Three men look up.
One of them I recognize immediately.
Ronan is at the far workbench, half-turned away, working on a carburetor with the focus of a man who doesn’t like being interrupted. Black henley, sleeves pushed up—my brain clocks his forearms before I mean to. Tattoos, muscle, the deliberate way his hands move over the engine.
I make myself look away.
The man closest to me—big, dark-haired, trouble written all over him, wipes his hands and offers one.
"Well," he says. "You must be the new PT."
"Harper Collins." I shake his hand. Firm grip, warm. "You must be Blaze."
He looks genuinely delighted that I know his name. "Rosa?"
"Rosa."
He laughs. "I like you already." He nods toward the man on the stool to his left, older, sharp-eyed, with a sarcastic set to his mouth and his right hand wrapped in what looks like a self-applied bandage that tells me everything about why he hasn't been coming to his appointments. "That's Gear. He's the one you want."
"I'm fine," Gear says, without looking up from the parts he's sorting.
"Knox." I use his real name deliberately, because people respond differently to it when they're trying to be difficult. He looks up. "Those two fingers. Can I see?"
A pause. He holds out his hand with the resigned expression of a man who knows he's already lost but hasn't decided to admit it yet. I crouch beside him, unwrap the bandage carefully, and take a look.
The scarring from the fractures is visible. The stiffness in his ring and middle fingers is obvious even at rest.
"How's your grip strength?" I ask.
"Fine."
"Can you close your hand fully?"
He tries. Can't.
"Right," I say, rewrapping it gently. "So, here's what's going to happen. You're going to come see me at the clinic, three times a week for six weeks, and I'm going to make sure you get full function back in that hand. Because you're a mechanic and you need these fingers, and right now you're running on borrowed time."
He stares at me.
"I don't bite," I add. "Unless you skip again."
Blaze makes a sound that might be a laugh disguised as a cough.
From across the garage, and I feel it before I hear it, a low voice says, "Go, Knox."
One word. That's all. But Knox straightens slightly, and when he looks at me again something in his expression has shifted.
"Fine," he says. "Thursday."
"Thursday," I confirm, and stand up.
I should leave. File accomplished, appointment made, job done.
Instead, I find myself drifting toward the third man by the far wall, enormous, dark-eyed, arms folded across a chest that could stop traffic. He hasn't moved or spoken since I walked in, and there's a VP patch on his cut.
"Stone?" I try.
He looks at me. Nods once. That apparently constitutes a full introduction from Rex Callahan.
