He chose cold; the night finished the count with a quiet laugh—and they slid into the hedge pocket.
Leaves breathed in their faces. Resin and dust. The porch across the way shut its crack, the butter-yellow dying to a thin seam and then to nothing. Theo didn't talk; his silence made space for the small sounds that betrayed shape—shoe on curb, zipper teeth against stucco, gravel arguing with a heel.
"Positions," Gavin whispered. "Madison rear. I take point. Stay cold. No road."
The woman touched the kid's shoulder. "Stay on me."
"Okay," the kid said, voice dry around the word. [CHECK: age/identity]
The crouched man kept his palms up when they moved—habit now, not plea—truth, shaped like hands. He stayed left of the line like Gavin had set.
They slid along the hedge until the shadow of two parked cars made a broken lane: a dented SUV nose-in, a low coupe behind it. Streetlight made their underbellies deep. Beyond, a mailbox leaned like a spectator who had an opinion.
"Curb line," Gavin said. "Hands low. No metal."
They crabbed behind the SUV's rear tire. The bumper smelled of hot brakes from a day that had believed in errands. Something inside the car ticked as heat left a manifold. The kid's breath stuttered; the woman mirrored a calmer rhythm until his found it.
Footsteps approached from the porch direction, went past—careful, unhurried—and stopped where the street met the driveway like someone reading a map, not looking at one.
The coupe's mirror wanted to have an opinion about elbows. Madison swallowed his arm back into his body. The mirror didn't tap. Win seconds. Stack them.
At the SUV's front tire, a shape separated from the shrub on the lawn and slid—flat, fast, elbows rowing. It went for the sound of breathing last heard—here. Gavin didn't swing. He waited. When the shin cleared the bumper, he let the guard meet bone with a flat, mean kiss. The shin failed; the body tried to climb the bumper and discovered metal did not love it. Madison added a small ankle tap that taught gravity the rest.
"Next car," Gavin breathed.
They moved, keeping the curb's black seam under their hands. A bottle cap under the kid's palm wanted to be a cymbal; the kid lifted, placed, learned. The mailbox leaned away from them, then toward someone else. We're not the story.
The sidewalk broke at a narrow cut between fences—trash bins, an old hose, the night's wet paper smell. An alley seam.
"Left," Gavin whispered. "Alley."
"Road is empty," a pleasant male voice offered from nowhere and too near. Theo, as if commenting on weather. "Empty is fast."
Fast falls, Gavin thought. "Alley," he said again, and fed them in.
The bins were a chorus line of plastics. He set fingers into the flutes to keep them from clapping. The hose lay like a black snake; he toe-tested, lifted, passed it hand to hand. Broken glass made a patch of stars; they edged along the fence to keep boots off it. A chained dog discovered a reason to be alive and launched; the chain yanked it short and taught a radius.
"Stay outside the circle," Gavin murmured, measuring link length with his eyes and setting a line out of range. The dog hit air and painted spit on fence boards. Its bark trained itself on the wrong direction—toward road. Thank you.
Halfway, a motion light over a garage door chose violence and warmed. Gavin watched its cone on the gravel and the geometry of its sensor—thin wedge. "Low," he said. "Wall slide until it forgets."
They went flat enough for shirts to find splinters. The cone swung and nipped their shoes; then it remembered only the dog and the empty air and made a white bubble in the wrong place. The garage door beneath it stayed dumb. [CHECK: motion light sensor arc]
Madison's breath was a quiet engine. The kid kept cadence with the woman's fists on his sleeve. The crouched man moved like paper being fed slowly through a printer.
The alley jogged. A wooden service gate sat in the jog: vertical slats, iron straps, hinge pins domed and exposed their side. The hasp faced away; the lock belonged to someone who believed in signs.
"Hinge," Gavin said. "Up—not out."
He palmed the saber to find the seam and set the guard under the strap.
Madison took the weight of the gate with two fingers under the cross-rail like he was cheating gravity without making it mad. The woman set her shoulder to fence to keep herself from swaying with the effort. The kid watched the alley mouth, less help than he wanted to be, more quiet than he thought.
"Lift me a hair," Gavin whispered.
Madison obliged. The strap relieved; the pin thought about moving. Gavin levered patient, not hard. Paint powdered. Metal squealed only in his teeth.
At the alley's street end, shoes paused—two sets. At the backyard end, something learned how to crawl over a bin without tipping it.
"Talk if you have to," Theo's voice advised the dark, not them. "Talk keeps you upright."
"Tongue is noise," Madison breathed, almost laughing.
"Up another grain," Gavin said, to the pin. The domed head rose a flake, then stalled. He reset the guard a thumb-width and coaxed. The pin climbed.
The kid's knee started to tremble. The woman's hand tightened on his sleeve until the tremble belonged to both of them and therefore to neither.
The first pin cleared. "One," Madison whispered.
"Top first," Gavin said. "Bottom last holds weight."
He moved to the upper strap and repeated the rhythm: weight, relief, lever, patient. The alley behind them found a reason to bring elbows and knees. A bin lid burped. The dog redoubled its bark at a motion-lure cone that had nothing to do with them. The shoes at the street end worked the gravel without coming in—herder spacing again.
The upper pin lifted, stuck, then lifted again. "Two," Madison breathed.
Gavin slid the guard under the last strap. The bottom pin was a liar; it promised to move and then tried to send the gate's weight into his wrist. He didn't let it choose. "More," he whispered.
Madison took another hair of weight. The gate groaned—wood grain, not voice. The pin rose a grudging flake.
From the alley's mouth, a low flashlight snapped on—waist height, not up—painting their feet and the line of the saber's guard against iron. Theo never blinded; he traced edges. "Your hands tell stories," he said, conversational, as if they had drinks.
"Eyes on me," Gavin said to his people. "Not the light."
The bottom pin came up the last shallow grain. He caught it with two fingers so it wouldn't bounce, then eased the strap clear.
"Now," he said.
Madison rolled the gate an inch at the hinge end and walked it an inch at the latch—quiet, a man carrying something sleeping. The gap showed a utility easement—meters like gray faces, boxes, conduit, a skinny crease of concrete between fences. Cold air moved like a rumor.
"Through," Gavin said. The woman slid and pulled the kid with her. The crouched man became narrow and went. Madison sent the gate further on its hinge without letting the latch bite, then folded himself through.
Gavin came last, blade low, guard crosswise. Behind, the low flashlight stroked the gap, then went out to make their eyes remember dark.
The easement ran tight—fence slats left, cinderblock right, meter faces blinking dead. [CHECK: meter/power state] A cable hung like a black vine. The concrete walked them forward in squeaks and whispers.
"Coach," Madison rasped, voice small for a big man.
"I've got you," Gavin said, meaning your feet, your choices, your air.
The kid stumbled on a conduit bracket. He didn't fall; the woman's fist had his shirt, and Madison's palm steadied his spine without pushing. "Small steps," Gavin said. "Inside of your feet. No outside edges."
They passed a gap in the fence where a yard's pool made a pale rectangle nobody needed. The easement kinked at a palm stump that had lost the rest of its body. Ants made a low river and ignored them.
Another gate waited—this one taller, two straps, older pins. No road light leaked through. On the other side: quiet, and the smell of clay and rosemary. Quiet made him suspicious now; it meant patience had already arrived.
"Hinge again," Gavin said. The saber's guard found the top strap. "Madison—weight."
"Copy." Fingers, relief, patience.
The top pin didn't argue long. "One," Madison breathed.
The bottom—he set the lever, eased, felt the gate try to gift him its mass, refused, eased again. Paint flaked like ash. The pin rose a hair.
At both ends of the easement, footsteps took positions. Not rushers—blockers. The kind of men who learned other men's timing. The kid made a sound; the woman's grip translated it into quiet.
Theo didn't speak. His patience warmed the wood.
The last pin came up slow. Their breaths stacked and unstacked. Metal whispered. The pin cleared into Gavin's hand. He caught it and didn't let it sing.
"Now," he said again, and Madison rolled the hinge as if carrying a sleeping door. The gap opened on another narrow run—darker than the easement, the smell of plants and damp clay, a fence corner ahead like the folded edge of a map.
The low flashlight on the far side flared—painted the ground, not faces. Behind, bin-plastic burped one more hungry note and a body brushed slats.
"Slip," Gavin said. "Left first. Stay small."
They went through as the alley behind and the men ahead decided together to make the gap smaller.