoulders, boots that haven't scuffed yet. His bike's on its side in the gravel, a midsize standard, nothing special.

He's standing beside it, shaken and dusty, one knee of his riding pants scraped where he hit the gravel, but he's putting weight on both legs without trouble.

Even from here, I can see the problem before I'm close enough to properly diagnose it. The chain has come off the rear sprocket and is hanging loose along the swingarm. A few links sit at the wrong angles, kinked badly enough that nobody sensible is putting it back on and riding forty miles home.

"You alright?" King calls, already moving toward him, and the rest of the group fans out behind him in loose clusters.