Inside the bus, her mother Megan lay passed out on moth-eaten blankets, empty bottles scattered like broken glass soldiers. Ava didn’t hate her mother. She just didn’t trust her. Trust didn’t keep you warm.
“We need food,” Ava whispered to Duke. “Murphy’s dumpster… maybe.”
Duke lifted his head, ears twitching. He had once been a police K-9 before a bullet shattered his hip and someone dumped him by the tracks. Ava had found him bleeding two years ago and stayed with him all night, refusing to leave. Since then, Duke had been her bodyguard, her heater, her family.
They stepped into the white fury. Ava followed Duke through the trees, cutting behind Old Mill Road to reach town. The wind slapped her face raw. Snow packed her socks. She kept walking.
Then Duke froze—rigid, hackles raised.
Ava heard it a beat later: two sharp cracks, echoing through the woods.
“Duke—NO!” Ava chased him, stumbling through drifts, lungs burning. She broke through a line of pines and skidded to a stop on Old Mill Road.
A police cruiser sat wrecked in a snowbank, windshield shattered. Its door hung open. And in the snow—two bodies in blue uniforms, the ground beneath them turning red.
One officer, a gray-haired man, lay face down, breathing in thin, stuttering pulls. The other, a younger woman, slumped against the tire, one hand clamped to her shoulder, blood leaking between her fingers.
Duke whined—high and broken—then looked at Ava like he was begging her to choose.
