3 days ago the manager had caught Pete doing it, threatened to fire him if he kept feeding strays. Pete had argued, the manager had won.
Now the back door stayed locked and Finn's stomach had started eating itself from the inside out.
The cold was getting worse. Finn's fingers had gone numb an hour ago.
His toes felt like blocks of ice inside his worn-out sneakers. The shivering had progressed to the point where it felt like his bones were trying to shake themselves apart.
He thought about his mother, the way she used to sing while she cooked dinner, off-key but warm, full of love. She'd had a hard life, worked three jobs to keep them in that tiny apartment.
She waitressed in the morning, cleaned offices at night, and spent weekends at a laundromat folding other people's clothes. She'd been so tired all the time.
Then she'd met him, the boyfriend, Travis. Charming at first, helpful, fixed things around the apartment, brought groceries, made Claire laugh for the first time in years.
Then the first slap came. Then the apologies.
Then the promises it would never happen again, then another slap, harder, then the closed fists, then the systematic destruction of a woman who just wanted someone to love her.
Finn had been too small to stop it, too young, too weak. He hated himself for that weakness.
11 years old and hiding while his mother bled out on the kitchen floor. Some son, some protector.
That guilt lived in his chest like a second heart, pumping shame through his veins instead of blood.
A pair of headlights cut through the rain turning into the parking lot. Finn pressed himself deeper into the gap between the dumpster and the wall.
Old habit, stay hidden, stay safe. But this wasn't a truck.
This was a pristine black Cadillac Escalade moving smooth and quiet like a predator.
It parked directly under one of the flickering street lights near the Roadhouse's side entrance. The engine cut off.
The driver's door opened. Cassandra Blackwell stepped out.
Even from 40 feet away, Finn could see the difference. This wasn't a casual stop for coffee.
Cass moved with purpose. She wore a sharp black leather jacket over a dark turtleneck, her blond hair pulled back tight.
Her posture was straight, shoulders square, eyes scanning the parking lot with the practiced caution of someone who expected trouble. She reached back into the Escalade and pulled out a silver Halliburton briefcase, heavy from the way she carried it.
Important.
Finn noticed the small red and white pin on her lapel, the 81 support patch. Hells Angels royalty, Magnus Blackwell's wife, the woman who helped run the club's legitimate business operations while her husband managed the brotherhood.
But something was wrong.
Cass usually traveled with protection, always. Finn had watched her come and go from the roadhouse dozens of times over the past months.
There were always at least two bikes escorting her, sometimes Axel, sometimes other senior members. She never moved alone.
Tonight she was alone.
Finn's instinct screamed. The same survival instincts that had kept him breathing for 13 months on the street.
The same animal awareness that made him notice when someone was watching him, when danger was close, when something didn't fit the pattern. This didn't fit.
Cass closed the Escalade's door and turned toward the roadhouse entrance, the briefcase in her left hand. Her right hand stayed near the pocket of her jacket.
Ready.
Then Finn saw it. A dark gray Dodge Charger, headlights off, rolling silently into the parking lot from the access road.
It didn't move like a car looking for a parking spot. It moved like something hunting.
Deliberate, calculated, predatory.