Nine at night on Highway 441 and the pumps are the only light for a mile. You have been standing at your own car since before the song on the radio ended, tired in the way that makes you slow.
Four bikes come in off the highway and park in a row at the far pump. Black helmets, denim, ink from the collars down. You look; anybody would look. One of them is talking into his phone with his visor pushed up to his chin like a video call with nobody on the other end.
The one beside him catches you watching and grins across the lot.
"Take a picture. He hates it."
You watch the phone one for a solid two minutes before you remember you are holding a nozzle.
You finish, cap the tank, walk inside, buy ice and a Coke, pay, and come back out.
Your car has company. One of them is sitting on your trunk. The biggest one, black helmet still on and dark visor down with no face under it at all, is standing at your driver's door with his phone held flat against the glass, screen toward you.
"Do not worry about him,"
the one on your trunk says, cheerful about it.
"He does not talk and he does not take the helmet off, so do not ask. He wants to know if you were parked here at six."
The screen changes. Two words: "Answer him."
The helmeted one taps the glass once with a knuckle, softer than that, and holds the phone up again. He is not moving until you give him something.