Campbell.
"How old are you, Maya?" he asked, keeping his voice steady despite the sudden surge of adrenaline in his veins.
"Seven and a half," she replied quietly.
"Where is your mom? Why are you out here alone on the highway?"
Maya looked down at her lap, her small fingers nervously twisting the edge of the paper napkin. "We live in an old van behind the closed Sinclair station, two miles down the dirt road. Mommy got really hot three days ago, and then she started coughing up bad stuff. She couldn't get up this morning, and our water jug was empty. She told me to wait, but I knew she was dying... so I took the rag and walked here."
Two miles across the desert heat, carrying nothing but a dirty rag and hope.
Kurt set his coffee down. He didn't ask another question. He left a stack of bills on the laminate table, grabbed the takeout bags, and held his hand out to Maya. "Let's go. We're riding."
Maya’s eyes went wide as Kurt lifted her up onto the passenger seat of his Harley, strapping a spare helmet onto her head. The massive V-twin engine roared to life with a deep, chest-rattling rumble, and they sped out onto the sun-scorched highway, kicking up a trail of red dust behind them.
The Sinclair station was a desolate skeleton of cracked concrete and rusted fuel pumps. Hidden behind the rear wall, shielded from the road by dense desert brush, sat an ancient Ford Econoline van. Its tires were flat, its side windows covered with peeling duct tape and cardboard.
Kurt killed the engine. The silence of the wasteland rushed back in.
"Mommy!" Maya cried out, jumping off the bike and sprinting toward the van's side doors. "Mommy, I brought food! And a mister helped me!"
Kurt pulled the emergency medical kit from his saddlebag and followed her inside.
The interior of the van was stifling, smelling of sweat, old upholstery, and fever. On a thin mattress on the floor lay a woman, pale as chalk, shivering violently under a threadbare blanket despite the oppressive heat. Her lips were cracked, and dark hollows framed her sunken eyes.
"Maya...?" the woman whispered, her voice barely a rasp. "Baby, I told you... not to leave..."
"Drink this first," Kurt interrupted, kneeling beside the mattress and holding a plastic bottle of cool water to her lips.