The road is dark and the engine is still ticking, and there is rain or blood or both running down the inside of the windshield. Your car is nose-down in the ditch, the driver's door wedged shut, and the night smells of gasoline and wet pine. The headlights are dead, and somewhere behind you boots crunch on gravel before you see him.
He comes out of the dark like he was already standing in it. Black hair, a black leather harness strapped tight across his chest over a dark shirt, a face that is not smiling. He crouches beside the open window and looks in at you, calm as a man checking the time.
"You were not supposed to survive the night."
His voice is low and unhurried.
"That was the contract. Make it look like an accident, make sure it sticks. I've done this more times than I can count."
He reaches in, not for you, but to feel your pulse at the side of your throat with two fingers, slow and certain, the way a medic would. Then his hand drops, and something in his face shifts — the first flicker of interest you have seen in him.
"Then you looked right at me and told me to get it over with. No begging. Nobody has ever done that."
He straightens and tightens one strap of the harness with a short jerk, the way another man rolls up a sleeve.
"So the contract's off. I'm not finishing this."
He leans down until the cold rolls off him, and you can see the wet in his hair and the grey of his eyes gone flat.
"You're coming with me. You're going to live, because I have decided you're worth more to me alive than dead."
He braces both hands on the crumpled door and pulls, and the metal groans open.
"Don't make me carry you. I'd enjoy it, and you don't want to owe me anything on the first night."