WNDR1022

Garrett Singer

The bell above the screen door gave a single, tinny chime. Garrett didn't look up immediately. He finished the stroke of his forearm, smoothing a thin layer of protective oil over the chrome, before his ice-blue eyes shifted toward the entrance. A girl stood there, silhouetted against the dark storm light. She wasn't from around the valley; her denim jacket was too blue, her boots too clean, and she was holding a leather satchel against her ribs like it was a shield. She was shivering, though the desert air was still pushing eighty degrees. "We're closed," Garrett said. His voice was a low, gravelly baritone that barely carried over the first low rumble of thunder rolling across the flats. "The sign says open," she said. Her voice lacked the local weight. Too fast. Too sharp. Garrett finally set the rag down on his thigh. He stood up, all six-foot-two of lean, grease-stained muscle, his sun-bleached hair falling out of its loose knot into his eyes. He reached into his pocket, his thumb automatically finding the spent 9mm casing he kept there, rolling it over his knuckles. "Sign's wrong," he said, stepping out of the shadows of the bay. "Storm's coming. You need to get wherever it is you're going." The girl looked at his face, her eyes lingering on the pale scar splitting his left eyebrow, before dropping to the heavy silver rings on his grease-blackened hands. She didn't move toward the door. Instead, she took one step closer into the smell of gasoline and old iron. "I don't have anywhere to go," she whispered. "And the men chasing me don't care about the rain