The shop owner finally admitted the bicycles had come from the same shipment.

Six had already been sold.

One was sitting in front of us.

Wade placed the metal fragment on the counter.

“Where did these come from?”

The owner hesitated.

“An overseas distributor.”

“Name?”

The man gave it.

Wade immediately recognized it.

His motorcycle club had investigated that company months earlier after several unexplained mechanical failures involving imported equipment.

But nobody had connected those cases to children’s bicycles.

Until now.

Daniel’s father was still furious.

“You expect me to believe this?”

Wade pointed toward the damaged bicycle.

“Look closely.”

The father examined the frame.

At first, he saw nothing.

Then the shop owner scraped away a tiny section of paint.

Another triangular mark appeared.

The same symbol.

Wade explained that the piece he had removed wasn’t supposed to be part of the bicycle’s structural assembly.

It had been inserted beneath the paint.

The shop owner checked another bicycle.

Then another.

Each contained the same concealed component.

Daniel’s father stared at him.

“Why would someone put that inside a bicycle?”

“We don’t know yet,” Wade answered.

Then the shop owner’s computer displayed something unexpected.

One of the bicycles had already been returned.

The customer had complained that the frame made a strange clicking sound.

The shop owner had repainted it and sold it again.

Wade’s expression hardened.

“Where is it now?”

The owner checked the address.

A family had bought it for their eight-year-old daughter.

Wade immediately turned toward the door.

Daniel followed.

“Are you going to break that one too?”

Wade stopped.

“No.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

Wade looked down at him.

“Make sure nobody rides it until we know what we’re dealing with.”

They found the second bicycle at a nearby playground.

A little girl was already sitting on it.

Her mother was taking pictures.

Wade shouted for them to stop.

The mother immediately panicked.

But the shop owner inspected the bicycle.

The hidden triangular component was there.

And this one was worse.

A hairline fracture had already formed around it.

Wade carefully moved the child away.

Nobody spoke.

Then his phone rang.

One of the bikers had checked the remaining sales records.

Seven bicycles.

Seven different families.

All sold from the same shipment.

All carrying the same concealed component.

And one more detail appeared on the records.

Every bicycle had been purchased within a three-week period.

Someone had been moving them deliberately.

Wade looked at the shop owner.

“Who delivered them?”

The man’s hands began shaking.

“I don’t know.”

Wade stared at him.

“Try again.”

The owner swallowed.

“There was a second delivery company.”

He pulled out an old invoice.

The name on it made Wade go completely still.

It belonged to a company that had been shut down years earlier.

Yet someone had used its identity to deliver the bicycles.

Then Daniel noticed something on the damaged frame.

A tiny number.

He pointed.

“What’s that?”

Wade looked.

His expression changed.

It wasn’t a serial number.

It was a date.

And that date was only two days away.