'I get mad,' Leo said. 'I just don't let the part know.'
That made Sully laugh, a genuine laugh this time, loud enough to send dust drifting from the rafters. Leo smiled before he could stop himself. He had not heard an adult laugh at something he said without a cruel edge in longer than he could remember.
By the time the bypass sat where Leo wanted it, the garage was dark beyond the circle of the work light. The smell of fuel had faded. He cleaned his hands on an old rag and turned back to the cover, where the remaining leak continued to mark the sheet metal beneath the bike.
He considered several options and rejected them all. The proper repair required equipment the abandoned station did not have. A reliable replacement cover would have solved the problem, but the scrap yard held no matching Harley parts. A weak adhesive would likely fail under heat and vibration. Leo could think of ways to make an emergency seal, yet none was something he would normally allow on a machine leaving his father's shop.
Then he remembered a cracked aluminum cover Patrick had shown him years earlier, when a customer insisted on driving a damaged motorcycle home instead of waiting for a replacement. Patrick had explained that a temporary patch was not a repair so much as a promise to reach a better one. He had written TEMPORARY in thick marker across the customer's work order and made the man sign below it.
Leo found an old sheet of alloy, a piece of wire, and a battery that still held a little charge. A flash of electrical light snapped across the metal during his first clumsy attempt to secure the emergency patch. Sully swore and Leo immediately pulled back, realizing how dangerous the improvised method had become. He refused to repeat it. Instead, after cleaning the damaged surface, he shaped a cover plate from scrap and secured it with the hardware already available at the damaged assembly, using material meant to resist oil and heat as a temporary seal. It was ugly, but it held without pretending to be a permanent weld.
He inspected the patch from several angles. Then he stepped away and waited. The leak slowed, stopped, and did not reappear when he gently rocked the bike. He bent low, wiped the metal clean, and watched for another minute.
'You didn't actually fix the crack,' Sully observed.
'No,' Leo said. 'I gave you a way to get somewhere that can.'
Sully nodded slowly. 'That answer I believe.'
Leo looked up from the floor. 'Can I ask what happened out there?'
The biker studied the dark doorway for a moment. 'Couple of riders from a rival club thought they had unfinished business with people I know. They tried to force me toward the shoulder. One got close enough to make it happen.'
'Are they coming back?'
'Maybe.'
Leo waited for reassurance that never arrived. The silence itself frightened him more than any dramatic warning could have. Sully had no reason to lie, and he was not pretending that being large or wearing an intimidating patch made him invulnerable.
'You should call someone,' Leo said.
'I will. Soon as I get a signal.'