He had even seen problems appear after routine maintenance.
But nothing on this Harley seemed to explain such a precise shutdown.
“Sure,” he said.
“But we haven’t found anything like that.”
“Maybe you’re testing the wrong condition.”
The senior mechanic straightened.
“What condition would you suggest?”
A small wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows.
For the first time, she seemed concerned that what she was about to ask might sound foolish.
“Just ask it,” he said.
Emma looked toward the fuel tank, the seat, and the tightly routed wiring beneath them.
Then she asked:
“Did it start happening after you washed it?”
Nobody laughed immediately.
The question seemed so unrelated to everything they’d been discussing that the mechanics took a moment to process it.
The senior mechanic tilted his head.
“The motorcycle.”
Ace stood very still.
Something shifted behind his sunglasses.
The question pulled a memory to the surface, one he’d barely considered since the repairs began.
His Harley had been cleaned before the trouble started.
It hadn’t seemed important.
Riders washed their motorcycles all the time.
A properly protected electrical system was supposed to tolerate ordinary moisture.
Nothing about cleaning the exterior should have caused the engine to fail.
And yet Emma was looking at him as though his answer mattered more than all seventeen mechanics’ diagnostic results combined.
Ace stared at the motorcycle.
He remembered how carefully he had cleaned around the bodywork.
He remembered water running along the narrow spaces beneath the seat.
At the time, he hadn’t noticed anything unusual.
There’d been no immediate reason to suspect a problem.
But when he later tried to run the engine, the strange shutdown had appeared.