Eddie said:
“You still caught it.”
“That's not worth five grand.”
“What's it worth?”
Lucas shrugged.
“Two minutes fourteen?”
Ray laughed.
The tension broke.
Grizz picked up the money.
“Fine.”
Lucas relaxed.
Then Grizz placed the envelope in the shop safe.
“We'll hold it until Dean asks.”
Lucas nodded.
“Good.”
Three days passed.
Dean did not ask.
A week.
Nothing.
Why?
Because asking for the cash meant acknowledging the wager publicly.
It also reopened questions about why he was so certain no one could fix the bike.
Rumors already spread.
Not from Lucas.
Motorcycle communities were villages with engines.
Someone always talked.
But Grizz controlled his side.
No online posts.
No accusations.
No videos.
“No mob,” he told the club.
“If police find something, fine.”
“If not, we know what we know and we run our shop.”
Lucas appreciated that.
Two weeks later, Officer Michaels returned.
Not with handcuffs.
With information.
A second complaint had appeared.
A customer of Rourke Performance heard the story.
Months earlier, his touring motorcycle developed an intermittent no-start immediately after Dean inspected it at a charity event.
Rourke later replaced an expensive control module.
The old module was returned to the customer.
He still had it.
An independent electronics shop tested it.
Functional.
That did not prove sabotage.
But police now had more reason to examine business practices.
Then a former Rourke employee contacted investigators.
His name was Kevin Marsh.
He had worked for Dean for six years.
Quit after pay disputes.
Kevin claimed Dean sometimes created or exaggerated faults during demonstrations to make competing shops appear incompetent.
Usually harmless manipulations.
Disconnected sensors.
Adjusted settings.
Not customer bikes, Kevin initially insisted.
Mostly training rigs.
Then his story changed.
He remembered two occasions Dean told him to leave a connector “just loose enough” after another mechanic had inspected a vehicle so Dean could later identify the fault publicly.
Paul Michaels asked:
“Eddie Knox's bike?”
Kevin did not know.
But he knew Dean’s habit.
Red marking compound?
Rourke Performance used it.
Bright red.
Same brand.
Still circumstantial.
Then the real break came from Dean himself.
Not confession.
Bookkeeping.
Rourke Performance had prepared a quote for Eddie Knox’s motorcycle module at 7:31 that morning.
Before Eddie knew the bike would not start.
The quote existed in the shop software.
Customer name.
Motorcycle model.
Replacement module.
Programming labor.
Dean created it from his laptop.
Timestamped.
7:31 a.m.
Eddie first attempted to start the motorcycle around 8:10.
Dean had arrived at Hale Motor Works around 7:58.
There was no legitimate reason for an estimate to exist before the failure was known.
When police showed him, Dean first said he had discussed module replacement with Eddie earlier.
Eddie denied it.
No texts.
No calls.
No prior symptoms.
Then Dean said he created a sample quote for internal pricing.
Using Eddie's name accidentally.
No one believed that.
Evidence accumulated.
The district attorney eventually filed charges related to attempted fraud and property tampering, not because a teenager made an accusation, but because records, footage, witness statements, and Dean’s own digital trail converged.
Lucas followed none of it closely.
That surprised Grizz.
“You don't want updates?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Lucas tightened a chain adjustment on a customer bike.
“Not my job.”
“You started it.”
“No.”
“I fixed a connector.”
Grizz smiled.
“Your father would've said exactly that.”
Lucas stopped.
“Really?”
“No.”
“He'd tell everybody.”
Lucas laughed.
That sounded more accurate.