Deliberately.
He holds the look long enough that anyone in the driver’s seat would notice. Then, like it means nothing, he keeps walking. Two steps past the van. Casual. Unbothered. Then he shakes his head, lets out a quiet sigh, and turns back.
When he reaches the window, he raises his hand to knock.
At the same time, Nathaniel tugs me along the row, and we cut behind the car parked beside the van. It’s a gray sedan with afaded sticker on the rear window. We drop into a squat behind it, knees bent, bodies tucked low.
Like thieves.
My heart is pounding so loudly it’s almost humiliating.
Cassian’s boots come into view beside the van, planted beneath the lower edge of the white panel door, next to a hubcap streaked with winter salt.
Okay.
This is happening.
I scan the lot. Just once. And that’s my mistake, because there are way, way too many people around.
Cassian raises his fist and knocks on the window, hard enough that Nathaniel and I hear it. My focus snaps back.
For half a second, nothing happens, and my stomach drops. If the man doesn’t react, if he doesn’t even look, then what? What choice do we have besides grabbing the goddamn gun, shooting out a tire, then firing into the sky to make everyone scatter, and praying, and I meanpraying, we can get away before the police show up?
But then, luckily, or maybe unluckily, there’s movement up there. Delayed, like he had to think about it first.
Cassian shifts his weight, leaning in. This time I can’t hear what he says. I can see it in his posture, though. He goes a little tighter. A little more circumspect.
Nathaniel squeezes my hand once, and we crab-walk out from behind the gray sedan. We slide along the narrow lane between the parked cars and the van, heads low, shoulders tucked.
I catch Nathaniel’s eyes.
“Switchblade,” he mouths.
Right.
I take a breath so shallow it barely counts and slip my hand under the hem of my oversized jacket. My fingers find the switchblade, and I ease it free without looking.
Above us, Cassian’s voice drifts down through the gap between the van and the car beside it.
And it isn’t Cassian’s voice. Not the Cassian I know, anyway.
This one is softer around the edges. Big warm hug energy without the cheerfulness. I didn’t even know he had a voice like that in him.
“Hey,” he says, like he’s apologizing for taking up space in the man’s day. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to startle you. You’ve got a flat up front.”
A pause.
The driver answers too low for me to catch, but I hear the shape of it in Cassian’s response.
“Yeah,” Cassian goes on. “Front passenger. It’s nasty, too. You run a van this heavy on that, you’ll chew the rim.”
I swallow so hard my throat hurts.
I glance at Nathaniel. He’s watching my hands.
I flip the switchblade open as silently as I can. The click is microscopic, but it sounds like thunder to me.
“I do construction,” Cassian says. “I’m in and out of job sites all day. Nails, screws, rebar scraps, you name it. I can show you where to jack it without bending the skirt. These vans are a pain. They hide the spare under the belly, and half the time the crank tool’s missing.”
