POV: Ava
The engine of Briggs's SUV died with a final, shuddering cough, and the silence that followed was so complete it felt like a held breath. I sat motionless, my fingers still fused to the steering wheel, the leather creased beneath my grip. Outside, the world had been swallowed whole by a monochromatic nightmare swirling curtains of white snow and deep, bruised shadows that pressed against every window like something alive and hungry.
I was half a mile from the Harrow Steel Mill. Any closer, and the crunch of the tires on the frozen gravel would have been a dinner bell rung straight into the ears of Vitelli's men. Half a mile felt both too far and terrifyingly close.
