Behind them, the villa exhales something man-shaped into the dark.
"Left," Gavin says. "Trees. Cars for cover."
They keep low along the curb. The street curves; trees bead the sodium light. Air tastes like hot metal and rosemary. Sirens rake the distance.
"Status," Gavin says.
"Bleeding," Rick answers, palm clamped to his ear. "Hearing's a kettle."
"Straight pain or dizzy?"
"Straight."
"Madison?"
"I can run."
A porch light snaps on. A man in bare feet pounds his own door, shouting a name. The hedge beside him shakes. Something low and fast hits his knees. He goes down; teeth start working his calf with steady intent. The porch light makes it look like a tutorial.
Gavin cuts a hand: quiet, move. They slip past a silver SUV. The hood is warm. He wants keys, a locked cab, solvable problems.
Metal booms. A shape lands on the SUV's roof and squats, weight shifting. Even through leaves the shoulders are Leonard's. A dark V dries down his chest. He tilts his head and tastes the air.
Gavin points: go. They slide along the doors, paint cold on jackets. Ahead, a T-intersection: left toward lit storefronts, right into dark cul-de-sacs. Light means sightlines.
"Left," he says.
"Copy," Rick says on a breath he can spare.
They cross the open. A sprinkler ticks. A dog barks inside a house and cuts off like a tape stopped by a thumb.
The SUV chirps again. Leonard's weight shuffles. Geometry shrinks: them here, him there, the line short.
An old landscaping truck squats ahead with ladders racked. Driver's window cracked, thermos on the bench, a lucky hat on the dash. Gavin tries the handle—open. "Check visor," he whispers.
Rick flips it. Nothing. Cupholders: coins, a golf tee. "Fuck."
Gavin palms the column shroud. Old truck, good odds. No driver for the tiny screws. He finds the harness by feel, plastic ridges. Too many wires. No cutters.
"Then we're pedestrians," he says, sliding out. "Bar high."
"I'm not stashing it," Rick mutters, lifting the towel bar like a pike.
A weight drops into their lane without sound. Leonard. Up close, he's a museum of wrongs. Something is missing under his ribs; his hands hang low. His eyes track off, but his legs remember the forty. He looks at them like a math problem, picks a solution, and goes.
"Angle him," Gavin says. "Cars left. He's fast straight."
Leonard closes. No roar, no threat display—just that forward lean and those hands. "Now," Gavin snaps, and they break.
Leonard aims past Rick, leading like he's watched highlights. Gavin throws a trash can under him. Leonard plants and runs the rim, toes taking bites of thin metal. Rick swings the bar—church-bell bong. Leonard's head snaps, returns; he doesn't stop.
"Run!" Gavin barks, anger giving the word teeth.
They cross the T, left, into neon. A liquor sign hums; a nail salon blinks cheerful lies. A minivan slides across the far lane, a woman biting the child climbing over the console. The van kisses a mailbox and keeps rolling. Madison clamps a sound in her teeth.
"Eyes on me," Gavin says. "Don't collect tragedies."
A siren chops the corner. A cruiser fishtails in, light bar coughing red-blue. The driver's door pops; the officer is young, wide in the shoulders, gun up, breath too high. "Hands! Show me—" He sees Leonard and the sentence dies.
"Behind us!" Gavin shouts, palms high.
The pistol barks twice. One round takes Leonard in the shoulder—meat blows, no effect. The next takes his throat—air goes wet; he speeds up. The officer freezes one second too long to file the moment in his religion. Leonard hits him shoulder-first and takes him across the hood. The pistol skates under the car. Leonard's hands find the neck and work. The sounds are plumbing. Kicking stops. Blood beads the headlight and runs.
"Gun," Rick says, diving low. He reaches under the cruiser. His fingers find metal and then cold flesh that still moves. He jerks back. "Fuck."
"Leave it!" Gavin says. He wants the gun worse than breath. Leonard turns, mouth lacquered, and looks at them like a math problem again.
"Sidewalk," Gavin orders. "Glass fronts. Reflections."
They run under awnings, ducking planters. Their shadows shiver on the windows. Madison's breath whistles; Rick's steps hitch. The night rides Gavin's back like a hand not yet touching him.
A hardware store sleeps with its grate half down. Inside: hammers, axes, pry bars. No time for locks. The grate has a manual chain. Gavin yanks. A link moves with a squeal. Another. The gap grows a rib.
"Bar," he says. Rick wedges the towel bar. Madison slides on her back under the grate, arm reaching. The inside handle gives; a deadbolt catches. "Left of handle," Gavin says. "Thumb turn." She finds it, twists. The door opens a palm's width and the grate eats that palm.
Gavin shoves the grate up with everything he has. Four inches buy them a choice. He dives under into aisles that smell like dust and rubber, grabs two hammers and a short-handled axe, passes a hammer to Madison. "Hit only with a wall behind you."
Rick slides in, takes a pry bar like a sacrament. Gavin tapes paper shop towels over Rick's ear with duct tape. "Pressure."
"Sexy," Rick says, spitting pink.
Glass breaks like a thrown pitcher behind them. Leonard runs through the front window. The grate isn't low enough to matter. He slides on glass and finds his feet on speed alone. Gavin's hands feel the axe get heavier.
"Back aisle," he says. "Narrow is good." They cut through plumbing. PVC elbows and copper flash. Leonard's shoulder clips a pegboard; packages of screws launch like dull hail.
End cap—right—dead end: water heaters. Wrong geometry. Gavin turns. Leonard fills the mouth of the aisle with that hinge-run.
"Left leg!" Gavin barks. "Joint!" He chops as Leonard springs. The axe bites above the knee with a sound he will never pay off. It sticks halfway. Leonard's knee yaws; he turns his fall into forward and hits Gavin chest-first. They bounce off a heater. The label shivers.
Rick spears with the towel bar. It hits rib and bows. Leonard's hand clamps it and pulls Rick in like a hooked fish. Rick headbutts, gets stars. Madison doesn't scream; she swings. The hammer pops Leonard's wrist once, twice. Something gives. The bar comes free. Rick cracks Leonard's jaw. Teeth chip.
Gavin rips the axe loose and chops again, sideways. The blade kisses spine and sticks shallow. Leonard drops to all fours because forward is the only rule left. He crawls quiet except for the wet.
"Out the back," Gavin says. "We don't finish fights."
Rick lurches past. Leonard's hand snaps and clamps his ankle. Rick stomps. Heel finds face; bone changes shape. The grip loosens.
They run the cinderblock back hall. EXIT glows bureaucratic red. Gavin hits the bar; the alarm shrieks. Cold air. The alley smells like freon and wet cardboard. Chain-link, dumpster, lot light orange.
"Right," Gavin says. "Dark buys time." A hit slams the push bar from inside—something learning doors.
They run the dumpster line. Madison's hammer taps her thigh. Rick's taped ear leaves a dotted trail on his shirt. Gavin carries the axe low and back and almost laughs at the thought of postgame Gatorade because his brain is trying to die.
An apron-wearing woman sways in the alley mouth, bleeding from more places than make sense, a wine key clenched like a blade. She looks past them toward the shrieking door and runs that way, clattering into the store like a deer on tile.
The lot opens. Cars at angles. For four steps the world is big again. Then something drops over the chain-link without using the top and lands like thrown meat. It stands slow, patient.
Leonard. One leg a question mark, mouth shiny. He leans on the fence to stand like a teammate. Balance returns because balance is a trick you keep.
"Decision!" Rick pants. "Which way!"
Gavin points: a delivery van idling with hazards tapping orange. Driver's door open, clipboard and scanner on the seat, key in the column. Bless what's still lazy.
"There," he says, and they sprint.
Leonard comes, dragging speed into a new shape. Gavin reaches the van first, hauls himself into the seat, foot to brake, hand to key. The engine hums a willing note. "In!"
Madison dives across the passenger seat, hammer under her ribs. Rick hits the step and misses with the blood-slick shoe, bangs a shin, grunts, and climbs. Leonard reaches the door seam with a hand that works like a clamp.
Gavin drops the shifter, heel on the horn. The van lurches. Leonard's hand slides along the door, fingers hunting for purchase. Rick swings the towel bar down on the hand, hard. Knuckles crack like walnuts. The hand slips. Leonard's face passes the mirror, too close, all wrong. He bites the air like he means to chew the van.
Gavin floors it. Tires chirp and bite. The van snaps across the lot toward the exit, cones scattering. Leonard runs two steps, three, and then the bad leg betrays him. He stumbles, plants on hands, and comes up again like a machine shrugging off a jam.
They hit the road. "Seatbelts," Gavin says, because rituals can survive anything. Madison's hands shake the belt into the buckle. Rick stuffs the towel bar between his knees and yanks his strap across his chest.
Behind them, the lot shrinks in the mirrors. Leonard stands in the orange wash, sway-backed and thinking, and then he turns to the light of the hardware store and the screaming that isn't theirs.
"Where," Rick manages.
Gavin scans the street: freeway sign two blocks ahead, on-ramp curling like a ribbon; to the right, a darker slope down toward a dry creek; left, more lights, more people, more problems. The van buzzes at forty. The engine wants steady.
"Freeway gets us out of neighborhood heat," he says. "Or it gets us trapped in a frozen parade."
"Pick," Madison says, voice bright with fear.
Gavin threads between a stalled sedan and a toppled scooter. The stalled driver stares, blinking blood. The scooter rider is gone. The ramp rises ahead, green sign offering names that still mean something for another hour.
He signals like the habit is stronger than the end of the world. "On-ramp," he decides. "Distance is life."
He lines the van up for the merge. The ramp climbs, rail on the right, concrete wall on the left. An overturned food truck blocks half the top. Its serving window is open like a grin. Something inside thrashes.
"Straddle it," Rick says.
"Copy." Gavin sets the van straight. He feels the weight, the climb, the decision. The mirror swallows the neighborhood and the hardware store and the alley that birthed a monster.
At the top of the ramp, something hits the roof with both feet and sticks.