There were other cards.
Membership cards.
Something resembling a business card.
A folded piece of paper Ethan didn't open.
And at the very back of the wallet, tucked behind everything else as though somebody had deliberately protected it, was a photograph.
It showed Marcus standing with a group of men outside what appeared to be a garage.
Everyone wore the same kind of vest.
Everyone faced the camera with the same expression.
Not the expression people wore when a photograph was merely a photograph.
It looked more like a record of something that mattered.
Ethan studied it.
He didn't know much about motorcycle clubs.
He'd seen groups of riders on highways.
He'd heard the engines.
Noticed the vests.
But Ethan had spent most of his recent life learning not to notice things that weren't his concern.
Noticing could bring trouble when you were homeless.
You kept your head down.
Made yourself small.
Didn't stare at people long enough for them to feel stared at.
But something about that photograph held Ethan's attention.
The men stood close together.
Solid.
Like they'd chosen one another.
It made something complicated move inside his chest.
Ethan closed the wallet.
He remained there for perhaps a minute.
Maybe longer.
$4,300.
Nobody had watched him pick it up.
Nobody was watching him now.
Nobody would ever know.
He thought about what the money could do.
Not abstractly.
Not dreamily.
Practically.
The way somebody who had spent a long time without resources thought about resources.
A room.
Not a good room.
Maybe not even a decent room.
But a room with a lock.
A bed that wasn't pavement.
Food today.
Food tomorrow.
New shoes.
God, the shoes.
Maybe a jacket without the tear along the right shoulder that allowed wind through no matter how Ethan positioned himself.
He could disappear with the money.
No one would stop him.
Then Ethan thought about the one thing he'd somehow managed to preserve through everything that had happened.
The falling-out with his family.
Months of couch surfing.
Shelters.
Then the street.
The people who promised help and disappeared.
The nights when temperatures dropped and the only thing between Ethan and a genuinely dangerous situation was the stubbornness that had always been both his greatest strength and one of his greatest problems.
Through all of it, he had kept one rule.
He had never taken something that wasn't his.
Not once.
Not when it would have been easy.
Not when nobody would have known.
Not even on nights when hunger made his hands shake and the rationalizations came fast enough to sound completely reasonable.
He had never stolen.
Because somewhere beneath thought, somewhere older than language, Ethan understood that if he began taking things simply because he could, even small things, even things their owners might never miss, then the version of himself he had been fighting to protect might stop existing.
And once that version was gone, Ethan didn't know what would be underneath it.
He didn't know if anything would.
Taking this money would answer that question.
He wasn't ready for the answer.
Ethan put every bill back.
Closed the wallet.
Placed it in his pocket.
Then crossed the parking lot toward the diner.
The bell above the door jingled when he entered.
Warmth hit him first.
That specific early-morning diner warmth made of coffee, frying grease, low conversation, and the hiss of food cooking on a griddle.
Ethan's stomach contracted painfully at the smell.
He ignored it.
He stood inside the entrance and took in the room.
Four booths along the window.
A counter with eight stools, five occupied.
Several tables in the center.