Fig returned with two sandwiches, chips, and a mug of coffee. He arranged them on the workbench, pushed the mug far enough from the edge that it could not be knocked over, and said, "Eat before it goes cold." Willa thanked him and unwrapped the first sandwich carefully, making a real effort not to eat too fast. He pretended not to notice that effort. People who had gone hungry rarely enjoyed being watched while they corrected it.
Sark returned to the motorcycle and muttered that they were running a repair shop, not a hotel. Fig looked at him once, not angrily, just long enough, and Sark decided his opinion did not need a second airing. The radio started playing again. A compressor kicked in behind the paint-room wall, and the evening resumed around the stranger as though the building had found a temporary place for her in its ordinary noises.
After she had eaten, Reese came back and sat on another stool. "You said engines since twelve," he began. "Who taught you?"
"My dad. He ran a shop." Willa looked briefly toward the motorcycle on the back lift. "I started by handing him sockets. Then he made me tell him why he wanted a particular one before he'd let me pass it over."
Reese smiled a little. "Sounds like somebody I could work with."
"He was," she said. The past tense came out with enough weight to make Reese stop there.
"Tell me what you see in this garage," he said instead.
Her gaze traveled through the room. She glanced at the open tool drawers, the chalk marks on the tire rack, the bike near the back lift, and the tagged wheel on the touring machine. She did not try to impress him by naming expensive equipment or reciting things she knew by heart. "Your inventory gets used," she said.
"People put tools back where somebody else can find them. The bay by the roll-up door has a leak in the air line. And that Electra Glide on the far lift shouldn't go back on the road until somebody looks at the lower right frame tube."
Sark stopped moving. "What about the frame tube?"
"Hairline crack near the engine mount. You see it when the light crosses from the side. It might be only surface damage, but I wouldn't assume that with a rider on it." Willa took another bite of sandwich, apparently unaware that she had said anything remarkable. Reese turned toward the lift. "Sark, would you check that for me?"
Sark crouched beside the bike, shifted his inspection lamp, and narrowed his eyes. He cleaned a small patch of grime with a cloth and looked again. Whatever he saw made him hold the lamp still for several seconds. "Well, I'll be damned," he said softly. "She's right."