Blood blinding him. "Hey!" The voice cracked like a whip across the parking lot. The man with the knife stopped. Turned.
Cassandra Blackwell was leaning against her Escalade. She hadn't collapsed. Hadn't run. Hadn't called for help and hidden like a civilian. She had leveled her compact pistol with a steady unwavering hand aiming straight at the second attacker's face.
Blood seeped through the sleeve of her jacket dark and wet dripping onto the asphalt. But her gaze was cold. Calculating. Completely void of fear. "You take one more step toward that boy," Cass said, her voice deadly calm, "and I will stop you."
The attacker froze. Looked at the pistol. Looked at his partner groaning on the ground cradling his shattered arm. They had lost the element of surprise. Lost the advantage.
The gunshot though suppressed had had attention. The back door of the roadhouse burst open. Pete the cook stood in the doorway wearing his white apron staring out into the rain with wide eyes. Sirens wailed faintly in the distance. Maybe a coincidence.
Maybe a passing patrol car responding to something else entirely. But the killers couldn't afford to find out. "This ain't over." The second attacker spat. The words came out tight with rage and pain.
He grabbed his partner by the collar of his raincoat hauling him to his feet. The injured shooter groaned, holding his damaged arm close to his body. They scrambled toward the Dodge Charger moving fast despite the injuries. The Charger's engine roared to life. Tires screamed on wet pavement spinning for purchase.
The car shot backward, executed a sloppy J-turn that sent water spraying in all directions, and tore off into the night. Headlights flicked on only after it was two blocks away disappearing into the rain and darkness like it had never existed. Finn lay on the asphalt. Rain washed the blood from his face mixing with the oil and grime and runoff carrying everything away into the gutters. His chest heaved.
Every breath sent sharp stabbing pains through his broken ribs. He felt cold. So incredibly cold. Colder than he'd ever been in his life. He tried to crawl back toward the shadows.
Back to the safety of the dumpster. Back to invisibility. Footsteps approached. Soft. Steady.
Cassandra Blackwell knelt beside him on the wet ground. She didn't care about the mud ruining her pants. Didn't care about the blood dripping from her arm. She gently placed a warm hand on Finn's cheek stopping his desperate attempt to crawl away. "Don't move, sweetheart. Don't move."
The hardness in her expression had vanished replaced by an intense, overwhelming maternal concern. She looked at his bruised, hollow cheeks, his ragged clothes, the bleeding gash on his head, the way his body shook with cold and shock and broken ribs. "You saved my life." Finn choked out words through chattering teeth.
"I have to go. Cops. I can't do cops. No cops."
Cass answered. Her voice was firm and absolute. "I swear to you, but you need help." With her uninjured arm, she pulled a sleek smartphone from her pocket.
She dialed a number, holding the phone to her ear while keeping her focus locked on Finn. The line connected. Cass's entire tone changed, urgent, commanding, but carrying a tremor of adrenaline underneath. "Magnus, it's me. I'm at the Iron Horse. They made a move for the case."
A roaring voice erupted from the other end of the line, deep, furious, loud enough that Finn could hear it even through the rain. "Yeah, I'm hit." Cass continued, "but it's a graze. I'm okay." The voice on the other end got louder, angrier.
"Listen to me, Magnus. Shut up and listen." Cass barked the words with enough authority to cut through even her husband's rage. "I'm alive because of a kid, a homeless kid out here in the lot. He took out the shooter with a tire iron. The kid is hurt bad."
Silence on the other end of the line, heavy, processing. "Don't call an ambulance." Cass instructed. Her voice dropped lower, colder.
"Bring Doc. Bring Axel. Bring the club." Another pause.
"Someone knew exactly where I'd be tonight, Magnus. Someone knew I'd be alone. We have a rat." She hung up.
Looked back down at Finn, shrugged off her thick leather jacket, wincing as the fabric pulled against her bleeding shoulder. She draped it over Finn's shivering body. The jacket was heavy, warm. It smelled of worn leather and tobacco and expensive perfume. It trapped what little heat his body had left.
"What's your name, kid?" Finn. He could barely get the word out. His eyes were heavy, so heavy. All he wanted was to sleep.
Finn. Cass repeated his name like she was committing it to memory, to something sacred. "My name is Cassandra. Cassandra Blackwell. You just picked a fight with some very bad people, Finn. But you also just made the most powerful friends in this state."
"Hang on. Just hang on." Time became strange, elastic. Finn drifted in and out of consciousness. Pete came out from the roadhouse with a first aid kit and a pile of clean towels. He pressed one against Cass's shoulder, another against the gash on Finn's head.
Asked questions, got short answers, kept looking at Finn like he was seeing him for the first time. Cass refused to leave Finn's side. She sat on the wet pavement holding his hand ignoring her own bleeding wound. Finn wanted to sleep. The pain was fading into a dull freezing numbness.
His body was shutting down, giving up. Hypothermia's final gift, the peaceful surrender. Then he heard it. Not thunder, something else. It started as a low deep vibration in the earth, a sound you felt in your chest before your ears registered it.
The kind of rumble that came from something massive, something powerful, something primal. The vibration grew, intensified, became a sustained deafening roar that drowned out the sound of the storm. Finn forced his eyes open. Headlights, dozens of them. Then hundreds.