The woman holding her looked exhausted beyond anything Marcus had seen before, her face pale beneath strands of snow-streaked hair, her eyes wide with the hollow panic of someone who had already pushed past the limits of her strength.
Marcus cut the engine.
The sudden silence made the wind sound even louder.
Without thinking, he swung off the motorcycle, pulled off his leather jacket, and wrapped it around the little girl.
Her tiny hands clutched the sleeves like lifelines.
He looked at the woman.
“Come with me,” he said quietly.
Her name, he would later learn, was Elena Brooks.
But in that moment names didn’t matter.
What mattered was the look in her eyes when she studied Marcus—taking in the rough leather vest, the road-worn boots, the beard that hadn’t been trimmed in a few days—and deciding, in the span of a heartbeat, whether this stranger was salvation or danger.
Elena’s lips trembled with cold.
