The words gathered speed because Sully was listening. Leo told him about Jaden and Mia, about the missing twenty-dollar bill, the night he climbed down the drainpipe, and the moment Higgins caught him in the wash. He did not remember every detail in order. He expected to be interrupted and corrected at any moment. Sully simply waited until the boy had finished.
'You hear that?' Sully said to the deputy.
Higgins shrugged. 'Kids make allegations when they don't want to go home.'
'Home,' Sully repeated. He looked at the abandoned garage, then at the boy who had been sleeping in it. 'You think a kid chooses this because he's having a good time?'
Hank gave an exasperated sigh. 'He's a thief. He's always been a thief. He ran off with property that didn't belong to him, and today I caught him carrying a stolen silver lighter.'
Sully went very still. Leo felt the air change before he understood why. Several riders near the front looked at one another, recognizing the description of an object that had been missing from Sully's vest for three days.
'A lighter,' Sully said.
'Yes.' Hank seized on the subject as though it might save him. 'A nice one, silver, with a skull. Who knows what he took it from? Some tourist. Some other runaway. That's the kind of kid he is.'
Sully took a breath that rose slowly beneath his vest. 'Where is it?'
'I confiscated it. It's evidence.'
'Show me.'
Hank glanced at Higgins for support. The deputy's attention was fixed on the phone in the hands of a rider standing near the front row. Hank reached into his pocket and produced the Zippo, holding it out by its lid as if he were demonstrating his authority over a small criminal.
'Here,' he said. 'Recognize the sort of thing these boys steal?'
Sully's eyes rested on the lighter. He remembered the teenage mechanic catching it clumsily in the garage, turning it over in the white circle of a work light, and asking why a stranger would give him something important. The memory was so clear that for an instant he could smell old oil and dusty concrete again.
'I recognize it,' he said.
Hank brightened. 'There you go.'
'I gave it to him.'
The words came out quietly. They carried across the yard because no one else was speaking. Hank's face did not change at once; his mind seemed to struggle to fit the answer into the explanation he had already chosen.
'You what?'
'That boy repaired my motorcycle three nights ago,' Sully said. 'I was injured and stranded. He gave me a way to get help when I couldn't have done it myself. The lighter was mine, and I gave it to him because he earned it.'
Hank looked at the silver in his hand. Its value had changed in less than a second. It was no longer something he could claim as stolen property. It was proof that he had taken a gift from a teenager who had done something honorable.
'I didn't know,' he said.
'You didn't ask.'
Hank tried to recover. 'Well, he should've told me.'
'He did,' Sully replied. 'You chose not to believe him.'
Then the biker moved. He seized Hank by the front of his shirt and forced him back against the door of the Dodge with a heavy impact that rattled the side mirror. Hank's eyes widened. Sully's injured arm shook from the effort, and for a dangerous second his grip shifted upward against the man's throat.