Air rams the open hood. It slams vertical and stays, a black wall at forty, the windshield gone to blank.
"Blind," Rick says.
"Windows down," Gavin says. "I'll drive the edges."
Madison cranks hers. Air punches in, hot with tire and diner grease. Gavin drops his glass and leans left until the A-pillar becomes a ruler. The street becomes a gray ribbon seen in slices: curb, lane paint, the far edge in strobe glimpses. He lets the right tires brush the gutter—ssss—a tactile line he can follow without eyes.
"Speed," Madison asks.
"Thirty," he says, engine dragging. Brakes are gossip; use weight. He drops a gear. The van hums lower. He steers by shoulder memory and the sound the curb gives back.
"The diner," Rick says. "Awning ahead."
"Low enough?"
"Metal lip. Maybe eight foot."
"Good." Gavin nudges right until the curb tone climbs—the tire sidewall singing just before complaint. He kisses the horn once, not to ask but to warn any object pretending to be a person.
Something hits the hood from the outside—palms testing for warmth. The hood doesn't move; it's pegged vertical, a sail.
"Careful," Madison says softly, as if words can slow objects.
"Talk me," Gavin says. "Distances."
"Ten yards to the awning's front edge. Five. Three. Bring it right—half a tire. Now square."
Gavin centers the van under the diner's low-slung brow. Neon from a dead sign makes the hood's underside glow sea-sick green. Grease smoke curls; a heat lamp inside blinks and dies. The awning's metal lip sits at shoulder height above the hood's top edge. Perfect.
"Hold," he says, bleeding speed with engine alone, then feeding just enough throttle to press. The lip touches the hood's edge—metal on metal—then rides down the underside as the van noses in. The hood groans, hinges flex. He eases forward until the hood is horizontal, trapped beneath the lip, their sightline a wedge suddenly back.
"Down," Rick says, relief and work in one word.
"Rick—strap," Gavin says. "Latch loop to tow hook. Madison—eyes out."
"Copy," Madison says, hanging half out with the hammer. On the sidewalk, two bodies lurch from behind newspaper boxes. One wears a delivery apron stiff with old flour; one has a towel clenched like a souvenir. They don't sprint. They commit, low and direct.
Rick is already moving, throttle-fast. He fishes the ratchet strap from cargo, snaps hook to hook to shorten, then drops to one knee in air and heat. He feeds the strap end through the grill to the hood latch loop—blessedly intact—threads it back, and snakes the free end down to the front tow eye.
"Closer," he says.
Gavin eases forward another inch to keep the hood pinned under the awning lip while giving Rick slack to work. The lip scrapes paint from the hood with a school-chalk squeal. A third shape angles from the diner's corner, low and wrong, hand on the brick like a track curve.
"Left," Madison warns. She taps the approaching face with the hammer through open window—short, mean strokes. Cheek caves and does not register. The thing keeps coming with a new geometry.
Rick throws the strap around the tow hook and feeds the tail into the ratchet body. He cranks. Webbing goes taut. The hood shudders against the awning lip, attempting to lift; the strap sings a high string note. "Give me tension," he says.
"We're already giving," Gavin says, foot steady, engine pressing just enough to keep the lip heavy on steel. He can feel the van want to creep; he keeps it honest.
The delivery apron lunges at Rick's ankles. Rick kicks it in the mouth without ceremony. Teeth click his boot. He plants and cranks again. The ratchet bites one more tooth and holds.
"Tie's good," he says.
"Check," Madison says, smashing knuckles. Blood freckles the hammer's eye like rust.
"Back," Gavin warns. He eases out of the awning's bite. The hood stays down, the strap humming a little lullaby. Sight returns in fractured, workable slices—the windshield a mosaic, but a mosaic he can aim through.
"Go," Rick pants, climbing in. The delivery apron slaps the sliding door and slides down it like rain in slow motion.
They roll. The street widens a breath past the diner. That's when a driverless pickup noses from a side lot with its door yawning, coasting a hill's opinion into their lane. Its wheels are turned foolishly left. A plastic kiddie seat sits jaunty and wrong in the back.
"Right-right-right," Madison says.
"Door," Rick says.
Gavin threads the pickup's yawning door with the folded mirror stump and the remark that he refuses to lift the brake. The pickup's bumper kisses their wheel arch—tick—and the van goes past. He feels the hood tug once like a dog at the end of a leash and then behave.
"Light pole," Madison says.
"Ahead or down?"
"Down. Across two lanes."
Gavin sees it as a black line in the mosaic, low and straight. He crabs left, rides two wheels into the painted median, then straightens. The strap thrums one warning and then goes quiet again.
"Roadblock," Rick says. "Dumpster sideways across the next intersection."
"Alley?" Gavin asks.
"Left side carwash—coin-op—drive-through bay to the back lot," Madison says, voice bright with seeing. "Nose in, out behind the dumpster."
"Copy," Gavin says. He lines them for the carwash mouth—green-painted block walls, hand-lettered signs about NO MUD and NO DUALLY and a coin box lit by a single honest LED.
"Motion sensor," Rick says. "You'll wake the works."
"Then the works can be ours," Gavin says. He slides the van into the bay. The guide rails kiss their tires. Brushes sleep in their plastic armor. A sign says STOP HERE in the kind tone of machines, then below it someone has Sharpied PLEASE.
"The dryer," Madison says. "Big fans at the exit. Strong wind on the hood."
"Strap holds," Gavin says, not promising anyone anything. "Eyes back."
Shapes collect at the bay mouth behind them—the apron, the towel, and three more—none of them hurrying, all of them correct about direction. The coin box hums as the sensor decides they paid with presence. The floor sprayers cough awake, then the roof bar jerks alive and shuffles forward on a chain with civic zeal.
"Windows," Gavin says. "Two inches."
They crack them. The wash starts with a low bar pass: wet jets batter the hood, test the strap. The ratchet creaks once and settles. Water sheets the cracked glass and finds new paths in the lamination, making lightning of clean.
"Brushes," Rick says.
"Hold steady," Gavin says, letting the tires run the rails like train wheels. Overhead, the first set of dangling strips—soft plastic—slap the hood, then the windshield, then lick through the side windows in a hiss. Madison laughs once, high, at the absurdity of being licked by cleanliness while the world rots.
"Movement back," she says immediately after. "They're entering the bay."
"Rails beat them," Gavin says. The guide channels are inches deep; feet that like sprint don't like slots. The apron stubs its shin, falls with the grace of a sack, and crawls true. The towel man steps on the apron's back without interest and keeps coming.
"Underhang ahead," Rick says. The overhead gantry—the part that hosts the high-pressure bar—drops to roof height. "We can shave a roof rider if one—"
"If one arrives, it earns a haircut," Gavin says.
A new sound spins up—the blower. Four round mouths at the bay's exit spool from lazy to hurricane. Air tears water off the hood in white sheets. The strap hums hard now, a violin string between latch loop and tow hook. The ratchet body chatters against the bumper like teeth. The hook on the tow eye lifts and settles, lifts and—
"Hook," Madison says. "Watching."
The dryer hits full song. Wind hammers the hood's lip. The strap goes banjo-tight. The ratchet's claw holds; the hook on the tow eye yawns in its slot, metal-to-metal. The van creeps toward the exit on the rails as the blower wakes every leaf and wrapper on the lot beyond.
"Almost through," Rick says, meaning the bay, meaning this problem, meaning none of it.
The apron clears the rails behind them and surges, hands on the van's flank. It slaps the panel and rides the edge like a remora. Madison smashes its ear through the window slit. It keeps its plan. She hits it again until the plan forgets itself.
Gavin keeps them straight. He will not add steering slop to a problem of wind and hooks. He watches the strap out of his left corner, the world out of his right. Hold, you bastard.
They pass under the dryer mouths. The first blasts the hood, the second the windshield, the third the roof. The ratchet clatters and the tow-eye hook spits free.