The bucket hooks the knot and pulls.
"Forward," Gavin says. "Into it."
He feeds throttle into the tooth—counterintuitive, right, but it loads the linkage and steals the operator's slack. The bucket wants to drag them sideways; the jersey barrier says no. The knot stretches, talks, and the dock line hum turns anxious.
"Blow the slip!" Madison barks.
"On it," Rick says. He shoves his fingers under the jam by the latch loop—dangerous, stupid, perfect—and yanks the slip of his trucker's hitch. The knot collapses to a straight line. Tension drops a heartbeat.
"Hold hood," Gavin says.
Madison drives the pipe wrench jaw between the hood lip and header and leans, cheek pressed to cold steel, arms locked. The bucket tooth skitters along the loosened line, loses its mouthful, and spits the rope free with a thunk against the hood skin.
"Clear!" Rick shouts.
The line is free—but now it's slack. The hood breathes. First a finger, then a thumb as wind finds a story to tell.
"Square to steel," Gavin says. He drifts left a whisper, kisses the curb—ssss—and puts the hood lip under a low sign brace jutting off a pole—one of those green street placard arms. The brace presses the hood back down with an ugly chalk squeal.
"Keep her there," Madison says, still braced.
"Re-tie," Gavin says. "Windlass. Seat base anchor."
Rick hauls in the interior tail—the same bitter end he safety-wrapped earlier around the seat base. He loops the line twice through the hood latch loop, runs the standing part back inside over his knee, then shoves the towel bar through the bight and twists—a quick Spanish windlass. The rope tightens, creaking over the latch loop. The hood settles a finger; sight steadies.
"More," Madison says.
Rick twists two more turns; the towel bar becomes a lever across the passenger footwell. He dogs the lever against the seat base frame and the glovebox lip, then claps two half hitches over the lever to make it a prisoner.
"Set," he says. "Ugly but set."
"Move," Gavin says. He eases out from under the sign brace. The hood stays. The windlass hums a steady high—nervous but proud.
The excavator operator, furious at having been denied a toy, yanks stick at random. The bucket scratches the gutter, files a bright scar in the roof seam, and drags a shriek that tastes like pennies. He over-corrects, the boom bounces, and the machine slews into a temp fence panel that clangs and folds.
"Right alley," Madison says. "Low cable, then a sagging chain at knee."
"Curb braille," Gavin answers. He pins the right tire to curb—ssss—and lists them left so if the cable rides high it meets header, not throat. The cable rings the hood lip, skates the new windlass angle, and saws a line across the header seam that the spidered glass accepts without further opinion. Madison lifts with the wrench at the pillar; the cable slides the roof seam, pops free, and whangs the fence.
"Chain," Rick says, as if the world could hear him and obey. It droops from a post into their lane like a tired snake.
"Bumper eats," Gavin says. He squares it dead center. The chain claps the bumper, hops, and falls to the cargo floor with a clatter like someone playing spoons. The windlass hum rises a note, then returns.
The alley narrows between concrete block walls that wear old phone numbers and newer prayers. A dumpster crouches crooked; its lid has a child's chalk crown sketched on it. The red dot returns, jittering over the hood and seeking for the header seam like a dog that thinks it owns the couch.
"Break LOS," Gavin says. He leans the A-pillar into the path of the dot until it paints steel, not skin. A rifle crack chips a spark off the towel bar where it juts from the windlass. The bar pings like a cheap bell; the half hitches creak.
"Line?" Madison asks.
"Holding," Rick says, and puts his palm against the lever to feel the song. "We'll re-jam in five."
"Gate," Madison says. Ahead: a scissor gate half drawn across the alley mouth, padlock bright and self-important. "Angle in."
Gavin sets forty-five, feeds weight, and lets the bumper bully the scissor. The gate sighs, rolls, and then catches on its own bent caster. The van keeps pushing. The padlock screw screams out of tube steel, lands somewhere like a coin in a cheap slot. They burst through into a service back lot with wet patches and an old mechanic's chair lying on its face.
"Re-jam," Rick says. He feeds the windlass a finger of slack—measured, not generous—then twists the towel bar another turn, driving tension back into the line. He slides a screwdriver—salvaged earlier from the map pocket—between the towel bar and the seat base frame as a pin, then throws one more half hitch around both. "Locked."
"Good," Gavin says. "Tunnel in two blocks."
"Tunnel?" Madison says, not loving the word.
"Low bar says eight-six," Rick answers, squinting at the black sign with dirty reflectors ahead. "We're under that."
"If we stay under," Madison says, eyes cutting to the windlass.
If we stay under, Gavin agrees silently and refuses to give the thought more shape.
They run a block on concrete plates that thunk-thunk under tires like a metronome. The hood lip kisses the header with every pitch change, the windlass hum settling into a thin, steady line. The red dot fades as line of sight breaks on a bend; someone shouts at someone else to stop wasting rounds; someone else discovers that instruction is not physics.
"Left wall," Rick says, reading the geometry. "Wider shoulder, paint stripe intact. Curb voice good."
"Take it," Gavin says. He eases the right tires onto the paint's whisper and lets braille be law. Ahead, a rusted sign arm drops lower than code over the sidewalk—a barber they've already paid once tonight.
"Roof rider?" Madison asks.
"Clean," Rick says. "Just dust and bad decisions."
They slip past an open loading bay where a man with an orange vest sits on a paint bucket and cries into his hands without making sound. Madison looks once, swallows something that isn't water, and keeps her eyes on the line.
"Down-grade starts," Rick says. "Tunnel mouth in a hundred. Clearance bar there, wet drip, potholes at the lip."
"Engine only," Gavin says. The pedal has stories and he isn't in the mood. He drops to second, breathes the throttle, and feels weight come forward like a big animal choosing to obey—for now.
The red dot reappears in a by-the-book way, walking the hood toward the header like a well-trained dog at heel.
"Low angle, lower deck," Madison says. "Maybe shooter inside the tunnel mouth."
"Bar will break it," Rick says. "We use steel."
"If steel holds," Madison says, and nudges the pipe wrench jaw deeper between hood and header. The wrench creaks; the hood lip settles a breath.
They curve to the right toward the tunnel and meet a new trick: a low cable strung from a handrail to a light standard inside the tunnel mouth, painted black and smug.
"On me," Gavin says. "Windows two. Fingers in." He leans the A-pillar into the bite so the cable will buzz the header, not introduce them to philosophy. The cable sings a high metallic zzrrth across the header seam and spits bright dust. The windlass hum walks up a half-note and holds. The clearance bar hangs ten yards beyond, wet with drip, its reflectors dull with road.
"Bar in ten," Madison says. "Hood is… good."
"Good enough," Rick says, but his hand stays on the windlass lever like a priest on a patient's wrist.
A shape slides out at the tunnel edge on their left—forklift, again, a different one, carriage high, operator white-knuckled. It thinks about lowering into their line. Then it doesn't, because maybe tonight it believes in miracles.
"Stay our lane," Gavin says, and does.
"Lip at the bar has a pothole," Rick warns. "Left of center. If you fall in, hood rattles."
"Square it," Gavin says.
He squares the nose to the bar and feeds the engine a clean, unpanicked voice. Go quiet, stay narrow, love the edges. The bar grows in the spidered glass like a ruler he can touch.
From behind, an engine howls. The excavator? No, a pickup—not their rope-kids, someone else—hops the plate seam and dies on the other side with a clunk; the driver pounds the wheel as if anger were a tool. The sound rolls away like weather.
"Two car lengths," Madison says. Her voice is steady without force.
The windlass gives a small voice—just a creak, wood-on-rope. The towel bar twists a quarter inch in its new prison. The hood lip lifts a finger—not much, but not nothing.
"Rick," Gavin says, not looking, not able to.
"On it," Rick says. He palms the lever, eases a breath of slack to re-seat the wraps, then twists the bar back to the stop against the screwdriver pin. The line sings higher, true again—if truth can be a thin sound.
The clearance bar drips cold on the glass.
"Now," Madison says.
Gavin holds the line dead straight, A-pillar intercepting where the red dot would be if it could. The hood lip kisses the header with a tenderness that has nothing to do with the night. The windlass creaks once more—small—and then is quiet.
"One car length," Rick says.
The bar arrives like a law that believes in itself.