Chapter 6 - A Game of Cat and Mouse"Get down!" Roland hissed, yanking Clara behind a stack of wooden crates piled high with frozen mackerel crates.
Goliath let out a low, rumbling growl, his hackles raised, ready to charge. Roland placed a heavy hand firmly on the mastiff’s neck, pinning him to the frozen ground.
"Quiet, boy," he whispered.
Through the gaps in the wooden crates, Roland watched Vince and two armed thugs step out onto the pier. They were methodically searching every shadow, questioning dockworkers, and checking IDs.
"Curtis thinks someone pulled him out," Vince’s harsh voice carried across the icy wind. "Search every corner of this pier. If anyone saw a battered man with a giant dog, bring them to me."
Clara’s heart pounded in her throat. She pressed herself flat against Roland’s chest, feeling the solid, rhythmic thud of his heartbeat. For a terrifying second, the danger dissolved into the intense, magnetic proximity of the moment. She looked up into his striking, storm-gray eyes, searching for fear—and finding only calculated, cold rage.
"They're heading this way," Clara whispered against his ear.
"I know," Roland murmured back, his hand sliding down to grip the heavy iron wrench he had slipped from the diner's toolkit. "When I tell you to run, sprint toward the drainage tunnel behind the cannery. Don't look back."
"I'm not leaving you to die here," Clara shot back with fierce defiance. "We fight together, or we don't move at all."
Roland looked at her, truly seeing her for the first time—not as a terrified waitress who happened to stumble upon a wreck, but as a warrior forged in the same brutal fires of survival as himself. A grim, approving smile touched his lips.
"Very well. On my mark... three, two, one—now!"
Roland vaulted over the crates like a striking panther, slamming the heavy iron wrench directly into the jaw of the nearest thug before the man could draw his pistol. The goon dropped like a stone.
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"Contact! Over by the crates!" Vince roared, pulling his automatic weapon and firing a burst of lead that splintered the wood inches above their heads.
Clara didn't hesitate. She grabbed a frozen mackerel crate and hurled it directly into Vince’s path, causing him to stumble on the ice just long enough for Roland and Clara to dart into the shadows of the abandoned fish cannery.
