“Luke—” Doc began.
“I’m lower,” Luke replied, and it wasn’t bravado. It was geometry.
He slid toward the strap, body long, profile flat. Rain braided off his beard. He took the bolt cutters from a firefighter’s grip and rested them on his shoulder a beat, measuring the strap’s rhythm like a musician finding a downbeat.
“Nia,” June said again, and I crouched behind the wrecker’s tire, bungee in my hands, palms damp inside damp gloves.
The operator steadied the cable until it hummed like a taut string, as ready as a line can be for the moment it stops sharing the job. The bus shifted a whisper toward the wrecker, as if preferring the new promise to the old.
“On three,” the captain said, her voice not raised, only tuned. “Wrecker hold. Ratchet off. Luke, you cut on the word—now.”
We waited for three.
