Leo shook his head.
“No.”
Everyone waited.
“He just hated waiting for shipping.”
That earned the loudest laugh of the morning.
They carried the chest upstairs.
Work continued.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Leo became less like a child issuing instructions and more like a living notebook containing fragments Arthur had left behind.
He remembered a sequence of stories.
The Reno breakdown.
The hidden ignition trick.
Dutch complaining that standard parts were “for men afraid of files.”
Arthur responding that Dutch was “the reason warning labels existed.”
Some memories sounded useless until Rusty realized they contained mechanical clues.
When Leo said his father used to complain about “Dutch moving the spark where God didn't intend it,” Rusty reconsidered ignition geometry.
When Leo remembered Arthur cursing an unusually long pushrod, they compared the spare dimensions.
By Wednesday evening, the mechanics no longer humored him.
They consulted him.
Not because he was magically smarter than trained adults.
Leo was not.
He could not calculate everything.
He misunderstood several terms.
He confused an electrical connector name once.
He had to ask Pete to explain resistance.
But he possessed something none of them did.
Memory.
He had sat beside the man who helped build that exact machine.
He had absorbed years of specific knowledge without realizing how valuable it was.
And unlike the mechanics, Leo did not begin with the assumption that the bike was normal.
At 8:30 that evening, Rusty ordered him home.
“We're staying.”
Leo frowned.
“So am I.”
“No.”
“But—”
“You're eight.”
“You said I was foreman.”
“I said a lot of dumb things under pressure.”
“I need to—”
Rusty crouched.
“Listen to me.”
Leo stopped.
“You gave us the map.”
Rusty pointed to Big Dave, Tommy, and Pete.
“They can follow it for a few hours.”
“What if they do something wrong?”
Big Dave looked offended.
Rusty ignored him.
“You have school tomorrow.”
Leo looked horrified.
“School?”
“Yes.”
“This is Dutch's bike.”
“And sixth-grade math isn't going to care.”
“I'm in third grade.”
Rusty paused.
“Even worse. Go.”
Leo looked at the motorcycle.
Rusty softened.
“We'll stop before anything major happens. I promise.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
Leo reluctantly picked up his backpack.
Before leaving, he looked at Pete.
“Don't test the electrical drain until we check the hidden circuit.”
Pete raised both hands.
“I wouldn't dare.”
Leo left.
Big Dave watched the door close.
“He's eight.”
Rusty nodded.
“Yeah.”
“That's disturbing.”
“Very.”
The next morning, Leo came directly from school.
His backpack landed beside Rusty's desk.
“Electrical.”
Pete smiled.
“Hello to you too.”
They removed enough of the tank assembly to inspect the hidden wiring safely.
Pete found the secondary circuit.
He stared at it for almost a full minute.
“This is insane.”
Leo stood beside him.
“Dad said that too.”
A cleverly concealed switch changed how the ignition circuit behaved.
Years of grime had nearly erased its outline.
Its wiring did not follow any diagram Pete possessed because Arthur had never intended it to.
The design was crude by modern standards but effective in its original purpose.
If someone unfamiliar with the bike tried to start it without knowing the hidden sequence, the machine appeared electrically sick.
Dutch had essentially built his own primitive theft deterrent.
“What kind of lunatic does this?” Pete asked.
Jim Mercer, who had unexpectedly stopped by but stayed outside the bay, answered from behind him.
“Dutch Sullivan.”
Everyone turned.