I thought it was just a dying animal dragging trash across four lanes of freezing asphalt on Highway 220.
The morning after Elena’s discovery, an ominous feeling settled over me. Clause 14-B was a lifeline, but it also meant Silas Finch’s syndicate had just lost a quarter-million dollars. I knew how these things worked in the mountains. Debts like that weren’t simply forgotten.
I was right. Just before noon, Elena and I were driving past Gabe’s Auto Repair. Even from the road, something felt off. A black, unmarked SUV and two menacing-looking sedans were parked haphazardly outside. Three burly men in dark coats stood by the main garage door. Silas Finch’s enforcers.
“They’re here for Gabe,” Elena murmured, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
One of the men, a thick-necked individual with a scar running across his chin, started yelling. We couldn’t make out the words, but his gestures were aggressive. He raised a hand, pointing a finger directly at Gabe, who stood nervously inside the bay, framed by the open garage door.
Suddenly, without warning, the air shimmered. A low, guttural rumble emanated from nowhere. Then, a freak localized blizzard erupted around Gabe’s shop. Not just a few flakes – a swirling vortex of heavy, wet snow and ice.
Within seconds, the garage doors, which had been open, slammed shut with a metallic clang. Before the enforcers could react, a thick, black ice began to encase the metal doors. It grew at an impossible speed, three inches thick, sealing them completely. It looked like obsidian, trapping everyone inside.
The men outside gaped, their faces frozen in expressions of shock. They tried to grab the door handles, but the ice held firm, their gloved hands slipping on the slick surface.
“What in God’s name?” one of them yelled, kicking futilely at the solid black barrier.
Elena pulled my rig, which I’d borrowed, to a stop directly across the street. The blizzard was localized to the shop itself, sparing our side of the road entirely. Inside the cab, the phantom hound appeared, sitting silently in the passenger seat. Its amber eyes were fixed on Gabe’s frozen garage, a strange knowing look in their depths.
I grabbed the heavy wrench from under my seat. “We have to go in there,” I told Elena, my voice grim. “This is about to get very ugly.”
Elena nodded, her eyes determined. “Silas Finch isn’t known for patience, especially when money’s involved.”
As we stepped out of the truck, the phantom hound shimmered, then vanished. But the black ice on Gabe’s garage doors remained, a supernatural lock on the brewing storm inside. We approached the garage, the chilling silence of the localized blizzard around it a stark contrast to the normal sounds of the town.
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