Chapter 13 A better mechanic

POV: First Person (Samuel Reed)

"You're Samuel Reed?" someone shouted before I even reached my garage.

I froze at the edge of the lot. Half the block had gathered outside, and standing in the middle of my own bay, hood up on a pickup truck that wasn't there this morning, was another mechanic entirely.

The engine caught clean on the first try, and the crowd erupted.

"So you're the famous Samuel Reed," he said, grinning, wiping his hands on a rag before offering one to shake. "Adrian Foster. Heard a lot about you lately."

"Can't say the same," I said, taking the handshake anyway.

"You will," he said, glancing around at the garage like he genuinely admired it. "Nice setup. Your father built this, right? Man had good instincts."

"Why don't you two compete," someone called out, and the idea caught fast, laughter rippling through the crowd.

"emotion scan active"

"jake, admiration sixty four percent, jealousy eighteen percent"

"crowd, excitement eighty two percent"

"adrian, confidence ninety one percent, hostility zero percent". The system chimed in my head.

I glanced at Jake, who was already watching Adrian's hands the way he used to watch mine. Adrian himself carried nothing sharp behind that grin at all, no hostility, no agenda I could see. Just confidence.

"Fine," I said. "What are the terms."

Two damaged vehicles, both towed in that morning, same make, same year. Whoever fixed theirs first, and fixed it right, won. Loser bought lunch.

Adrian moved fast once we started, hands steady, tools laid out before I'd finished my first diagnostic. I worked slower, listening more than looking, running my hand along the engine block the way my father taught me.

His hood dropped first. Bolts tightened. He turned the key.

The engine roared to life, and the crowd erupted before I'd even closed my own hood.

My stomach dropped. I hadn't found anything wrong yet, and Adrian was already grinning at the sound of his own victory.

Then the engine coughed, sputtered, and died.

The crowd went silent for a beat, and Adrian stared at his dashboard like it had betrayed him personally. I crouched down and found it fast now that I knew to look, a hairline crack along the fuel line, hidden behind a bracket he'd already checked and moved past.

I replaced the line, turned my own key, and my engine caught clean and steady.

"Fuel line," I said. "Small crack near the bracket."

Adrian laughed, short and honest, no bitterness in it at all. "I walked right past that." He stood and extended his hand again. "Looks like you've earned your reputation, Reed."

"Good competition," I said, and meant it.

Jake clapped me on the shoulder, grinning, but a second later I caught something else cross his face, quiet and quick.

"Man's fast," Jake said, mostly to himself, watching Adrian pack up his tools. "Wonder what it's like working with someone who moves like that every day."

He caught himself saying it out loud and shrugged it off, going back to work, but the words sat there between us longer than either of us wanted them to.

Several customers came up afterward, one older man saying loud enough for others to hear, "If you can beat Adrian Foster, you can fix anything," and by the time the crowd thinned, three people had left vehicles for repairs I hadn't expected that morning.

Adrian was loading his tools when a black sedan pulled up along the curb, sleek and out of place on this block. A man in a suit stepped out just long enough to hand him a thick envelope through the window before driving off.

Adrian slipped it into his toolbox fast, but not fast enough. I caught the letterhead for half a second before it disappeared.

Whitfield Development Group.

"Friend of yours?" I asked, keeping my voice light.

Adrian smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes this time. "I wish," he said, and immediately reached for his next tool, changing the subject before I could ask anything further.

I didn't push, but the image of that letterhead stayed with me, small and unexplained, long after his truck pulled away from the curb.

I was closing up for the night, still turning the day over in my head, when I heard the sirens.

Two patrol cars pulled into the lot, lights flashing without sound, and Marcus Doyle stepped out first, official documents in hand, expression carefully blank in a way that made my stomach drop before he'd even reached me.

"Samuel Reed," he said.

"That's me." I answered.

"I need you to come with us." He continued.

"What for." I asked crossing my hands with a raised eyebrow.

Marcus didn't answer right away. He unfolded the papers slowly, glancing past me toward the office where my father's photo still hung straight on the wall.

"This concerns Ethan Cross," he said.