Chapter 1

Desmond Pike was still laughing about my boots when my fingers closed around the key in my jacket pocket.

"Sir." He said it the way a man says it to a dog on a lawn. "This is a viewing event. Not a test ride."

Behind him, the Sparrow sat on its platform under a cone of warm light. Silver and deep green. Exposed engine, chrome handlebars, a seat stitched by hand in 1985 by a woman named Ruthie Alvarez, who is no longer alive. Sixty people in good suits were drinking champagne eight feet from it, and not one of them had ever put a hand on it.

"I know what it is," I said. "I'd just like to sit on it. Thirty seconds."

Desmond looked at my boots. Then at my jacket. Then he laughed loud enough to turn heads at the champagne table - a bright, performing laugh aimed at the room and not at me.

"Security's already on the way," he said.

I asked once, quietly. He answered twice, louder.

"It's a museum piece, sir. It's insured for two point four million dollars. It's going to a buyer in Dubai on Monday."

That was new. Nobody had told me that.

Then I made my mistake.

"I built this bike," I said.

He laughed so hard he had to put a hand on the velvet rope to steady himself. A woman in the corner - a singer, I learned later, with two Grammys and a very nice laugh - laughed along with him. I don't blame her. In a worn denim jacket and scuffed boots, I looked like a man who'd wandered in off Congress Avenue.

Only one person on that floor wasn't laughing.

The associate working the room had stopped mid-step with a tray of champagne flutes in her hands. She was tall and honey-blonde, with green eyes and cheekbones that made half the men in the room stand up straighter without knowing why - a black blazer, pearl earrings, and the kind of stillness that comes from watching instead of talking.

She wasn't looking at my face. She was looking at my key ring, where it hung off my belt loop.

Small brass key. Leather fob, hand-stitched, dark with forty years of thumb oil. Two initials worn nearly smooth.

E.W.

"Where did you get that?" Desmond asked.

His tone had changed. Not softer. Sharper. He'd spotted it too.

I lifted the fob and let it turn in the light.

"Off my own key ring," I said. "Where'd you get yours?"

He reached for it - and I let him.