The strap goes slack. The hood twitches and starts to climb.
"Pin it!" Rick barks.
"Vac canopy," Gavin says. He swallows the urge to brake—you taught yourself this; don't unteach now—and rides the guide rails out of the dryer's fist. The vacuum island squats ten yards ahead under a low metal eyebrow. He angles the nose right, kisses the curb with the right front to find the line—ssss—and centers the hood under the canopy lip.
"Square," Madison says. "Four feet. Two. Now."
The lip catches the hood's leading edge and shoves it down with a chalk-squeal. The hood fights like a knee trying to stand while someone sits on it. The blast from the dryers throws paper and leaves across the lot in a white river.
"Hold her," Rick says. He's already out the sliding door, ratchet strap in a fist, moving low like he's crossing a sideline under live fire. "We ditch the tow eye. Crossmember this time."
"Copy," Gavin says. He gives the engine just enough to keep the hood trapped under the lip—no creep, no slack. The strap snakes past his left headlight in a wet arc. The apron and the towel-thing are at the bay mouth, juking the rails now that they understand depth. Another shape crab-walks the outside wall toward Rick, low and smooth like it practiced.
"Left," Madison warns. She leans out and smacks the wall-crawler in the ear through the window slit. It doesn't register pain; it registers geometry, re-angles, and reaches for Rick's ankle.
Rick loops the strap overhand around the subframe's lower crossmember—a fat piece of honest steel—then feeds the tail up through the hood latch loop. He jams the ratchet body down near the crossmember, not the flimsy tow hook, and cranks. Webbing sings. The hood shudders and tries to find lift; the strap slaps that urge flat.
"Two clicks," he grunts.
"Give," Gavin says, feeding a hair of slack with the throttle so the ratchet can eat without fighting the canopy. Rick takes it—click, click—and the strap goes banjo-tight, this time with the ratchet teeth buried where a hammer blow won't jar them loose.
"Strap tail!" Madison snaps.
Rick grabs the loose tail and stuffs it through the grill, hand-over-hand, feeding it inside to the footwell so it can't whip, can't snag a pole, can't become a snake that decides to wind a wheel later. He boots the door skin and dives in. Madison slams hers as the apron reaches the slider seam and guests itself there without knocking.
"Back," Gavin says, easing out from the canopy lip. The hood stays down, width of a finger above the header. The strap hums with a good note. Sight returns in shards he can stitch.
"Dumpster route," Madison says, breath quick. "Behind. Left gap."
He threads the van behind the sideways dumpster that blocks the street. The lot back there is gravel and pothole and a canted stack of tires that leans exactly like bad decisions. A chain droops across the far mouth with a lock that looks new and bored.
"Angle," Rick says, already bracing to shove a door if needed.
"We don't stop," Gavin says. He sets them forty-five to the chain, feeds weight, and lets the bumper bully the diagonal. The chain skids, then the wall anchor gives up with a petulant snap. They slip through into a cut between cinderblock and fence.
"Tail okay?" Madison asks.
"No slap," Rick says, meaning the strap isn't whipping. "You stuffed it smart."
"Try not to be shocked," Gavin says, and earns a single laugh that sounds like a line getting oxygen.
The cut doglegs hard right then hard left between buildings tattooed with old tags and new emergency. The right mirror stump rakes a painted gas-meter cage with a sound like a zipper. Above, a banner sag reads GRAND RE— something nobody will finish. Farther: a triangle of sky that is the neighborhood mouth.
"Lines," Madison says. "Downed—cable?—hanging across at roof height."
"Copy." Gavin skims center-left to let the line scrape the hood, not a neck, and rides the curb with the right front, letting the ssssss write his path like braille. The hood lip shaves insulation off the cable; sparks do not arrive. He thanks whatever random one of a thousand rules he obeyed earlier made this not the live one.
Something hits the roof and stays. Hands rake for the rain gutter above Rick's head, find it, and flex.
"Roof," Rick says, calm because the sentence is old now. He jabs the towel bar up through the headliner tear. It meets ribs and resistance. There's a flesh-on-steel knock, then a new rip. Nails hook sheet metal and promise to become math later.
"Brace at eleven o'clock, low," Madison says. "Sign arm."
"Take it," Gavin says. He drifts left so the roofline kisses the steel brace that once held a bakery sign. The brace bites the roof edge and shaves the clinger off like a carpenter planing a high spot. A palm slaps the rear hatch and fails to file an appeal.
"Hydrant," Rick says.
"Leave it its dignity," Gavin answers, easing right of a lamppost that isn't a lamppost anymore. He bleeds speed with engine—no brake bite left worth a trust fall—and the van listens.
The alley dumps into a drainage dip—a concrete underpass cut that ducks under a feeder road. The floor holds two inches of standing water that looks like coffee and glitter. The lip down is sudden. The rise out is steeper. In the center of the dip, figures move—three, maybe four—shoulder-deep in the water, walking their hands along the belly of the rail on the wall like they learned it from a video: low, fast, wrong.
"Water," Madison says. "Pack in the trough."
"Stay straight," Rick says, as if the road could be talked to.
Gavin centers them, sets the nose, and commits. The van drops into the water with a slap that climbs the firewall. The cracked windshield takes the spray like another hit. The hood strap hums in a deeper key. The pack turns faces toward the light like basement things seeing a door. Hands slide off the wall and find the van. Palms slap. One set of fingers claps the hood seam and stays.
"Hit," Madison says.
"Through," Gavin answers. He lets engine do the punching. The right tires bite and spit as the slope out begins. A body tumbles under the bumper and thuds the crossmember. Another climbs the slider seam and goes broad as a starfish at the window slit; Madison puts the hammer in its temple like a plug and pulls it back out clean. It falls and becomes a new texture in the water.
They climb out. The underpass coughs them onto a short, pinched straight that feeds a T. On the corner, a shuttered check-cashing place with a dozen cameras that watch nothing. On the other corner, a bar with a neon martini that didn't bother to die. The hood strap holds; the hood lip barely flutters. The pedal sinks to floor and comes back with a whisper. You lie, but I hear you.
"Left," Madison says. "Neighborhood lower and less lit."
"Right has noise," Rick says. He means sirens and a kind of light that isn't helpful.
"Left," Gavin says, making the turn with engine and geometry and a hand that doesn't twitch. Hydrangeas, crushed flat in someone's yard, become smell and apology. A porch light flicks on two houses down like a reflex.
"Pack reappearing behind," Madison reports, glancing back through the fractured oval of mirror. "Slower. Learning."
"They always learn," Rick says, more prayer than statement.
They run a block under trees old enough to give verdicts. The cracked glass makes those trees into black lace on the world. A sprinkler ticks somewhere because a timer thinks the world remains civilized. The strap hums. The engine sings a steady low.
"Next move," Madison says, already scanning corners and rooflines. "We need—"
She doesn't finish.
A red dot appears on the hood, quivering with the engine, and climbs the cracked windshield like a quiet animal that knows exactly where it wants to go.
It stops between Gavin's eyes.