"Coffee," Billy said, settling into the corner booth. "Black. And don't bring us that weak stuff the tourists drink."
"Then you're in luck," Sarah replied. "Tourists usually stop somewhere with a gift shop."
The prospect's mouth twitched, but he smothered the smile when Billy glanced his way. Sarah poured the coffee and noticed Wyatt watching her with the same careful attention he had given the room. His face betrayed almost nothing, yet something in his gaze suggested he was exhausted by the business of measuring everybody he met. She had seen that expression on long-haul drivers who slept with their keys in their hands.
"You work here alone?" Wyatt asked.
"Most afternoons," Sarah said. "My help comes in before dawn and leaves when the heat gets stupid."
"And you stay?"
"Somebody has to tell strangers the coffee isn't free."
Billy snorted into his mug. Wyatt looked away first, which Sarah took as a sign that the conversation was finished. She had no reason to remember it until the afternoon began turning into something else. In another hour she would wish she had paid closer attention to every word spoken inside that booth.
The men stayed ten minutes. Billy complained about a road closure near Needles; the prospect drank water as though he had been lost for days. Wyatt barely touched his coffee. When he did speak, it was to ask whether the old bridge east of the diner was still passable, and Sarah told him the county had closed it after the last flash flood.
She noticed the blue wire because she was watching his motorcycle through the window while replacing a cracked sugar dispenser. It was a thin flash of color beneath the dark lines of the bike, so out of place that her mind refused to let it become background. Her father had taught her to look first for what did not belong. When he inspected a machine, he said, the eye should find the difference before the hand finds the damage.
Wyatt's Dyna had been modified carefully, with its exposed components finished in subdued black. The blue strand had not been tucked away with the same care, and its position bothered her more the longer she looked. There was also a wet-looking mark on the gravel beneath the motorcycle, a mark she had not noticed when the three machines arrived. It might have been harmless. Old motorcycles leaked all manner of fluids, and the heat did strange things to seals and hoses.
She walked toward the workshop doorway and took another look through the side window. The blue line disappeared behind a panel that should not have required new work, and the liquid beneath the bike was not spreading like the drips she normally saw after a hot ride. Sarah could not identify the substance or say with certainty what had been hidden inside the machine. But she knew enough to recognize an alteration that did not fit the machine's ordinary systems, and she knew enough about hazardous materials to leave something suspicious alone.