CHAPTER 5: CRUMBS IN THE ALLEY
Mark knelt on the cold pavement so he was eye-level with the young boy. "How long have you known?"
Leo pulled his tattered jacket tighter around his shoulders. "Three months. I sleep back here because the bakery on the corner tosses day-old bread at dawn. I see a gray van stop at your back fence every Tuesday at midnight. A man in a dark hoodie hands a small brown bottle to the lady with the yellow hair."
"Did you ever see his face?" Mark asked, his pulse hammering against his temples.
"No. He wears a cap pulled low. But he drives a van with a faded logo on the side door—a blue snake wrapped around a flower. And he always drops his cigarette butts right by the gate."
Mark’s mind raced. *A blue snake wrapped around a flower.* It sounded like a variant of the Rod of Asclepius, the traditional symbol of medicine and pharmacies.
"Leo," Mark said softly, noticing the boy’s blue-tinged lips and bare ankles. "Why are you out here alone? Where are your parents?"
Leo looked away, staring down at his scuffed sneakers. "My mom got sick two years ago. When the money ran out, she went to a clinic upstate and never came back. The foster home was bad, so I left. Nobody looks for a kid who collects cans. People look right through you."
A sharp pang of remorse struck Mark. In his comfortable, grief-blinded life, he had walked past children like Leo a hundred times without offering a second glance. Yet this abandoned boy was the only person in the world who had bothered to protect his little girl.
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"Tonight, you're not sleeping in the dirt," Mark said firmly. "I'm going to set you up in a motel near the highway. But first, I need you to show me exactly where that van stops."
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