Chapter 8: The First Wrench

Marcus didn’t wait for the engine to cool before he shoved his knuckles into the searing heat of the block, desperate to find the rattle that sounded like a coffin nail shaking loose. The metal hissed against his skin, a sharp, biting reminder that the machine didn't care about his timeline. He pulled his hand back, checking the red welt forming across his palm, then wiped the grease onto his already ruined coveralls. The shop light flickered overhead, casting long, skeletal shadows across the concrete floor of the garage, where the scent of old oil and stale coffee hung like a permanent fog.

Outside, the wind off Cypress Bend was picking up, rattling the corrugated tin roof of the shed. It was a hollow, lonely sound, the kind of noise that usually let Marcus sink into the mechanical rhythm of his work, but tonight it felt like a countdown. He reached for his 10mm socket—the one tool that always seemed to migrate to the furthest corner of the bench when he needed it most. His fingers brushed against a cold, heavy object he didn't recognize.

He pulled it into the light. It was a heavy brass casing, tarnished and dented, but unmistakably not a car part. It had been tucked behind his box of gaskets, hidden where only someone looking for a specific wrench would find it. Marcus turned it over in his light-starved hands. There was no brand name on the base, only a series of etched numbers that looked like coordinates.

"I told you the radiator was shot, Marc. You’re tilting at windmills."

Marcus didn't jump, but his grip on the brass casing tightened until the edges bit into his skin. He didn't have to look up to know it was Elias standing in the doorway. Elias always smelled like expensive tobacco and the damp earth of the riverbank, a combination that usually signaled a long, circular conversation Marcus didn't have the energy for.

"It’s not the radiator," Marcus said, his voice gravelly from hours of silence. He slid the casing into the pocket of his coveralls before turning around. "It’s the timing. Everything on this rig is out of sync."

Elias leaned against the doorframe, his shadow stretching halfway across the garage. He wasn't wearing his work clothes. He was in the dark wool coat he wore when he was heading into town to see people Marcus tried to avoid. "Sync is a luxury we don't have anymore. The shipment is moving at dawn. Whether that truck is rattling or not, it’s going over the bridge."

Marcus straightened his back, feeling the familiar pop in his vertebrae. "The bridge won't hold if the vibration gets worse. You know how the suspension is on the old crossing. If this engine hits that specific frequency under a full load, the whole thing goes into the drink. I’m not signing off on it."

Elias stepped into the circle of the shop light. His eyes weren't on Marcus; they were on the pocket where the brass casing was hidden. The bulge was obvious. Marcus felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of his neck, itching against the grime. 

"You've always been too precise for your own good," Elias murmured. He took a slow step forward, his boots crunching on the stray metal shavings littering the floor. "Cypress Bend doesn't reward precision, Marcus. It rewards speed. It rewards people who know when to look at the engine and when to look at the horizon."

"I look at what’s in front of me," Marcus snapped. He grabbed a rag and began cleaning his hands, the motion frantic and repetitive. "And what’s in front of me is a disaster waiting to happen. Why was there a shell casing in my gasket box, Elias? And don't tell me it’s for some local hunt. Those coordinates on the bottom aren't for deer stands."

The air in the garage suddenly felt several degrees colder. The flickering light gave one final, violent pop and died, leaving them in the amber glow of the small space heater in the corner. Elias didn't move. He didn't even seem to breathe.

"You should have looked for the wrench, Marcus," Elias said softly. "Just the wrench."

Marcus felt the weight of the casing in his pocket. It felt heavier now, like a lead sinker dragging him down into the depths of the river. He thought about the bridge, about the way the rust-eaten girders moaned whenever a heavy load crossed. He thought about the names on the manifests he wasn't supposed to see—names of men who hadn't been seen in the Bend for years.

"What are we actually hauling?" Marcus asked. He dropped the rag. It hit the floor with a wet thud.

Elias smiled, but there was no warmth in it. It was the smile of a man who had already decided where the bodies were going to be buried. "We’re hauling the future, Marc. Or at least, the parts of the past we don't need anymore. Get the truck running. Not perfectly. Just enough."

Elias turned and walked back into the darkness of the yard, his footsteps fading until they were swallowed by the wind. Marcus stood alone in the dim amber light, his hand trembling as he reached into his pocket and pulled the brass casing out once more. 

He moved back to the workbench, clearing away the clutter of half-finished repairs and rusted bolts. He pulled a map of the county from the bottom drawer, the paper soft and frayed at the edges. With a pencil he’d sharpened to a lethal point, he began to plot the numbers from the casing. 

The first coordinate landed squarely on the old sawmill property. The second was the bend in the river three miles north of the bridge. The third—Marcus stopped, the pencil lead snapping against the paper. 

The third coordinate was the exact location of the garage where he was standing.

He looked up at the darkened rafters, the silent tools, the truck that was more of a trap than a vehicle. He wasn't just fixing a machine; he was maintaining the gallows. 

Marcus grabbed his heavy wrench, the one he'd been looking for. He didn't go back to the engine block. Instead, he walked to the back of the garage, to the heavy iron padlock on the floorboards he’d told Elias were just for storage. He knelt, the cold of the concrete seeping into his knees, and shoved the wrench into the gap between the boards.

He didn't want to know what was under the floor. He didn't want to know why the coordinates pointed here. But as he heaved against the wood, the nails screaming as they were forced from the joists, Marcus realized that in Cypress Bend, the only thing more dangerous than a machine that didn't work was a man who knew exactly how it did.

The wood gave way with a splintering crack that echoed like a gunshot in the small space. Marcus reached into the dark void beneath the floor, his fingers brushing against something wrapped in heavy, oil-slicked canvas. 

He pulled it up. It was longer than the casing, heavier than any tool in his chest. He unwrapped the layer of fabric, his breath hitching in his throat. 

It wasn't a part. It wasn't a weapon. It was a logbook, the leather cover embossed with the seal of the local precinct from twenty years ago—the year his father disappeared. 

Marcus opened the first page. The handwriting was cramped, frantic, and covered in the same grease stains that marked his own hands. The first line wasn't a report. It was a warning.

*If you’re reading this, the engine has already started, and there’s no way to kill the spark.*

Marcus heard the crunch of gravel outside—too many boots, too fast. They weren't waiting for the truck anymore. They were coming for the mechanic who had finally found the right wrench.

He shoved the logbook into his coveralls, grabbed the heavy brass casing, and kicked the shop light over. The heater sparked, a small blue flame licking at a puddle of spilled solvent on the floor. Marcus didn't stay to watch it catch. He dived through the small window at the back of the garage, the glass slashing his shoulder as he tumbled out into the wet, stinging weeds of the riverbank.

Behind him, the garage erupted into a low, thrumming roar of flame. Through the smoke, he saw the silhouette of the truck—his truck—still sitting there, a silent witness to the fire. He didn't look back again. He ran toward the river, toward the bridge that shouldn't hold, clutching the evidence of a crime that was older than his own name.

He reached the water's edge, the mud sucking at his boots, and looked up at the towering silhouette of the old crossing. The truck would be there in four hours. The cargo would be on board. And Marcus, the man who knew every bolt and every weakness of the machine, was the only one who knew that the bridge wasn't the target—he was.

The bridge groaned in the wind, a long, low metal sob that perfectly matched the hollow feeling in his chest as he realized his father’s handwriting didn’t end on the first page; it continued onto the last, where his own name was written in blood-red ink.