She was exceptional and she was being swallowed up by something that exceptional people sometimes got swallowed up by circumstances that had nothing to do with their skill and everything to do with other people's cruelty. Marcus had not sent her to the Hell's Angels garage because he thought they could protect her. He'd sent her there because he thought she could earn something she needed more than protection right now. Respect. The kind of respect that in a town like Milh Haven could shift the way people looked at a situation.
He finished his coffee about the blue truck he'd seen parked near the Morgan property twice in the past week. About Haley's face, not the bruise, which was bad enough, but the expression behind it. Trolled, careful, exhausted expression of someone who had been fighting a battle on multiple fronts for months and was winning by the narrowest possible margin. He put some money on the counter. He walked out into the cold.
Out his phone, he called a number. It rang twice. Harrison said, "Marcus, she show up?" Marcus asked. Last night she was right about the bike.
I know she was right about the bike. What did you think of her? A pause on Cole's end of someone choosing words carefully. I think she's carrying something. Cole said.
Marcus said she is another. How bad? Cole said. Marcus looked down the street toward the highway. Bad enough that I thought you should know she existed.
He said bad enough that I thought she needed somewhere to show up and be worth something before everything else came to a head. Cole said nothing for a moment. The bruise. It wasn't an accident, Marcus said. I know for certain.
She hasn't told me the rest. Not the kind to tell. He heard Cole breathe. She'll be back at noon, Cole said. I know, Marcus said.
Fix the bike. That's the first thing. He hung up. He stood on the sidewalk outside Vera's diner in the October cold and watched the traffic thin out on Main Street. About what a town does when it decides someone is small enough to ignore about how wrong that always turns out to be.
They arrived at 11:47 a.m. Noon 11:47 because she had accounted for the drive to Fremont and back and the 10 minutes she'd stood at the parts counter making absolutely certain she had the right diaphragm for a 1,968 shovel head before she paid for it. And she'd built buffer time into her estimate of nooners and then she'd made good time. She had her tool bag, a second smaller bag with the new parts. She had borrowed the timing light from her neighbor Phil it in his garage and had asked no questions because he was that kind of neighbor and partly because Haley had asked him at 7:30 in the morning with the particular tone of voice that made people understand this was not a casual request. Reyes opened the side door before she knocked.
She hadn't knocked. Parking lot was visible from the interior windows and apparently someone had been watching. He looked at the bags she was carrying. Look at her face. You're early, he said.
I said noon, she said. Noon yet. He stepped back to let her in. Rico was already there. He was sitting on the same stool as last night.
Coffee cup in the same handers, wearing a different flannel shirt, but the same expression, which was the expression of someone who had learned after 56 years of life to withhold judgment until the evidence was complete. Wasn't in the main bay. Someone said he was in the office. Didn't ask about him. She set her bags down the corners.
She pulled the cloth off the motorcycle. She organized her tools with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this 10,000 times, laying everything out in a specific order that probably only made complete sense to her, but that made absolute sense. Um, if you understood the sequence of work she was planning, she looked at Ry. I'm going to need to start the bike at some point, she said. Let you know before I do that.
Anything I should know about how she starts choke position, a particular sequence. Ry blinked. Most mechanics didn't ask that. Most mechanics assumed they knew better than the owner. One of the things that made Ry distrust mechanics in the first place, the assumption that years of experience with motorcycles in general superseded your specific knowledge of your specific machine.
She's temperamental on a cold start, he said, standing up. Prime the carb three times, not two. Choke full until she catches halfway as soon as she's running or she'll flood. Haley nodded. Held it.
Thank you, she said. Ray sat back down. They looked at Dany. Dany shrugged. She worked without narration.
It was one of the things that the men in that garage would remember later. Not the skill, which was increasingly obvious, but the silence, the purposeful, focused silence of someone who was in conversation with the machine and didn't need to perform their expertise for anyone watching. She started with the petcock. She had the old diaphragm out in under 4 minutes clean work. No stripped screws, no fumbling.
She examined the old diaphragm under her flashlight, tilted it, held it against the light from the overhead fixture. She carried it to where Ry was sitting and held it out. That edge, she said. See how it's pulling away from the rim? Probably 6 months ago.
In warm weather, the material stays pliable enough that it doesn't affect flow much. 50° it stiffens, Ray said. He was leaning forward looking at the diaphragm with the expression of a man who had just been given a very specific answer to a very long question. Stiffens. Yes.
And the fuel flow becomes inconsistent. Completely blocked. Just inconsistent enough that under load at certain RPMs, the engine starving slightly. Not enough to stall, but enough to feel wrong. Ry took the old diaphragm in his hand.
It over. He felt the edge she'd pointed to. He said Briggs missed it because in August set Edge still felt close enough to normal and he was focused on the car because that's where the symptoms pointed most obviously. She paused. Not saying Briggs is a bad mechanic.