Rain hammered the roof of Malik’s cab as he turned onto Halvorsen Street, the wipers smearing the city’s shadows across the windshield. He shouldn’t have been out this late, not in this neighborhood, but slow nights made drivers desperate.

He almost didn’t see her—standing at the edge of the sidewalk like a ghost, her silhouette caught in the stutter of a faulty streetlamp. She waved frantically, one high heel in hand, the other foot bare and bleeding.

Malik braked hard.

She yanked the back door open and threw herself inside. “Drive. Anywhere but here.”

He hesitated. Something about her—wild-eyed, soaked to the skin, blood on her wrist—set off alarms.

“You okay, miss?”

She met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Please. If they see us—”

Headlights appeared behind them, turning the corner.

That was enough.

Malik floored it.

The cab fishtailed as it accelerated, tires spitting water. The other car didn’t follow immediately, but Malik didn’t slow down. He didn’t ask more questions either. There were rules in this job. Sometimes you broke them.

Three blocks later, he finally spoke. “Name?”

“Jess,” she said. “Jessica.”

“What’s going on?”

She hesitated. “I saw something. Something I wasn’t supposed to.”

That much had been obvious.

“I was working late—admin stuff for this biotech firm over on Marlowe—and I was in the wrong room at the wrong time. They didn’t see me at first, but... I think they realized after I ran.”

Malik took a left onto 9th Avenue, outpacing the traffic camera zone. “Who’s *they*?”

Jessica shook her head. “You don’t want to know. Please just get me somewhere safe.”

He drove in silence, tension crackling in the close air of the cab.

Ten minutes later, in a quieter part of the city, she finally said, “I’m sorry. You probably think I’m crazy.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Malik said.

They passed an all-night diner. Her eyes locked on it. “Can you drop me there?”

He nodded and pulled in.

As she reached for the door, Malik’s hand moved instinctively to the lock. “Wait.”

She looked at him, startled.

“Your arm,” he said. “You’re bleeding more than you think. That needs stitches.”

Jessica glanced down, seemed to notice it for the first time. “I can’t go to a hospital.”

“You don’t have to.” Malik reached into the glove box and handed her a clean towel. “But stay put for a sec.”

He got out and jogged inside the diner. A minute later, he returned with a plastic bag—bandages, bottled water, a sandwich.

She took it, stunned. “You didn’t have to—”

“Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.”

Jessica stared at him for a long moment, as if trying to memorize his face. “You’re a good man, Malik.”

“How’d you know my name?”

She froze. “What?”

“You never asked. But you said my name.”

Her face went pale. “I—I must have seen your ID.”

He said nothing. Just stared.

Then he smiled, small and slow. “Relax. Just making sure you’re alert.”

But inside, something twisted. Because he’d taken his ID down after someone tried to rob him last month. There hadn’t been a name tag on the dash in weeks.

Jessica opened the door. “Thanks again.”

As she stepped out, a black SUV pulled into the far end of the lot.

Malik reached for the door handle. “Jessica—”

But she was already moving—fast—toward the back of the diner.

The SUV door opened. A man in a dark suit stepped out, scanned the lot.

Malik didn’t think. He hit the gas again, looping around the lot to where Jessica had disappeared behind the dumpster. She was crouched there, trembling.

“Get in!” he shouted.

She hesitated, then dove in again.

This time, the SUV followed.

They sped out of the lot, headlights blinding in the mirror.

Jessica was gasping. “They tracked my phone—I forgot I had it on me.”

Malik didn’t ask where it was. He just veered off the main road and into the parking garage of an old shopping center. The concrete swallowed the cab. He killed the lights and rolled to a stop between two abandoned vans.

Silence.

They waited.

Footsteps echoed somewhere above. A door slammed. Then nothing.

“You ever disappear before?” he asked quietly. Jessica nodded.

“I know a place. Friend of mine runs a junkyard and a trailer on the edge of town. No questions asked. You’ll be invisible.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because once, a stranger helped me. And I lived.”

Jessica leaned back in the seat, exhausted. “Then maybe I will too.”

They didn’t move for a while, letting the storm wash the world clean around them.

Outside, the rain finally began to let up. But Malik knew better than to take that as a sign.

Sometimes the quiet was just the eye of the storm.