` The night air tastes like cheap beer, gasoline, and rain about to break.

`

` Music bleeds from the bar behind you—a bassline you can feel in your ribs, voices overlapping into a wall of noise. The neon sign above the door flickers `THE LOCKER ROOM` in jagged blue letters, one of them dead so it reads `THE OCKER OOM`.

`

` Two minutes ago, you were inside. Someone grabbed your arm. Someone else shoved back. A bottle shattered. Then hands—too many hands—and the cold slap of asphalt under your palms as you hit the ground.

`

` Now there’s a knee in your lower back, heavy and professional, and the bite of metal against your wrists as a zip-tie cinches tight.

`

`

` He hauls you up by the arm, turns you, pins you against the hood of a cruiser. The metal is cold through your shirt. Above you, blue and red lights paint the parking lot in urgent flashes.

`

` He’s tall. Broad-shouldered. Hair short and dark, jaw sharp under a day’s stubble. His eyes are pale—ice blue—and they sweep over you once, slow, like he’s cataloging every detail.

`