Fig got up to check that the side door was secure. Sark went back for his coat, still thinking about the thin line of damage he had found in the Electra Glide. Reese turned off the light above the table last, leaving only the security lamp in the hall. He had offered Willa one night. He had not yet decided what morning would require, but he knew the difference between a shelter he could offer without conditions and a job he would need to trust her to perform.
Morning arrived at four thirty for Willa, much earlier than it arrived for anybody else. She woke in the strange room with the immediate, bewildered certainty that something was wrong, then remembered the locked door and the sandwiches and the man who had spoken about wages as if wages were her right to earn. She sat still while the heater clicked beside the wall. Outside, the rain had softened to mist.
She found a broom near the back entrance and began with the concrete around the lifts. She swept carefully around the marked oil stains rather than spreading grit over them, sorted the loose hardware someone had left on the service counter, and discovered that the parts shelves were arranged according to a system that had once made sense to somebody who no longer worked there. She did not throw anything away. She made small paper labels, moved unopened supplies into accessible rows, and wrote down the things she could not confidently identify so she could ask before touching them.
By six, Fig walked in carrying a bag of breakfast rolls and stopped just inside the doorway. The front bay had been swept. The service counter no longer looked as though a box of small metal objects had exploded across it. On Reese's desk lay three handwritten pages describing the damage to the Electra Glide, including a simple diagram, the location of the crack, the likely inspection steps, and a clear warning not to return the machine to service until it was properly assessed.
"You been up all night?" Fig asked.
"Since four thirty," Willa said. She was beneath a customer's pickup with an inspection lamp, looking at the exhaust mounting hardware. "I couldn't sleep much, so I found something useful."
Fig set down the breakfast bag and read the inspection note twice. He did not praise her, which Willa appreciated more than she could have explained. He walked to the office and put the papers where Reese would see them first, then came back and placed a warm breakfast roll on the bench beside her tools.
When Reese arrived he found the same orderly floor, the same notes, and Willa under the pickup asking Brody whether the owner had reported a vibration under load. Brody, who had arrived five minutes earlier, looked as though he had been handed a question on an exam he had not known was scheduled. Reese listened to their exchange until Willa crawled out and sat up on the creeper. Then he said, "You do trucks too?"