The man guiding it down the gravel shoulder was enormous. He wore steel-toed boots, dark jeans, and a leather vest over a torn riding jacket, his shoulders nearly filling the doorway when he passed the station's front window. The red-and-white winged skull on his back was a patch Leo recognized from television and from warnings exchanged among other runaway kids. Hells Angels. The sight made his skin go cold even before the stranger turned and revealed a blood-dark stain on one shoulder.
The rider braced the motorcycle on its stand and removed his helmet. His graying beard framed a face marked by scars, weather, and the impatience of someone who had been having a very bad day. On the front of his vest a smaller patch read SULLY, and beneath it another identified him as sergeant at arms. He examined the motorcycle with an expression that suggested he would gladly argue with it if it could answer back.
Leo watched from the dark office. The stranger checked the damaged side of the machine, cursed at the stain spreading under it, and glanced down the highway twice in less than a minute. A scrape on his helmet and the torn shoulder of his jacket told a story that the mechanical damage alone did not. Somebody had forced this rider off the road, and whoever had done it might not have finished looking for him.
The biker tried to improvise a repair, then abandoned it when the engine's condition became unmistakably worse. Leo saw that the machine needed more than a quick wrap of tape or a fresh tank of fuel. He also saw that the man's wound was making his left arm stiffen and his hands less precise. The old voice inside Leo's head, the one that still sounded like his father, said that a broken machine deserved attention and a hurt person deserved help.
Another voice told him to stay hidden. The second voice had been keeping him alive for three weeks and knew every reason a hungry runaway should not approach an injured stranger wearing a notorious motorcycle-club patch. Leo's hand stayed on the doorframe as the arguments collided inside him. Finally he pushed the door open, stepped into the fading sunlight, and said the first useful thing that came to mind.
"That isn't going to hold."
The biker turned so abruptly Leo nearly stepped back into the building. One broad hand moved toward the knife on his belt, stopped there, and remained still while the stranger measured him with dark eyes. Leo lifted both hands, showing the palms stained with grease. He had faced too many angry adults to mistake the danger in the silence.
"Who are you?" the biker asked. His voice was rough but not slurred, and the question sounded less like curiosity than a warning. "And why are you hiding in a condemned gas station?" Leo swallowed and gave him the only answer he thought might matter.
"My name's Leo. I know motorcycles."