He spent the first day repairing the bicycle. The rear chain dragged against the frame, and the rust had seized one of the bearings. Working slowly, he cleaned what he could, straightened the worst bend in the wheel, and fitted a usable brake cable scavenged from a dead lawn mower. At noon the metal became too hot to handle comfortably, and he retreated into the shade with his water. The bottle Sully had left gave him a small margin against disaster, but he understood how quickly that margin could vanish.
Late in the afternoon he walked to the dry wash behind the station, hoping to find a depression where moisture remained beneath the sand. He used a broken length of pipe to probe the ground and found nothing that would yield drinkable water. A dry creek was not a promise. It was simply evidence that water had once passed through.
When the sun fell he returned to the garage, counted the crackers remaining in his bag, and considered the distance to the nearest diner. It lay miles away along the highway. Going there meant walking under the open sky and perhaps running into someone who remembered his face. Staying meant hunger and the gradual emptying of the canteen. He stared at the two bad choices until exhaustion made the decision for him. He slept.
The next day he walked north at dawn and approached the diner from behind. The building had a faded red roof and a little gravel lot crowded with trucks. He knew one of the cooks left vegetable scraps and occasional bread near the dumpster. He had relied on it twice since arriving at the station, approaching only when the morning rush was over.
This time the kitchen door opened while he was searching. A middle-aged woman in an apron stood on the step holding a garbage bag. Leo froze, a heel of bread in his hand.
The woman looked at his dirty clothes and then at the bread. She did not shout. 'You hungry, honey?'
Leo considered running. 'I'm fine.'
'People who are fine don't usually climb into that bin.'
He looked at the ground. She glanced toward the road, then placed a paper sack beside the door. 'Sandwich in there. Water too. If you take it, leave the bag by the gate so I know you got it.'
He wanted to ask why she would help him. Instead he waited until she had gone inside, took the food, and hurried back toward the wash. The sandwich tasted of cold turkey and mustard, and he ate it slowly because every bite reminded him how hungry he really was.
He did not know that a trucker at the counter had seen him crossing the lot. The trucker mentioned the boy to another driver, who knew a waitress in Flagstaff, who had recently heard a story about a runaway foster child. There was no conspiracy in those ordinary conversations. News traveled through roadside towns because people had little else to discuss, and a hungry teenager with a torn jacket was memorable.
That evening, nearly a hundred miles away, Hank Dawson received a call.
He was sitting at the kitchen table in Flagstaff with a racing form open beside his dinner and a stack of unpaid bills under one elbow. He had gambled away money meant for the household and treated the state payments for the children as a way to cover his losses, not as resources entrusted to their care. The person on the phone said there had been a boy matching Leo's description behind a diner west of Kingman. Hank asked several questions, then hung up and stared at the table for a long time. The information irritated him more than it relieved him.