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face lit up when he talked about it. It’d been years before he finally got it going, and he rode it everywhere. “Why would he do that?” she said.
    “He wouldn’t say why.” Ellis furrowed his brow. “Look, uh, Sydney. Are you his friend?”
    “Absolutely not,” she blurted before she could think it through. “I mean…well, I went to school with him. We haven’t talked in years.”
    “Too bad,” Ellis said quietly. “Because I think he could really use a friend right now.”
    “Ellis. Shut the hell up.”
    Cam spoke in tight, controlled tones from a few feet away, where he’d apparently materialized with his toolbox. At once, Sydney felt lower than dirt. Had he heard her insisting that she wasn’t his friend? It might’ve been true, but she still shouldn’t have said it like that.
    If Cam did hear, he gave no indication. “You’re going to miss your boy’s race,” he said to Ellis. “Just put the money in the truck. I’ll unload the bike for you when I’m done here, all right?”
    “Sure.” For a long moment Ellis didn’t move. “Look, this is an open-ended deal, understand? Any time you want to buy it back, it’s yours.”
    “I don’t back out of deals, Ellis.”
    The big man looked about to say something more, but the cold in Cam’s voice must’ve stopped him. “Whatever you say, Thatcher.” He frowned and glanced past Sydney at the beacon of the raceway. Then he met her eyes and said, “Well, it was nice meeting you, at least. Hope you get home safe.”
    “Thank you. Nice meeting you, too.”
    She watched him walk away, and then turned to Cam—but he was already banging away under the hood. She really hoped her truck would survive his wrath.
     
     

Chapter 6
     
    Cam didn’t say a word for a long time. Sydney couldn’t see him, though she heard him clanking around somewhere beyond the glow of the flashlight he was using. Eventually he came around to the window holding a little hose with a metal clip at one end, and what looked like an oversized thermometer at the other.
    “You might have a bad spark plug,” he said. “When I tell you, crank the engine. But only for a few seconds. You keep grinding it over, your battery’s going to die.”
    She nodded. “What’s that?”
    “A spark tester.” He started back for the engine.
    “Cam?”
    He stopped without turning. “What?”
    “I…” It was on the tip of her tongue to apologize for what she’d said. But she didn’t know if he’d heard it, and maybe he didn’t want an apology. It might even piss him off more. So she settled for saying, “Thank you.”
    “I haven’t done anything yet.”
    He kept going, and Sydney leaned back against the seat with a sigh. She really didn’t know how to take this. After all this time, to have Cam Thatcher help her not once, but twice in the same day was disconcerting at best. It galled her even more to think that Tommy had tried to forbid her from talking to him.
    He’d been right about one thing, though. Cam didn’t have any friends. And for the first time, she started to wonder why—how much of it was Cam keeping to himself, and how much was the whole town assuming he wanted it that way.
    “Okay. Crank it.”
    She started, reached for the key, and gave it a single hesitant twist. The engine barked once.
    Cam leaned over and stared at her. “A few seconds. Not half a second.”
    “Right, sorry. Tell me when.”
    He disappeared behind the hood again. “Okay, go.”
    She turned the key and counted to four before she switched it off. Cam didn’t stop her, so she figured that must’ve been right. Then he muttered under his breath, and she heard him rustling through his tool box.
    “Cam? Was that it?”
    When he didn’t answer, she took a deep breath and got out of the truck. “Hey,” she said as she headed for him. “Can I help…”
    She caught sight of him in the wash of the light that was settled on the edge of the hood, and her heart skipped a beat or three. He