Garrett flinched more visibly at that than he had when Black Fury first fired. He extended the money again, and this time Owen took it. His hand was steady as he folded the bills and placed them in the pocket where the emery cloth usually lived. He did not count the money in front of the crowd. He knew how much was there because Garrett had counted it publicly and because the wager had never been only about money.
For a breath the two stood facing each other as the sound of distant traffic moved through the open gate. Garrett was still larger, still richer, still surrounded by people prepared to follow his instructions. Owen remained an exhausted eighteen-year-old with cheap shoes. But something essential had been settled, and it was not the question of who could overpower whom.
Eleanor Graves did not move toward Owen immediately.
She waited through the first surge of applause because she knew he had just endured a great deal more than a difficult mechanical task. People were surrounding him now, shouting questions, asking for photographs, trying to touch the young man's shoulder as though being close to him might make them part of the achievement. Some were the same people who had laughed at his book. Eleanor watched him grow visibly smaller beneath their sudden enthusiasm.
She stepped between him and a man holding a microphone connected to his phone. "Give him some space," she said. Her voice was not loud, but the certainty in it caused several people to step back. "He's finished the job. Let him breathe."
Owen looked at her with surprise. She was an older woman in a plain windbreaker, wearing sensible shoes and glasses that hung from a chain around her neck. There was nothing about her appearance that announced the authority she carried. In another setting he might have mistaken her for somebody waiting for a family member, which made the realization that he had been judged by appearance all evening land with additional force.
"You handled that well," she said.
"The engine?"
"That too." Eleanor glanced toward Garrett, who had stepped aside and was staring at Black Fury. "But mostly the rest of it. You kept your head when people were trying to take it away from you. You shouldn't have been made to."
Owen felt his throat tighten. He had wanted someone to say that for the better part of the last half hour, though he had not admitted the want even to himself. "I just wanted to fix the bike," he said. "He was going to throw out an engine that only needed somebody to look at it differently."
"You didn't only look differently. You verified three separate faults under pressure." She held his gaze. "That's the important distinction. People have lucky guesses every day. Very few can explain exactly why their guess is worth testing."