'I know a place with a roof, a garage, and more motorcycles than anybody sensible would want to repair. It's in Phoenix. You'd have work to learn, and you wouldn't have to sleep on concrete.'
Leo stared at him. 'You'd let me work there?'
'If you want to. We have an actual shop forewoman who'd decide what you can touch, and she's meaner than I am about bad repairs.'
The faintest smile appeared on Leo's face. 'Sounds like my dad.'
Sully's expression eased. 'Sounds like a good place to start.'
He held out his hand. Leo clasped it, feeling the broad calluses and the careful restraint in the biker's grip. Around them, engines remained quiet, and the sun hung above the old Sinclair sign like a white coin.
For the first time in weeks, Leo let himself consider a future beyond surviving the next night.
Before they left the station, Sully took Leo inside to collect his belongings. They walked through the garage slowly, the biker staying close enough to help if the boy's injured ribs made him unsteady. The workbench looked exactly as it had during the repair, except that a narrow silver stain marked the place where the emergency patch had rested. Leo picked up the tin with his father's photograph, folded drawing, and small socket, then tucked the cardboard phone number inside it.
'That's all?' Sully asked.
Leo looked around. The blanket, the bent bicycle, the row of sorted screws in the muffin tin. He had spent three weeks teaching himself to regard those objects as the boundaries of his world. Leaving them behind should have felt like abandoning a home, yet the garage had never really been a home. It had been a place where no one knew to look for him until somebody did.
'I want the drawing,' he said. 'And that socket. The rest can stay.'
Sully noticed the folded paper in his hand. 'Your dad's?'
Leo nodded.
'Then put it somewhere safe.'
They went outside together. A rider had found a clean long-sleeved shirt and a pair of gloves that fit Leo well enough. Another gave him a sandwich wrapped in foil. Someone had placed a second bottle of water beside the Road King, and a woman passing in a pickup slowed to ask whether they needed emergency assistance after seeing the damaged truck. The riders directed her toward the nearest place with cellular reception and asked her to report an injured minor and the location of the station. They had already made their own calls, but no one wanted to rely on a single message getting through.
Leo had never been around so many people who seemed to notice things he needed without asking him to explain why he deserved them. A water bottle appeared when his hands shook. A rider offered shade when he began blinking against the bright sky. Martin checked his condition again before agreeing that Leo could sit upright for the short ride to the closest clinic. The attention was disorienting. In the Dawson house, being noticed usually meant he had done something wrong.
A man with a white beard handed him a spare helmet. 'Strap goes under your chin, son. You ever ridden pillion?'
'With my dad, when I was little.'
'Then you know the rule. Don't try to steer it from the back.'