Chapter 1
Alone in the Rain
The rain had been falling since Noah's shift started, and by the time Denise locked the front doors of Harlow's Market it had settled into the kind of steady November downpour that made the whole town of Millhaven feel like it was holding its breath underwater.
Noah pulled his hood up and stepped out into it. The parking lot was empty except for the puddles, each one catching the orange light of the streetlamps and throwing it back in broken pieces. His shift had ended at nine-forty, which meant he was already late getting home, and Elena would be awake, listening for the front door, pretending she hadn't been worrying.
He unchained his bike from the rack by the loading dock. It was an old blue ten-speed he'd rebuilt twice, and the chain had been skipping for a week. He'd meant to fix it. He'd meant to do a lot of things.
The first pedal stroke told him the chain had finally given up. There was a metallic ping, a sudden looseness under his feet, and then the pedals spun free, useless as a promise. Noah stopped, one foot on the wet asphalt, and stared down at the sagging loop of metal hanging off the sprocket.
"Great," he said to the empty lot. "Perfect."
He turned the bike around and started walking it back along Route 9, toward the edge of town. Home was two miles in the other direction, but the only shelter between here and there was the old gas station at the crossroads, its awning still standing over pumps that had been dry for three years. He could wait out the worst of the rain there, maybe call his mom, maybe figure out the chain with the little multi-tool on his keychain.
The wind pushed the rain sideways. By the time he reached the awning, his jeans were soaked through at the knees and his sneakers squelched with every step. He leaned the bike against a boarded-up window and pulled out his phone. Twelve percent battery. He'd forgotten to charge it again.
He was about to call Elena when he heard it. He tried the multi-tool on the chain first, crouching under the awning with the rain dripping off the edge onto his neck. The tool was small and the links were stiff with cold, and after a minute his fingers were too numb to hold it steady. He gave up and sat back on his heels, watching the rain turn Route 9 into a black mirror. Elena would be at the kitchen table with her tea gone cold, the inhaler beside her hand, listening for the front door. She worried enough for two people since the pneumonia, and Noah had gotten good at being the one who didn't add to it. Get home. Fix the chain tomorrow. Keep your head down. That was the whole plan, and it had been a good plan right up until the sound of the engine.
At first it was just the rain, and then underneath the rain, the low growl of an engine — a big one, a motorcycle, coming fast along Route 9 from the direction of the highway. Noah looked up in time to see the headlight cut through the dark, too fast for the wet road, too fast for the curve.
The rider saw it too. He braked, and the bike's rear wheel slid sideways on the wet pavement. For a terrible second the motorcycle seemed to hang in the air, balanced on nothing, and then it went down with a scream of metal and a shower of sparks that hissed and died in the rain.
Noah didn't think. He dropped his phone and ran.
The bike lay on its side in the middle of the road, its engine still sputtering, gas and oil spreading in a dark rainbow across the asphalt. The rider lay ten feet past it, face up in the rain, one arm flung out, the other bent wrong beneath him.
He was huge. That was the first thing Noah noticed — a man built like a doorway, with a gray-streaked beard and a leather vest soaked dark by the rain. Blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow, thin and bright, and his chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths.
"Sir?" Noah dropped to his knees beside him, his hands hovering, afraid to touch. "Hey. Can you hear me?"
The man's eyes stayed closed. Rain hammered down on both of them.
Noah's heart was going so fast it felt like it was trying to climb out of his throat. He'd never been the person who ran toward things. That was the rule he'd lived by since his dad walked out two years ago and his mom started getting sick: keep your head down, don't get involved, take care of your own. The rule had kept him safe. The rule had kept him alone.
But the man on the road was alone, too, and he was dying in the rain, and nobody else was coming.
Noah fumbled his phone out of his pocket. His hands were shaking so hard he nearly dropped it twice. He dialed 911 and pressed the phone to his ear with one hand while he held the other over the man's chest, feeling for breath.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"There's been a motorcycle accident," Noah said, and his voice came out steadier than he felt. "Route 9, by the old gas station. A man — he's hurt bad. He's not waking up. Please hurry."
He gave the address, the landmarks, everything the dispatcher asked, and all the while the rain kept falling and the man kept breathing, shallow and uneven, like a candle about to go out.
Then, just as the dispatcher was telling him the ambulance was on its way, the man's eyes opened.
They were gray, and clear, and they fixed on Noah's face with a focus that didn't belong to a man who'd just been thrown off a motorcycle.
The man's hand came up — slow, trembling — and closed around Noah's wrist. His grip was weak, but it was deliberate, and his lips moved, shaping words Noah had to lean in to hear.
"Don't..." The man's voice was a rasp, a thread. "Don't... let them..."
And then his eyes rolled back, and his hand went slack, and the rain kept falling on Route 9 like nothing in the world had changed.