Page 16 of Enzo
“What is a crankshaft sensor?” I asked after a pause.
“A what now?” he frowned and moved closer, his head tilted as if he hadn’t heard me correctly.
“A crankshaft sensor, what is it?”
Enzo blinked, then scratched the back of his neck. “Uh… it’s this sensor that tracks how fast the crankshaft is spinning. It helps the engine control the timing of the spark plugs and fuel injection. Without it, the car won’t know when to fire—might not even start.”
He was unsure, so I pressed, “And what does the crankshaft do?”
“It… um… it converts the up and down movement of the pistons into rotation,” Enzo said, and his hands started moving like he was trying to sculpt the explanation out of thin air. He raised both fists in front of him, then pumped them up and down in quick succession. “So the pistons move like this—up and down—right? That’s what happens inside the engine cylinders.”
Then he rotated one hand in a slow circle. “The crankshaft takes that and turns it into this—circular motion. That’s what actually drives the car. The sensor tracks all that movement so the computer knows when to fire the spark plugs and add fuel. Timing’s everything.”
He paused and gave me an uncertain look as if maybe it had all come out wrong. “I mean, I know what it does when I fix it. I’m not always great at explaining the tech stuff.
I nodded, then asked, “So the sensor monitors that rotation?”
“Yeah. Pretty much. It’s like the engine’s um… like its brain, and it needs that info to keep everything timed right.”
I turned back to the papers I’d stacked. “Did you get paid for it?”
Enzo blinked. “What?”
“Quote 765/2,” I said, tapping the top sheet. “And a parts order for a crankshaft sensor. Did you get paid for the work?” I tossed the papers I’d found outside the door, and he picked them up, scanning the documents, brows drawing together.
“I have no idea, that’s a Logan thing.”
“You should check,” I said. “I can’t find the payment anywhere—no invoice match, no receipt, nothing.”
“What do you mean?” He took another step closer. “I don’t understand?—”
I slammed the door shut, shoved the chair under the handle, and was done with talking again.
He’d come too close and he was twice the size of me, tattooed, hard, and he could hurt me way worse than John ever did. They all could.
I swallowed some soup—it was softer, gentler, creamier. The warmth soothed my throat, and the crackers didn’t hurt as much to swallow this time. The note taped to the tray had a list with little boxes, asking me for muffin choices and candy preferences. Options. As if I mattered. There were also vitamins lined up like tiny soldiers and a line scrawled under them:You should take these.
I stared at them for a long time. They could be a trick. A new kind of poison, something slow. But I’d already been taking the pain meds, and they hadn’t hurt me. So what was different about this? What made this the moment I questioned it?
Eventually, I wrote a new soup option: chicken. Simple. Safe. Familiar.
Then my eyes caught on the mess of papers again, and a wave of irritation swept through me. Everything was chaos, loose sheets scattered, some fluttering off the edge of the desk when I moved. I needed to do something about it.
There was something I neededreallybad.
A stapler.
SIX
Enzo
Jamie,Rio, and I were standing in the break room, locked in a heated debate over the damn stapler on Robbie’s list. I wasn’t even part of the conversation—just nodded at the right times, tossing out automatic answers, my thoughts a million miles away. Truth was, it had been impossible to focus on anything all morning, knowing Robbie was locked in that freaking room. He’d been more lucid in the last few hours, yeah, and that was something. He’d been here over two weeks now and I hadn’t stopped watching.
Listening. Bracing and waiting for the next scream, the next sob, the next sound telling me he was back in that dark place. And when he did scream, when he sobbed and I heard him retching as though his body was trying to force the memories out, I saw red. I grabbed the axe we kept in the back and was halfway to the door before Rio stopped me, arms wrapped around my chest, stopping me from messing up.
Helping him had ceased being about duty about five minutes after I’d scooped him up out of the alley. It wasn’t about being a decent guy or doing the right thing—no one ever said I was a decent guy. It was instinct now. His survival was important to me, and somewhere in the broken nights Robbie had carved out space in me. He wasn’t only someone I wanted to help. He was someone I needed to see safe. Someone who’d gone from a ghost behind a locked door to the person I thought about when I closed my eyes. I wasn’t anyone’s hero and that scared the hell out of me.
“Why a stapler?” Jamie pressed, and I focused back on what he and Rio were discussing.
