It was raining the next morning. Not the good kind of rain just that slow, stubborn drizzle that soaks your socks and makes everything smell like wet concrete.
Samuel hadn't planned to go out, but the power flickered twice before finally going out completely. With no Wi-Fi, no coffee maker, and no reason to sit staring at a dead laptop, he decided to walk to the diner for breakfast.
He took the same long way down Willow Street, past the little park where the benches were always empty in weather like this.
That's when he saw him.
A man stood at the bus stop, coat collar turned up, rain dripping from the brim of his hat. He was tall easily over six feet and lean in that wiry, hungry way.
Something about him made Samuel slow down.
It wasn't just the way the man held himself. It was the scar an ugly, jagged slash running from the corner of his left eye down to his jaw.
Samuel knew that scar.
He'd written it.
In The Blood Debt of Xirathul, that was Caleb Riker, a bounty hunter with a past full of bad choices and worse debts. He was one of Samuel's favorite side characters, the kind you didn't plan for but who ends up stealing half the story anyway.
Caleb Riker was fiction.
This man was real.
Samuel hesitated, feeling his pulse quicken. But the rain was cold, his stomach was empty, and the rational part of his brain took over.
It was just coincidence. Lots of people had scars. Lots of tall guys wore trench coats. The human brain was built to see patterns where there weren't any.
The man didn't look at him, didn't acknowledge him at all just stood there, staring at the slick, empty street as if waiting for a bus that would never come.
Samuel walked on.
At the diner, he tried to forget about it, but the sight kept replaying in his mind.
He almost laughed at himself imagining his own characters walking around in the real world like ghosts without a story.
Halfway through his pancakes, the door to the diner opened.
Rainwater dripped onto the tile floor.
It was him.
Caleb Riker.
The man didn't look at Samuel. Didn't seem to notice him at all. He just sat at the counter, ordered coffee black, and drank it without sugar, just like Samuel had written in the novel.
Samuel stared for a moment longer than was polite, then forced himself to look down at his plate.
"God, what's going on lately?" he muttered under his breath. "First the bullet, now… this."
The man left without saying a word.
When Samuel finally headed home, the bus stop was empty.
But there, sitting neatly on the bench where the man had been, was a single bullet casing identical to the one in Samuel's desk drawer.