Chapter 8

Owen didn't cry at the funeral. He went to the garage the next morning, sat on the same overturned bucket, and stared at his father's tools on the pegboard wall: each one in its exact place, each one with years of grip marks worn into the handle. He picked up his father's favorite wrench, a half-inch Craftsman with a chip on the jaw, and held it for a long time. Then he started working.For four years, Owen taught himself everything Thomas didn't have time to finish teaching: YouTube tutorials at the public library, engineering textbooks from the used bookstore on 7 Mile—fifty cents each, covers torn, pages stained with coffee. He pulled engines out of junked cars at the salvage yard on 8 Mile, rebuilt them on the garage floor, sold them to local shops for fifty, sometimes a hundred dollars.The garage went under when Owen was sixteen: back taxes. His grandmother Ruth couldn't keep up on a fixed income; the county seized the property. Owen stood on the sidewalk and watched a stranger padlock his father's garage shut. He took the toolbox—that was all he could carry: his father's tools wrapped in an old bedsheet, stuffed into a backpack that barely zipped closed.By seventeen: two jobs—car wash, gas station—eleven-hour days, six days a week. Every paycheck went to Ruth for rent and groceries; nothing for himself except bus fare and library books. But every night, every single night, he'd sit on the fire escape of their apartment on Chene Street, close his eyes, and listen: trucks on the freeway, generators behind the factory, the neighbor's Buick idling rough three floors down.He could diagnose that Buick from the fire escape: bad ignition coil, cylinder two misfire. The neighbor spent $400 at a shop a week later; they replaced the coil. Owen was right. He was always right. He just never had the chance to prove it to anyone who mattered.Until tonight. Until Black Fury. Until a parking lot full of people who looked at Owen Fletcher and saw nothing. They were about to see everything.The timer started at 7:47 p.m. Someone in the crowd, a kid with a backwards cap and a cracked phone screen, held up the stopwatch app and yelled, "Five minutes, go!"Owen didn't rush. He set his backpack on the ground, unzipped it, and pulled out his father's toolbox: a dented metal case, olive green, with T. Fletcher scratched into the lid in block letters. He opened it and laid the tools out on the asphalt in a neat row: half-inch Craftsman wrench, quarter-inch socket set, flathead screwdriver, Phillips, a small flashlight with electrical tape around the handle. That was it: no scanner, no laptop, no voltage meter.Garrett looked at the tools and burst out laughing. "Are you kidding me? That's what you brought? My kid's toy set has more in it than that!"His crew roared. One of them kicked a socket wrench across the pavement. "Oops. Hope you didn't need that one, rat."Owen picked it up, wiped it on his shirt, put it back in line.

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