Sienna Clark stood in the dark parking lot of a gas station with eight crumpled dollars in her hand. Her last eight dollars. Tomorrow morning’s breakfast money for her daughter.
The overhead lights buzzed with that thin fluorescent hum every late-night gas station in America seemed to have, harsh and lonely at the same time, washing the concrete in a sick white glare. Beyond the lot, traffic moved thin and fast along the road, headlights sliding past like lives that had somewhere better to be. The soda machine by the wall rattled.
A moth beat itself against the light near the restroom door. Somewhere far off, a siren rose and fell and disappeared. Then she heard it.
A man gasping for air. She turned and saw him near a chrome motorcycle parked under one of the lights, a huge man in black leather, gray beard, tattoos down both arms, one hand clutching his chest as if he could physically hold himself together. He stumbled once, hard, then dropped to one knee.
A second later he hit the pavement. “Don’t get involved,” the gas station attendant shouted from the doorway. “Those guys are nothing but trouble.”
