“Nah,” Zack shook his head, “He refused to shake my hand when I held it out to him. He lifted one shoulder, but he did give me a clue where to start.
We got to go to the house.”
“Sure.” Castello would honor Zack’s assessment of the situation. He knew Marc Colgan best. Turning to Axel he nodded toward the garage,
“Grab your gear and lock up.”
“I’ll take my bike.” There was no freaking way Axel was leaving his 1954 Harley-Davidson FL Panhead here in the garage. Nopie, not happening.
“I’d rather you came with us.” Castello could do diplomatic, he hoped.
He’d dealt with superior officers for most of his life.
“Look,” Axel muttered under his breath, trying to keep the discussion between himself and Cas was almost impossible with Zack standing right next to them. He scowled at Zack, “Do you mind?”
“Oh,” Zack grinned at them both, but stepped back a couple of feet. “My bad.”
“Dickhead.” Castello’s mutter a clear indication that he knew Zack was just being a nosey fuck.
“I’m not leaving without my bike.” Axel held up his hand to stop Castello from interrupting with a bunch of orders. “It’s just not happening, no matter what you say. But you can ride with me.”
“Okay—good.” Castello had been gearing up for an argument as to why
Axel shouldn’t head back to the house alone. Axel’s offer stopped any argument he could have come up with in its tracks.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Axel led the way to the door to grab his keys.
He needed to set the alarms and stuff too. “Despite showing up in a stupid country where I was an idiot to travel to alone, I am not typically stupid.
Dyslexic, with a touch of ADHD, sure, but stupid I’m not, even if you think I am.”
“Hey.” Castello caught his arm, stopping Axel from walking away. “I don’t think you are stupid.”
Axel shrugged, he shouldn’t care, but he did. He got it, people like him didn’t do stuff like he had done, especially not if they were on the right side of the law. He knew it would always be a doubt in Castello’s mind. But when you grew up in the Hell’s Eagles, then you looked after family. And Krystal and her boy were all the family he had left.
“I. Do. Not. Think. You. Are. Stupid.” Castello clearly enunciated the words. He hadn’t meant to make Axel think that. Jeez. “Got. It?”
Axel just shrugged and went through the door to grab his gear. Walking across the floor, he gathered up tools and some other bits and pieces he had been working on.
“Nice place.”
“Liar.” A quick glance around the interior of his workshop reminded him that this place may not be much. Some tools hanging on the walls, and stacks of paint scattered in organized chaos. But location didn’t matter. Give him some metal, a couple of tools, a welder, and space to dream. That’s when the magic happened. That’s when the designs came to him. He still didn’t know what possessed him to post that first design on a Harley forum. But he did and it was picked up by Harley themselves for use in a TV series. But Axel had known he didn’t just want to draw the designs. He wanted to take those blueprints and build them from the ground up. So that’s what he did.
He ignored Castello leaning against the wall. He had to focus on the mental list he kept in his head to ensure he didn’t miss anything. Switch off the gas. Turn off power to everything but the alarm. When he’d bought this place, he’d had the electrics altered to shut down all electricity to the building just by hitting a kill switch inside the door. Not much really scared the shit out of him. But fire? That one did.
“Anything I can do?”
“No,” Axel grabbed his leather jacket and shrugged into it, zipping it
shut over his t-shirt. Yeah, the Florida sun was hot as hell and it was humid enough to make Hades work up a sweat, but he would much prefer sweaty to road-rash if something happened on the bike. But then he was gonna do a stupid and not wear a helmet. But eh, his brain again had its quirks, and helmets sucked. “You got leathers? Or something that will protect you if we spin out?”
“You planning on racing?” Castello pushed open the door, allowing Axel to go through it before him.
“Nope.” Axel nudged Cas aside so he could reach the door to lock it.
“Not unless you want me to". He walked to his Panhead and smiled. As much as he loved that first design that he had sold—the one many of the bike magazines speculated was the first custom bike to come straight from Harley-Davidson—he loved this one more. It wasn’t exactly the same as the design they had bought from Axel, the drag bars being different, along with a few other tweaks to the engine, but it was close enough to give him goosebumps and a burst of pride every time he thought about it.
Castello grabbed a black jacket out of the car, waved to the guys, and climbed onto the bike behind Axel. Scooting up close he wrapped his arms around the other man’s chest.
