Leo escaped before dawn two nights later. He took a change of clothes, a photograph of Patrick standing beside a red motorcycle, and a small assortment of hand tools whose handles his father had marked with blue paint. He left behind the schoolbooks and most of his possessions. On a folded sheet of notebook paper tucked beneath Miguel's mattress, he wrote, "Tell the truth when it's safe. I'm sorry I couldn't do more." He knew that leaving might make Hank angry with the others, and the knowledge followed him out the window like a weight attached to his ankle.
He traveled south and west in fragments. He caught a legitimate bus as far as his money allowed, walked beside service roads, and accepted a ride once from an elderly couple who mistook him for a college student heading home. At a gas station he discovered that Hank had reported him as a runaway, using a photograph from the school year before. Leo stopped using his debit card after that. The little cash he carried disappeared into food and bottles of water, then into the feeling of safety he got from having one more day between himself and Flagstaff.
He found the Sinclair station because a storm had driven him from an open stretch of road. It stood roughly forty miles outside Kingman, near an old section of Route 66 that tourists occasionally followed in search of nostalgia and almost nobody used after dark. The roof had fallen over one garage bay, but the other half of the building still offered shade and a little protection from wind. Desert plants grew through cracks in the forecourt. Behind the station, old refrigerators and vehicle parts formed a rusting maze that somebody had abandoned so long ago the land seemed to be reclaiming them one bolt at a time.
He made a sleeping place in the former office and repaired a latch so the door wouldn't blow open at night. He carried water carefully and tried not to think about what would happen when the last of it was gone. He sometimes heard trucks on the newer highway, their sound arriving through the heat as though they came from another world. During the day he sorted the salvage into things that might still have value and things no sensible mechanic would trust. Every tool he handled brought back the garage in Reno, and the memory was both comfort and punishment.
The evening before the motorcycle arrived, Leo had found a damaged bicycle behind the station. Its frame was bent, its tires exhausted, and one wheel turned crookedly, but he could see how a few usable parts from another bicycle might make it serviceable. He imagined riding it toward Kingman, finding a shop, and convincing somebody to let him sweep floors until he proved he could do more. He was old enough to understand that an employer would ask for identification and probably questions about where he lived. He had not figured out what answer would keep him safe.
Now a stranger in a Hells Angels vest stood in his makeshift sanctuary and surveyed it as though deciding whether the roof would fall on both of them. "Name's Jack Sullivan," the man said. "Most people call me Sully." Leo noticed a smaller patch on the front of his vest identifying him as sergeant at arms.