FADE IN: EXT. HIGHWAY REST STOP, PARKING LOT, DUSK Golden light angles low across cracked asphalt. The kind of light that makes everything look like a painting of itself. A minivan idles near the entrance, its sliding door open. A FATHER lifts a toddler from a car seat while two older children sprint toward the building, their sneakers slapping the pavement. A TRUCK DRIVER crosses the lot carrying a styrofoam cup, his free hand adjusting the brim of a cap that has not been new since the last century. Two sedans. A motorcycle cooling in the shade of a concrete pillar. The ordinary arithmetic of a place designed for passing through. The rest stop building is institutional and low slung. Brick facade. Automatic glass doors. A sign above the entrance reads: REST AREA, NEXT REST AREA 47 MILES. The vending machines are visible through the glass, glowing their particular shade of fluorescent commerce. Behind the main building, partially visible between a dumpster and a length of chain link fence, a concrete maintenance structure squats in the long shadow of the rest stop. It is twenty yards from the parking lot. No windows. A single metal door. A county property sign bolted beside the handle. The building is in the frame like a cavity in a tooth: present, functional, and easy to ignore until it announces itself. A MAN in a reflective vest walks toward it from the access road. He is unhurried. His boots are work