At one in the morning, Ferris Street Coffee held nothing but Marin and the fading hum of the espresso machine cooling down.

Word count target: ~1,500 words

A figure stumbled out onto the snow-covered roof.

It was Julian.

His coat was torn, blood soaking through the dark fabric at his waist. He was dragging his left leg, holding his side with one hand, a empty pistol in the other.

"Julian!" Marin screamed, sprinting across the icy concrete toward him.

Behind him, through the open doorway, Arthur Bennett stepped out onto the roof.

Bennett was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, his grey coat ruined, but he held a heavy chrome revolver in his right hand. His face was twisted into a terrifying mask of aristocratic fury.

"Vance!" Bennett roared over the storm.

Julian turned, raising his empty gun, but Bennett fired first.

BOOM!

The shot rang out over the roar of the helicopter. The bullet caught Julian in the upper chest. He reeled backward, dropping to his knees in the snow five feet from Marin.

"Julian!" Marin reached him, throwing herself over his body, holding him tightly against her chest. Blood—hot and crimson—was pooling quickly under his shirt, staining the white snow beneath them.

Bennett walked forward slowly, his boots crunching on the ice, raising the chrome revolver toward Marin's head.

"You should have stayed in your little coffee shop, girl," Bennett shouted over the helicopter blades. "You could have lived a quiet life. Now, you die with him."

Julian reached up with a bloody hand, clutching Marin’s coat. "Run..." he coughed out, blood flecking his lips. "Marin... run..."

Marin looked up at Arthur Bennett. She didn't cry. She didn't beg. The fear that had ruled her life for three years—the quiet, creeping dread that had governed every tip envelope, every chair she turned upside down, every glance over her shoulder—evaporated into the freezing night air.

"No," Marin said, her voice piercing through the wind.

She reached beneath her blanket, where she had kept the heavy silver revolver concealed since stepping out of the helicopter.

She didn't close her eyes this time. She didn't hesitate.

Marin raised the weapon and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The heavy rounds struck Bennett squarely in the chest. His eyes widened in utter disbelief. He took two staggering steps backward, lost his balance on the icy ledge of the roof, and tumbled backward over the low parapet wall, disappearing into the dark, snowy abyss four stories below.

Silence descended on the roof, save for the thrum of the helicopter.

Marin dropped the empty gun into the snow and collapsed over Julian, pressing her hands against the wound in his chest, applying heavy pressure just as she had been trained to do in trauma units years ago.

"Hold on," she wept, her tears falling onto his face. "Hold on, Julian! You aren't dying tonight! Do you hear me?! You aren't leaving me again!"

"Marin..." he whispered, his eyes fluttering. "Leo..."

"Leo is on the helicopter! He's safe!" she screamed to the pilot, who came running out with a medical kit. "Help me get him inside! NOW!"

Together, they lifted Julian’s limp body, carrying him across the slick roof and loading him into the bay beside Leo.

The pilot slammed the side door shut, sealing out the freezing storm. He jumped into the cockpit, pulled the collective lever, and the helicopter rose into the night sky, banking sharply west as Marlo Ridge disappeared into a sea of red police lights and burning snow far below.

In the back of the aircraft, surrounded by the rhythmic humming of life-support monitors, Marin knelt between her brother and the man she loved.