Chapter 7 - The Night the Lights Went Out
The power failed at Mercer Auto at eight seventeen on a Friday.
Khloe was finishing a brake inspection.
Bea stood in the office with the day’s receipts.
The other mechanics had left twenty minutes earlier.
For a second, darkness swallowed the bay.
Then the emergency lights blinked on, washing the room in a weak red glow.
Khloe straightened.
“Whole block?”
Bea moved toward the front window.
“No.”
Across the street, the convenience store remained bright.
Khloe’s stomach tightened.
The side door rattled.
Once.
Then harder.
Bea looked at her.
Neither spoke.
Khloe reached for her phone.
A message from an unfamiliar number appeared before she could dial.
Back door. Alone. Or your brother loses the deal.
She showed Bea.
Her employer’s face hardened.
“Call emergency services.”
Khloe did.
She gave the address, explained the threat, and stayed on the line.
Someone struck the side door.
A metal crash rang through the garage.
“Khloe!”
Eddie Voss.
She recognized the voice from one terrible dinner in her apartment.
“Don’t make this stupid!”
Bea led her toward the office, where the solid interior door could be locked.
Khloe’s legs wanted to run in three directions.
Instead, she moved where Bea pointed.
Training, she thought wildly.
Not courage.
Just having somebody else tell you the next useful thing when fear made every choice look impossible.
They locked the door.
Bea pulled the blinds.
Eddie shouted again.
“You think Salvo cares?”
Khloe pressed the phone to her ear.
The dispatcher asked whether the intruder was inside.
“Not in the office,” she whispered. “I don’t know about the bay.”
Glass broke.
Bea gripped her shoulder.
Not hard.
Just enough to keep her there.
Police sirens rose in the distance.
Eddie heard them too.
A door slammed.
An engine started.
Then a sharp impact echoed outside, followed by shouting.
Khloe stayed where she was until officers identified themselves and directed them out.
She learned later that a patrol vehicle had reached the alley as Eddie tried to leave. He was taken into custody after a short confrontation.
There was no cinematic fight.
No last-second rescue through flames.
Just frightened people, broken glass, and officers asking the same careful questions until the night had edges again.
Roman arrived after Lena contacted him.
He stopped at the police boundary.
Khloe stood beside an ambulance with a blanket around her shoulders.
Again.
She hated the blanket most.
The repetition of it.
The suggestion that every time she began rebuilding, somebody could reduce her to shaking beneath borrowed fabric.
Roman saw her face and did not approach.
He waited until she looked at him.
Then he asked, “May I?”
She nodded.
He came only close enough to hear.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Bea?”
“A cut on her hand.”
He looked toward the shattered window.
Something dangerous passed through his expression.
Khloe caught it.
“No.”
His eyes returned to her.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” she said, “no.”
“Khloe—”
“I need this to end in records and witnesses. Not somebody disappearing because you got angry.”
He stood very still.
The words seemed to strike somewhere deep.
Then he nodded.
“You’re right.”
“I need you to mean it.”
“I do.”
She searched his face.
For the first time, the thing she wanted from him frightened her more than his power.
She wanted to believe him.
That night, Bea slept at her sister’s apartment.
Khloe accepted temporary accommodation arranged through her advocate, with security concerns coordinated through official contacts rather than promises from Roman’s men.
Roman went to his attorney.
By morning, he had authorized the preservation and production of additional records relating to Victor’s management, including material that might expose his own failures.
His lawyer warned him against treating cooperation as a guarantee.
Roman signed anyway.
The warehouse was searched under lawful authority days later.
Records recovered there added to the evidence investigators had been assembling.
Victor’s attorneys could no longer describe the matter as a single disgruntled worker’s complaint.
There were too many workers.
Too many matching documents.
Too many signatures belonging to people who had never agreed to become debtors.
When Victor was charged, Roman learned from his attorney.
Khloe learned from Mara.
Nobody called it finished.
That afternoon, Bea unlocked the yellow door.
Plywood covered the broken window.
Khloe stood beside her, holding two coffees.
“You could close for a while,” she said.
“So could you.”
Khloe looked into the garage.
The damaged door.
The familiar hoist.
The unfinished car waiting in the bay.
Then she handed Bea a coffee.
“Rear pads still need doing.”
Bea smiled.
May you like
“Guess we’d better get to work.”
For the first time since the lights went out, Khloe’s hands stopped shaking.
