“You're doing a careful job,” she told him. “But be careful with recordings. Rules vary depending on who's participating and where everyone is located. Keep the originals intact and tell an investigator exactly how you obtained them.”
Ethan nodded and wrote down her advice. He didn't want a technical mistake to become the reason somebody dismissed the truth. He also didn't want to become so focused on building a case that he forgot Jack was a person standing in the middle of it. When they returned to the garage, he made supper and persuaded Jack to eat before going back to work. The older man complained about being managed, but he finished everything on his plate.
Their ordinary days continued around the threats, stubbornly ordinary. Jack taught Ethan to read a service manual instead of relying on guesses, and Ethan helped rebuild a touring bike whose owner wanted to ride across three states to see his newborn granddaughter. They argued about music, about whether decaf coffee counted as coffee, and about why Jack continued to keep broken parts that had no apparent use. Ethan began leaving a pencil behind his ear the way Jack did. Customers sometimes mistook them for family, and both men pretended not to hear.
But the nights grew harder. An SUV appeared across the road after sunset and stayed for hours with its headlights off. Ethan photographed it from inside the shop, using the security camera whenever possible, and wrote down the dates. Jack told him to keep the doors locked and never approach the vehicle. The watcher moved away whenever a patrol car came through town, which made the pattern harder to dismiss as coincidence.
One evening Jack found Ethan hunched over the evidence file, his face lit by the old desk lamp. It had been a long day, and Ethan's hands were trembling from fatigue. Beside the papers lay the eleven dollars he had saved from his first night, now kept in an envelope rather than his wallet. Jack picked it up and looked at the boy.
“What's this for?”
“So I remember.”
“Remember what?”
“What it was like to have almost nothing. I don't ever want to get careless just because things are better.”
Jack put the envelope down. “Remembering isn't the same as living inside it forever.”
Ethan didn't answer. He kept arranging pages until Jack sat opposite him and closed the folder. “Look at me,” Jack said.
“This isn't your fight. You owe me a clean floor, maybe a day's decent work. You don't owe me your safety.” Ethan looked toward the window and the road beyond it. For a long moment he said nothing.
“You let me in when nobody else would,” he said finally. “How am I supposed to stand here while somebody scares you out of the only place that's ever felt like...”
“Felt like what?” Jack asked.
Ethan swallowed. “Like somebody was glad I was around.”