Amanda stepped out from behind the counter, wiping her palms on her apron. She had worked enough graveyard shifts to know the only rule that mattered: treat everyone exactly the same, whether they were a cop, a drifter, or an outlaw. “Booth or counter?” she asked, her voice steadier than she felt. “Booth. Corner,” the man said. His voice sounded like gravel being dragged over concrete. He walked past her and slid into the corner booth, setting a scarred, heavy hand flat on the table. “Coffee. Black. Whatever meat you’ve got back there. Burnt.” “Yes, sir. Coming right up.”
When Amanda brought his plate, she noticed the name stitched over his chest: Sullivan. Frank Sullivan. Everyone on the road called him Wolf, though Amanda had no way of knowing that yet. What she noticed instead was the small, worn photograph resting beside his helmet—a much younger version of the same hard face standing next to a thin woman in a floral house dress, both of them smiling outside a small clapboard house. His thumb kept brushing the edge of it without him seeming to notice.
“Your total comes to fourteen dollars and fifty cents,” Amanda said quietly, pretending not to see the photo. Wolf blinked, pulled out a worn leather wallet, and dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the table. “Keep it.” “Sir, I can’t take a thirty-five-dollar tip.” “I said keep it.” He did not look up from his plate. “Buy yourself something warm for the drive home.” Amanda’s throat tightened. She slipped the bill into her apron pocket, her fingers trembling slightly. It was not enough to stop the eviction, but it was enough for one more week of Dorothy’s medication, and tonight that felt like a small miracle.
The quiet of a graveyard shift is a fragile thing, though, and trouble does not wait for a good moment to arrive. Amanda was rinsing dishes when she heard the screech of brakes outside. She looked through the drive-through window and saw a rusted, dented pickup truck roll into the lot, parking illegally close to the entrance, directly beside Wolf’s motorcycle. The headlights cut out. Two men climbed out, moving with the jittery, restless energy of people who had not slept in days. One of them—a lean man with a shaved head and a tattoo crawling up his neck—walked to the truck bed and pulled out a heavy wooden ramp. The other, wiry and hollow-eyed, pulled a pair of bright yellow bolt cutters from his jacket.
Amanda’s stomach dropped. They were going for the bike. She pressed her palm flat against the cold glass, counting the seconds without meaning to. The taller man kept glancing over his shoulder toward the highway, jumpy, like he expected headlights. She glanced toward the corner booth. Wolf was still there, head down, eating slowly. He hadn’t heard the truck. She thought about calling out to him. She thought about calling the police. She thought about the $38 in her account and the eviction notice on the door and the way her mother struggled to breathe some nights. Then she thought about the photograph beside his helmet—the woman in the floral dress—and something inside her decided.
Amanda grabbed the tire iron from under the counter, the one they used for prying open stuck cooler lids, and pushed through the back door into the cold. The two men were already working. Dale had the bolt cutters clamped on the chain locking the front wheel. Curtis was sliding the ramp into place against the truck bed. “Hey!” Amanda shouted. Both men spun around. “Get away from that bike.” Curtis laughed. “Go back inside, waitress.” “I said get away from it.” She raised the tire iron. Dale snorted. “You serious?”