53 Nothing new

**Date = 22 June**
*Two more days snaked past*
**Place = San Francisco (Grimms — at Paws and Claws)**
*A new hangout spot*

**POV - Enrique**

7:03 PM.

The wall clock hangs like a relic, its wooden frame darkened with age and polish, every nick and scratch a story whispered through generations. Roman numerals, faded but stubborn, cling to the weathered face. The hands move with a faint, uneven tick, as though time itself limps along.

Just beneath it, three massive displays curve into a semi-circle across a vast ebony desk, their cool glow casting sharp light over the room. Together, they look less like office equipment and more like the cockpit of some sleek, futuristic warship.

Grimms — PI / Search & rescue.

Bold words, etched on a brass plate at the desk’s edge. And for a moment, I can’t shake the sense that the room itself already knows something I don’t.

The open-plan loft itself exudes that same energy — a sharp, high-tech contrast mixed with the rustic charm of The Doghouse bistro below. It has the bones of something old and honest — raw timber beams running like ribs across the ceiling, brick walls left bare and breathing. Plants hang in bursts of green that soften the edges — vines coiling around iron frames, potted ferns standing at rigid attention, softening the place without ever loosening it.

It’s warm and cozy but alive, arranged with military precision — a long, wood conference table stretched out like a command station, walls layered with digital boards, maps, and monitors that switch in seamless rhythm. Every wire is hidden, every screen angled just so, turning the loft into a battlefield nerve center dressed in wood and steel.

At the back, clean lines continue — a narrow kitchen and stark bathroom tiled in slate, and D-boy’s office tucked behind a reinforced door. It’s a space built for long nights, bad news, and the kind of work that demands both caffeine and paranoia in equal measure.

Jackson is investigating Romeo’s death. We’re here watching him investigate.

Natural light seeps through the huge windows, cracked open wide to break the taste of stale air — a cocktail of burnt coffee, sweat, and the faint ozone tang of overheated wires. Beyond the glass, the glow of the summer solstice bleeds pink and orange across the horizon, draping long shadows over the fields, until it fuses with the ocean.

The hum of processors and the occasional crackle of a police scanner fill the silence like static.

The middle monitor runs with the jittery, grainy tension of the onboard footage of Damion’s race — front-of-bike view. The track stretches ahead like a ribbon of danger.

The right VDT is frozen mid-action on the helmet cam POV, time itself caught in a pause.

The Zoom window on the left shows Damion and Logan crammed into the same frame, shoulder to shoulder, both looking like men who lost a fight with the clock hours ago. There’s a nine-hour difference, so it’s way past midnight already.

We all focus on the center hub. The gray tar hurls past — I quickly peek at Damion’s speedometer displayed in the bottom right corner — at an astounding 184.8 miles per hour.

My chest tightens just looking at it.

The track is slick from a pre-race pop-up shower. Damion is in fourth place, chasing Graham, #7, through the straight section leading into Turn 1.

I lean in, elbows on the table, as the yellow-and-blue Enervoltz rider slants into the bend with practiced grace, knee skimming tar like it’s part of some choreographed dance with death.

Around me, no one breathes. Jesse and Jackson sit forward, eyes narrowed, their pens motionless in their hands. Axel and Noah hover at our shoulders, statues carved in shadows.

The room is dim. Just the soft hum of the motorcycle engines and the occasional shuffle of feet when one of us moves.

“Here is where I pass,” Damion murmurs, his voice sandpapered with fatigue. His lids hang heavy, his body loose, but his mind is locked on the screen.

The footage jerks as he dives in, overtaking Graham on the inside. The camera is rigid, bolted to the front fairing, but the footage jitters subtly with every vibration — vibration that makes my stomach drop — it feels too real, like my own body is strapped to the front of that machine.

“There,” Jackson says, tapping the screen with his pen. “Romeo. Just ahead.” The number #18 rider comes into view, sleek and aggressive on the Enervoltz bike, with the red Ducati leading the race a few meters ahead.

“We are approaching Turn 5,” Damion narrates, detached and almost clinical, though his eyes say otherwise. “A blind entry, uphill, sweeping right-hander that punishes late braking,” Damion comments as if reading from a script. “If you’re late, you’re done.”

Jackson leans forward. I barely breathe.

Dukati (#21) brakes and dives in first. His bike is solid. Smooth. Controlled.

Romeo (#18) barrels in behind him. Damion’s camera shows his body shifting in anticipation — weight to the right. But he doesn’t slow down.

Something is wrong.

Very wrong.

“Freeze,” Jackson orders quietly. Jesse pauses. The footage halts on the precipice of disaster. “Watch this frame by frame.”

Jesse clicks the first frame. Each second splits into stills.

No brake light. No dive in the forks. No usual deceleration before turn-in.

Just a small head movement. Panicking. A quick look down. A twitch of his right arm.

“He overshot,” Damion mutters, guilt woven into every syllable. “I thought he’d bin it. Straight slide.”

“His brakes were gone,” Jackson cuts in, his voice razor-edged. He leans so close that the pen in his hand trembles against the screen. “Watch. He hits the thumb brake. Nothing. No response.”

Fuck. Graham might be right.

A silence crashes down. Thick. Suffocating.

We watch the next frames in silence.

Romeo forces the turn anyway. The rear twitches, panic written in rubber. Then the front collapses. The bike spits out from beneath him.

It happens in under 300 milliseconds. There is no correction. No recovery.

Damion, millimeters behind him, is already committed. The camera vibrates violently as he hits the brakes hard, the front tire screeching. The image jolts as he leans left, desperate to avoid the inevitable.

Too late.

“I really thought he would slide in,” Damion says, voice hollow, guilt carving through him. “But he turned.”

The light-blue-and-yellow bike pivots and rotates Romeo’s body right into his path.

The impact thunders through the speakers, brutal and sickening. Damion’s wheel slams into the back of Romeo’s neck at nearly 100 m/h. My stomach lurches at the crunch of carbon, the crack of his helmet on contact. It’s brutal.

Jesse switches feeds, and the Race Control broadcast slams into the screen like a punch to the chest.

The camera shifts to a wide-angle shot — eagle-eye view — just in time to catch the instant everything goes wrong. Damion hits Romeo like a bullet through glass.

The impact rips our boy clean off his Reaper. He’s launched over the handlebars, weightless for a heartbeat, limbs flailing.

He somersaults like a ragdoll — once … twice … and a half.

Then gravity remembers him. His body crashes into the tarmac.

The air leaves my lungs.

He skids across the asphalt in a blur of green and black, rolling, scraping, tumbling — before his body careens into the gravel trap.

The stones spray like shrapnel.

And suddenly … stillness.

He doesn’t move. Not a twitch. Not a breath.

It’s a miracle — a goddamn miracle — that he only broke his collarbone.

The Reaper is hurled sideways like a grenade. Sparks explode as it slams the ground, tumbling end over end. Pieces sheer off, clattering across the track. The fairings peel away. The engine casing scrapes and howls like a dying animal.

Graham comes in. Too fast. Too hot into the corner. He never turns and speeds straight into the gravel.

The bike bucks, and in the blink of an eye, he’s airborne. His bike flipping in wild, murderous arcs behind him. It cartwheels across the tarmac like a deranged gymnast, exploding into shards — the front wheel twisted like a pretzel.

The Honda leans in clean, eyes up, line tight … a perfect turn. Until part of Graham’s bike slides across his path like a death sentence.

No time to react. Zaine skids onto his side. Slams into Romeo’s limp body with a horrifying thud that makes my stomach lurch. The collision catapults him off his bike and sends him hurtling onto the grass outside the apex. He lands hard, rolls, and lies crumpled in the green.

All this happens in a matter of seconds. One, Romeo falls — two, Damion hits — three, Graham flips — four, Zaine collides.

And then the world detonates into chaos.

Bits of carbon and titanium litter the tarmac. A shredded glove. A cracked visor. A fairing panel flapping like a broken wing.

Riders behind slam their brakes. A few cut wide. Others dart left and right, weaving through a minefield of shattered fiber, leaking fluids, and burning tires, like startled birds trying to survive a storm.

Bikes wail in protest — rear ends fishtailing, rubber screaming.

One rider barely clears the wreckage by inches. Another clips the rolling Honda. A few slide into the run-of-area.

The track becomes a warzone.

Bodies. Bikes. Debris.

Everywhere.

The red flag flashes like a warning siren across the screens.

Track marshals explode into action — sprinting down the asphalt in high-vis vests, arms windmilling — attacking the danger like piranhas on caffeine.

Emergency crews arrive in a blur of flashing lights and hydraulic hiss — kneeling by the injured. The roar of the engines still echoes like a ghost in the room.

We watch, frozen, the air thick as oil, hearts hammering, eyes locked to the screen.

No one speaks. Because for a few, terrible seconds … we know Graham might be right.

Jesse switches to the right-side monitor — the footage of Damion’s helmet cam at the moment of impact.

The onboard shakes violently, distorting for a second — a chaos of sparks and smoke and limbs, flickers of green and black leather — before it spins — sky-ground-sky-ground.

Asphalt grinds past at terrifying speed.

A blur of gravel. The grinding sound is visceral, like sandpaper on bone. When it finally stops, the angle is wrong — fence looming, ground skewed.

“Back it up,” Jackson commands. His voice is soft, lethal. Jesse rewinds. The frame halts on Romeo’s desperate downward glance. “There. That’s when he knew.”

“Shit,” Damion swears under his breath. His hand rubs his jaw, hard enough to hurt. “I thought I pushed him too late. I thought it was on me.”

Guilt. Heavy. Poisonous. I would know.

Noah folds his arms, jaw tight. “Brakes on a MotoGP bike don’t fail like that,” he says from behind my chair. “Even if the hydraulics went, you’d still get something. He had nothing.”

It lands like a death sentence.

The room feels colder. I stare around the space. One wall is a living mural of organized chaos — corkboards layered with photos, pins, and color-coded strings — all those faces watching us in silence, judgment carved into their paper eyes.

Another wall is lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, stacked with manuals every PI worth their salt would swear by — law books, tactical manuals, forensics, surveillance tactics, rescue guides — and even the occasional battered paperback comic — the kind that looks smuggled in to soften the edge of long nights.

Jackson leans back slowly, clicking his pen. “So mechanical tampering?”

“Most likely.”

“Jesse, rewind to Graham. Just before the crash.” Damion’s tone sharpens, exhaustion briefly forgotten.

The footage shifts. The camera feeds a steady view from the top. Two bikes following close behind Damion — #7 Graham in blue, and #26 Zaine in red. Smooth, fast, composed.

As the crash happens, Graham is at the start of the corner, and his bike — still at high speed — shoots wide off the racing line. His arms jerk, but the bike stays straight until it crashes into the gravel.

Jesse pauses.

Jackson taps his knuckle against the screen. “It seems as if he went wide before the crash. Maybe he realized in time that he couldn’t break.” He’s talking about Graham.

“Looks like his steering locked,” Damion opines.

“We should talk to him again,” Logan says with a yawn.

“Good idea,” my twin sneers. “If we can find him.” The police still haven’t found either Chloe or Graham.

“Okay, so someone tampered with their bikes,” Axel mutters, “But did they want to kill Romeo, Graham, or both?” Great question.

“Well, if someone wanted Graham or Romeo dead, they chose the perfect moment,” Damion adds.

“I think they wanted Romeo dead,” I say. “Else they would have tried to kill Graham again, wouldn’t they?” No one says anything. I sigh.

“I’m just saying … it’s been more than a year and he’s still alive. If they wanted him dead, they would have tried again by now.”

This time, my twin hits MY temple with the bent knuckle of his index. “Oh, that such a mind has to rot,” he titters.

I ignore his sarcasm and glance at the screen where paramedics are doing CPR on Romeo. His helmet lies cracked beside him like a discarded shell. They keep going. Minutes stretch into eternity. But I know the truth.

They won’t bring him back. Dead on scene.

The coroner’s report was clear. Blunt-force trauma to the chest. Shattered ribs. Organ damage. Broken neck. Traumatic brain injury. No chance.

They ruled it an accident. Speed. Road conditions. A fatal miscalculation.

Damion disappears from the screen without a word. He probably needs some air.

“Guys, it’s late here. I’m gonna go. Keep us updated,” Logan says. The black screen swallows him, leaving only his ghost reflection and our silence. I’m jealous. Of how free he looks. How light he carries himself. No one to lose but maybe us.

Jackson gets up and walks over to the whiteboard in the corner. I turn in my chair. From where I sit, staring at the board for what feels like the hundredth time, all I see is how deep their reach goes.

And the only truth I know for sure — we are being targeted again

Red string crisscrosses in frantic tangles, a chaotic web of taped-up faces, scrawled notes, highlighted Post-its, and circles upon circles, until it’s impossible to tell if the board is connecting clues or documenting a nervous breakdown.

It looks less like a crime map and more like the inside of a mind unraveling. Jackson’s mind.

Nothing makes sense to anyone but the mind behind it.

He grabs a marker and scrawls a word beside Romeo’s photo, the letters all sharp and aggressive: MURDERED.

“I’ve added every clue from the recording Aria gave me,” he says. “But Brian doesn’t know much.”

Dead center, circled three times in an angry red marker like a bullseye, is a question mark. Waiting for a name. A title. A someone. Who, at this stage, is a ghost. A white whale.

Jackson fully believes whoever that is, is the one orchestrating this whole elaborate dissection of our lives — tearing it apart with surgical precision.

Surrounding the word are photos, names, scribbles, and more tangled connections. Faces I know. Faces I don’t. People involved. People in danger. People of interest.

Lots of rough drafts are scribbled around each photo, detailing relationships, alibis, locations, key pieces of evidence, and other shit that found their way into my twin’s mind.

And I have a bad omen that we are running out of room — on the board and in real life.

The facts are all there, staring back at me. This is a slow, orchestrated dismantling. A sick game.

Because of Darren? Or Romeo? Or both?

The thought slams into my brain so hard I nearly flinch. My pulse stutters, the echo of the crash replaying behind my eyes like a strobe.

“Guys,” I blurt, voice sharper than intended. “So that was no accident … fine. But why the hell does Graham think we’re responsible?”

Jackson leans back in his chair like the smug bastard he is, lips curling. His smirk is pure gasoline on my nerves. “Hell, you should really use your mind more often. It comes up with great thoughts.” He drawls it out, teasing, like he’s got all the time in the world to mess with me.

“Don’t test me right now,” I snap, though the corner of his mouth twitches like he’s dying to push further.

Axel scratches the back of his neck, looking more confused than guilty. “I don’t know. I mean … I wasn’t even there.” His shrug is loose, careless, but the tension in his jaw betrays him.

“We were,” Jackson cuts in. His tone sharpens, slicing the air. His gaze flicks toward me, and for a second, there’s an edge there — something unspoken, heavy as a knife.

“Yes,” I say, matching his tone. “So were two hundred and fifty thousand other people.”

The silence after is thick, sticky, clinging to the room like oil.

“Fair,” he mutters at last, tilting his head, though the smirk doesn’t fully leave. He lives for this, the dance of barbs and blades. “But there must be something. Graham would know.”

The name hangs there like a trigger pulled halfway back.

“We really need to talk to Graham,” Axel says.

I get up and tap the photo labeled Lamortes, the name scratched through like it’s already been condemned. “What does this mean?”

“Remember that fire I had to pull a triple shift for a few days ago?” Axel asks. I nod. “It was a ‘gas leak’ in that restaurant that started it.” He finger-quotes ‘gas leak’.

“So no leak?”

“Oh, there was a leak,” he smirks. “A nice, big one. And a delayed fuse to light it up like a bonfire.”

A muscle jumps in my jaw. Figures.

“What about the bet?” I ask, not seeing it on the board. “Did you ask Uncle John about that?”

“There was no bet.”