Leo looked from one man to the other. 'I didn't steal anything. He hurt me. I told him I was leaving.'
Hank gave a short laugh. 'Hear that? He told me. Like he was paying the bills.'
'I was working for you,' Leo said. 'All the time. I didn't get paid.'
'That's called responsibility.' Hank stepped closer. 'Something you wouldn't recognize if it came with a label.'
Higgins released the jacket only to stand between Leo and the access road. His vehicle was parked at an angle near the old pumps, effectively closing the easiest route out. Leo could see a radio clipped to the dashboard and a small camera mounted behind the windshield. The deputy had switched the camera away from the station. Leo noticed the angle because he had spent enough time around machines to notice when something was deliberately turned from its proper position.
'Can I talk to a caseworker?' Leo asked. 'A different one. Without him there.'
Higgins raised an eyebrow. 'You can talk when we get this settled.'
'You have to call someone. I'm seventeen.'
'He's my responsibility,' Hank said. 'A judge put him there.'
Leo had heard that sentence so often it had begun to sound like a law of nature. Yet he also remembered the actual caseworker who had visited the Dawson house, a tired woman carrying a folder too thick to close. She had once told the children that they could call her directly if they felt unsafe. Hank had taken away their access to the phone shortly afterward. Leo wished he could remember the caseworker's number now.
'I'm not going back,' he said.
Hank's smile faded. 'Oh, you're going back.'
He leaned down until Leo could smell coffee on his breath. 'You made me answer questions. You made people come to my door. Do you have any idea how much trouble that caused?'
Leo could not understand how someone could turn a child's escape from violence into a complaint about paperwork, but he had listened to Hank do it for years. The man spoke of fees, repairs, fines, missed appointments, and anything else he could calculate. He never spoke of the children unless they had become costs.
'What about Jaden and Mia?' Leo asked.
Hank went still. The question changed the air between them. Even Higgins glanced over.
'You don't say their names,' Hank said quietly.
'I left them a note. They know why I ran.'
The line was a mistake. Leo understood that from the immediate hardening of Hank's face. A note was evidence, and Hank hated evidence he did not control.
'You told them lies,' Hank said. 'You filled their heads with garbage.'
'They saw what happened.'
Hank gripped Leo by the front of his shirt and pulled him upright. Pain flashed along Leo's ribs. He tried to protect his side with one arm, and Hank mistook the movement for resistance.
'No more smart answers,' Hank said. 'No more running. When we get home, you're going to remember how things work.'
Higgins watched with an expression of distant annoyance. 'Keep it moving. It's getting hot.'
Leo heard the words and realized the deputy was not failing to understand what he was seeing. He understood perfectly well and had decided it did not matter. The distinction was almost as frightening as Hank himself.