He feels the weight of the toolbox against his callused palm. And the weight of his uncle telling him his father had died in a house fire. Add “mysterious” to that caption, and the wheels in his brainpan begin to crank. Both things create a burn—one in his knees and lower back, the other in his conscience. Itch on one side, Nugget guiding the center, they slide the massive bulk to the concrete amid the clank and clatter of wrenches, sockets, and breaker bars and roll it into Hunter’s garage.

He hadn’t heard from his father in months. They were never what one would refer to as “close.” They talked. Stayed in contact, but visits were a rare thing. He couldn’t remember the last time they were face-to-face. Now the news of his passing weighed Hunter down.

Nugget asks, “When’s the last time you spoke to your ole man?”

Nugget keeps his head shaved slick beneath the biker ball cap with a flaming death’s-head and bold letters that spell ride till death. With a black-and-chrome goatee, a neck like a grizzly bear’s, and arms like two twenty-five-pound hams stenciled in ink, he cuts an unconventional figure in his Misfits T-shirt with a big white skull, Dickies jeans, and biker boots.

“Been months.”

“That’s a kick in the dick, brother,” Itch tells him.

Like Nugget, Itch is massively built, though shorter. He has a black-stubbled head, thick beard the color of bourbon, big shoulders and chest, tatted arms, and a fondness for the metal band Pantera. He is always sporting a T-shirt with their logo. Today he wears faded Levi’s jeans and solid-black DC skate shoes, preferring comfort over the tough-guy appeal of boots.

Wheeling the toolbox to the far wall, away from where Hunter’s nearly three thousand pounds of Olympic weights, squat rack and bench, pulldown station, and reverse hyper take up space, they push the box between two workbenches—two-by-four legs and a half-inch plywood surface, splotches of paint, grease, and oil. Motorcycle stickers all over the place, with American flag Punisher skeletons, skeletons riding bikes with such captions as “Forever on Two Wheels,” “Dark Side Rider,” “When in Doubt, Throttle Out,” and “Ride or Die.”

Bike parts laid out for a custom job, a rebuild, the reconstructing of a Buell S1 Lightning. Same as his first bike. Somewhere, there was an order to all this, some sense to be made—Hunter just didn’t know what it was. Attacking his boss. Rescuing Ruby. Losing his father. Rebuilding this bike. And, now, having to travel to California.

“When you fixing to leave?” Nugget asks.

“Soon as I can get packed. Get my phone, Google maps. Just need some clothes; then I’ll take my time, get there when I get there.”

“You ain’t going alone,” Itch tells Hunter. “Nugget and me is going with.”

“Best get your asses home, then, get packed. Ain’t waiting around.”