The hood snaps up like a fist into wind, and the windshield goes to blank as the van noses deeper onto slick planks that move under them.
"Blind," Rick says.
"Windows two," Gavin says. "Drive the edge." He drops his glass; river air pours in wet and cold. He leans left until the A-pillar becomes a ruler. The world is slices: the dock's outside rub rail, the seam lines in the planks, the shadowed bite of the gantry ahead. He lets the right tires kiss the rub rail—a low, wet shhhh that he can steer by.
"Speed," Madison asks, voice tight.
"Walking," Gavin says, engine alone. Brakes are gossip. Use weight and angles. Ahead, the ferry gantry crossbeam hangs low enough to scalp trucks that think they're taller. Perfect.
"Pin it under the beam," Madison says, already coiling to move.
"On you," Gavin answers. He noses the hood under the rusted I-beam—metal clinks metal, and the open hood bucks, then ducks as the beam forces it down to horizontal. Sight returns in fractured, usable shards through the spidered glass.
"Hold her there," Rick says, half out his window with the towel bar. "Madison, wrench wedge."
Madison crawls to the hood edge through her window—belly on the fender, boots braced on the sill. She jams the pipe wrench between hood lip and header, heel-drives it until the jaw bites sheet steel. Rick spears the towel bar through the torn headliner and into the hood's inner bracing, levering down.
"Need tie," he grunts. "No ratchet left."
"Dock line," Madison says, eyes cutting right. A gray three-strand line coils on a cleat two feet from the bumper—a ferryman's gift.
"Grab," Gavin says.
Madison slides off the fender onto slick planks, knees and palms squealing, and snatches the line. She whips a turn off the cleat and feeds the bitter end through the grille. Rick reaches through the grille from inside like a surgeon, catches it, and hauls it up to the hood latch loop.
"Trucker's hitch," Rick says.
"Fast then," Gavin says, breath level but face hot. The gantry beam complains with a slow eeee as the van's idle tries to creep. He feathers throttle backward against first gear to hold tension without moving.
Rick throws a quick-loop trucker's hitch—turn, slip, haul—and cranks the line until the hood lip flexes down to the header again. He finishes with two half hitches and a jam. The knot thuds against the loop like a tiny heart.
"Set," Rick says.
"Back," Gavin warns.
Madison scrambles up the fender and dives through her window as the pack noise from shore changes—the rope crew's shouts dragging the pack's choir toward the pier. Something slips. Something splashes. A voice yells, "Don't—" and the rest turns to bubbles.
"Laser," Madison says, as a red dot feels for them on the hood and fails under the beam.
"Break line," Gavin says, and eases them off the beam, keeping the hood pinned a breath longer to let the line settle. He gives the dock a finger of throttle; the planks shiver and accept the load. The hood stays down, the dock line singing a clean, high, good note.
"Seam," Rick says. "Gap ahead where floats meet. Left float sits a touch lower."
"Read it like ruts," Gavin says. He crawls forward, steering by plank seam—boards jump width where floats couple; the rub rail becomes a braided black guide rope with a wet shine. He keeps the right tire on the rail's whisper and aims the left for the tongue where the two floats meet. The nose bumps, drops an inch, climbs, and the van is on the next float.
"Hands," Madison snaps.
A dead-gray arm slaps the sliding door seam from the pier ladder. It sticks, fingers jamming the seam with a meat squeak. Madison cracks the window another inch and rakes the knuckles with the wrench cheek. Bones grind. The hand keeps wanting. She hits the wrist once, high, and it forgets wanting.
"Cable," Rick says. "High—angled—bollard to ladder rack. Mid-hood height."
"Not nylon," Madison says, hearing the sing instead of the whisper.
"We give it header and roof," Gavin says. "Windows two. Fingers in." He leans the A-pillar into the cable's bite point, drops the right tire a finger off the rub rail so the van lists left. The headlight crowns the cable; it winks like tensioned instrument wire.
"On," Madison says, bracing with the wrench.
The cable clangs the hood lip, skates the strap line, and saws at the header seam. The new dock line hums and holds. The wiper spindle—what's left after the earlier snap—catches and rips out of the cowl with a pop that makes Gavin taste battery. Madison shoulders the wrench under the cable at the pillar; Rick plants the towel bar against the hood's underframe like a jack.
"Straight," Gavin says, keeping the rail tone on his right ear. The cable rides the roof seam, peels a strip of paint like tape, and pops free behind them with a twang that rattles chain link.
"Clear," Madison breathes, rolling her shoulders once to make her body remember how it fits.
Gunfire cracks from shore—two measured shots, not panic. Sparks spit off the gantry beam behind them. Someone yells, "Down on the dock!" and then collides with something wet. The river takes voting privileges from anyone who slips.
"Exit ramp ahead," Rick says. "Steep. Hawser across at knee height."
"Left or right end?" Gavin asks.
"Left end tied high; right end lower at the pile," Madison says, eyes sharp.
"Right gives us tire bounce and under," Gavin says. "Line for the pile. Lift on call."
"Copy."
He sets the nose for the right-hand pile where the hawser droops into a catenary. The dock shivers under wake from somewhere—the river moves even when nothing else does. He kisses the rub rail again—shhhh—and feeds them to the ramp lip. The hawser tightens as if it senses them.
"Touch," Rick says, towel bar braced.
Gavin touches the pile with the right bumper and immediately rolls the tire up the beveled timber a finger. The nose squats that finger. The hawser slides the hood lip, hisses along the header, and makes a bad decision about the roof seam. Madison lifts with the wrench. The hawser slides to gutter and off.
"Climb," Madison says. "Ramp up—slick."
"Engine only," Gavin says. The pedal sinks like he put his foot in the past. He sets second low and lets torque carry them up. The dock line stays tight; the hood lip kisses the header like a vow.
"Back left," Rick warns.
Gavin doesn't look. Looking is steering. He keeps the A-pillar on a sliver of cracked glass where the ramp's right edge and the lot asphalt meet in a seam that says out. The plank cleats tick under the tires like a long zipper.
"Sniper?" Madison asks.
"Red in the lot—low angle now," Rick says. "He moved off the roof."
"Then the beam's over," Gavin says. "We're exposed on the slope."
Something flashes left—a red dot trying the hood again. The ramp angle makes the dot walk down the glass and then shoot away as the hood reflects sodium instead of aim. Another shot comes, hits the ramp timbers, and spits splinters through the wheel well. A sliver nicks Gavin's cheek; it stings, and he refuses it a hand.
"Hold line," he says. He gives the engine a hair more voice. The van climbs, the hood holds, the dock line sings and doesn't change key.
At the top of the ramp, a municipal pickup has been abandoned sideways, its tailgate open, a roll of orange fencing drooled into the lane like spaghetti. Two figures—still moving, still deciding—stand by the booth beyond, hands empty, mouths full of empty words.
"Slot left," Madison says. "Between bumper and bollard. Two inches each side."
"Two inches is a joke," Rick says. "Tell a better one."
"Make it three," Gavin says, and does, because the curb is a lever if you love it enough. He scrubs the right tire up onto the curb, leans away from the pickup's bumper, and threads the slot. Rust sings along the slider for a heartbeat and stops.
"Clear," Madison says, and then her eyes go hard. "Wake."
The river speaks with a low body thump that isn't sound so much as decision. A tug somewhere up-channel throws a shoulder; the wake runs the planks back toward them. The floating dock yaws against its guides; the ramp shivers and slides an inch sideways against the abutment lip. The seam between ramp and lot jogs.
"Hold!" Rick says—not to Gavin, to the physics.
Gavin sees the seam jag and adjusts half an inch left. The wake hits. The van skates a handbreadth sideways—rubber on wet timber, a glide he can hear in his teeth. The right tire loses curb and then finds it again with a bump that tries to steer for him.
"Counter," Madison says. "Small."
"Small," Gavin repeats, giving the wheel less than a breath. The hood line stays down—dock line good, jam knot true—but the whole world moves under his hands the way a drunk room does.
"Hands," Rick says—new ones on the ramp rail, grabbing for their quarter. Madison rakes them through the slit, fast and mean. Blood freckles the wrench like rust. One body slips, knees to water, then is gone with a gulp the river doesn't apologize for.
They crest the ramp lip into the lot. Asphalt under them is worse than wood—slick with river sweat and oil. The van yawns and then steps true. The hood line hums. The air feels like coins and old learning.
"Left bend around the restroom block," Madison says. "Then service slit to the street."
"Curb braille," Gavin says, setting right rubber to the lot's concrete edge for that trustworthy hiss. The red dot plays peekaboo and dies as line of sight breaks behind the block. The block's corner scrapes the bumper clean like a whetstone. Sight remains, slit and alive.
"Seam," Rick warns. "Lot patch to street—lip up."
"Take it straight," Gavin says. He squares the nose, gives enough engine to bridge the lip without asking brakes to confess their softness. The van hops it and lands true.
"That wake's got a second hump," Madison says, listening to the river the way some people hear trains.
"Copy," Gavin says. He angles for the service slit—a mean mouth between two bollards and the back of a newspaper rack. The slit looks like a friend that owes you money: maybe.
"Across the slit—" Rick says, and stops as he sees it.
On the far side of the exit, the wake's second hump shoves the floating dock again. The ramp doesn't just shiver this time—it shifts, the hinge groans, and the ramp's side edge slides on the abutment lip, leaving the seam open an inch. Then two. Then wider.
"Go now or never," Madison says.
"Now," Gavin says, and feeds throttle.
The van noses into the slit. The right tire rides the bollard, the left kisses the rack. The wake hits the ramp.
The ramp slides a final inch. The right tires lose their dry, and the world under the right side turns river.
The van yaws toward open water as the river climbs the door seam.