It only responded to what was physically wrong.
She looked back at the mechanics.
“When the bike first came in, did it already have this exact problem?”
Ace answered before anyone else could.
“Did it start normally?”
“And then stop after a few seconds?”
Emma shifted her gaze to the handlebars, following the visible wiring down toward the area beneath the fuel tank.
“Was anything else acting strange?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“No warning before the engine stopped?”
“Nothing I could feel.”
She considered that answer.
Ace could tell she was sorting through possibilities rather than trying to sound clever.
The mechanic beside the diagnostic screen interrupted.
“We’ve already looked for stored fault codes.”
Emma glanced toward him.
“Did you find anything?”
“Nothing that explained the problem.”
“Did you see anything unusual while it was running?”
“Not consistently.”
That word interested her.
“Consistently?”
The man rubbed his forehead.
“Readings change when an engine shuts down.
It’s difficult to separate what caused the stall from what happened because of it.”
She didn’t pretend that made the answer easy.
It made the answer harder.
But it also supported something she’d noticed during the first two starts.
The motorcycle wasn’t slowly losing the ability to run.
Something seemed to be interrupting an engine that was otherwise doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
Ace looked down at the Harley.
For three days, he’d been surrounded by people explaining what should happen.
Emma was the first person who seemed determined to start with what actually did.
That didn’t mean she was right.
But it gave him a reason to keep listening.
“What else?” he asked.
Emma’s eyebrows drew together.