The warehouse never truly slept, but at 3:17 a.m. on a February night it came as close as concrete and steel ever would. The last outbound trailer had sealed forty-three minutes earlier. The yard jockey killed his engine and disappeared into the guard shack with a thermos of truck-stop coffee. Then the building did what it always did when no one was watching: it exhaled. Lights dimmed to security levels, HVAC fans dropped to a murmur, and the temperature began its slow, merciless slide toward whatever the outside world decided it wanted to be.

Alex Thompson finished his first round at 3:26. Twenty-four years old, six-foot-one in boots, still filling out the shoulders of the uniform they’d issued him four months ago. The polyester itched, the duty belt rode low on his hips, and the Maglite felt like a club. He clicked it off and let the red EXIT signs guide him. Somewhere in the dark, a pallet of imported glassware shifted with a crystalline sigh.

He was halfway down Aisle 19 when he heard the soft, unmistakable sound of a human being losing the fight against the cold.

Mia Alvarez sat on the shipping desk with her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, rocking almost imperceptibly. Her company fleece was zipped to the top, hood up, but the hood had slipped back and her dark hair spilled out in loose waves that trembled every time she shivered. A single desk lamp cast a weak cone of light over the bill of lading she was supposed to have finished an hour ago.

She didn’t hear him approach. Not until his shadow fell across the paperwork.

“Hey,” he said, keeping his voice low the way you do with spooked animals. “You okay?”

Her head snapped up. Eyes wide, lips faintly blue. “Alex, right? Security?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged out of the oversized jacket before his brain fully signed off on the plan. “Here. This thing’s basically a sleeping bag with sleeves.”

She stared at the offering like it might bite her. Pride and cold had a brief cage match; cold won. She slid off the desk and let him drape the jacket over her shoulders. It swallowed her. The hem brushed mid-thigh, sleeves dangling six inches past her fingertips.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “I thought I’d be out by one. Then the system locked me out of the office for the space heater, and the dock door decided it was done with humanity for the night.”

“I noticed.” He tried his radio again. Nothing but a soft hiss, like the building was shushing him. Phone: still zero bars. “We’re in the dead zone. Happens sometimes when they cycle the main breaker.”

Mia rubbed her arms through the layers of nylon. “Define sometimes.”

“Often enough that I keep a spare charger in my locker and still forget to use it.” He offered half a smile. “Come on. Walking keeps the blood moving.”

They started a slow circuit of the shipping office perimeter. She stayed close enough that their shoulders brushed every third step. The jacket smelled faintly of him: coffee, wintergreen gum, and something clean that might have been soap or just the absence of warehouse dust.

“How cold does it get in here?” she asked.

“Low thirties if the outside drops into the teens. Which it is.”

“Fantastic.”

He glanced sideways. The lamp’s glow caught on the curve of her cheek, the way her lower lip was caught between her teeth. He looked away fast.

They reached the far corner where the returns cage lived: a twenty-foot cube of chain link stuffed with broken dreams and mis-shipped espresso machines. Alex unhooked a rolling chair from someone’s abandoned workstation and nudged it toward her.

“Sit. Elevate your feet. Basic hypothermia 101.”

She obeyed, pulling the jacket tighter. “You’re weirdly prepared for someone who looks like he should still be in college.”

“Boy Scouts,” he said. “And four years in the Army. They beat warmth-retention protocols into you pretty thoroughly.”

Mia tilted her head. “You don’t seem like the military type.”

“Which type is that?”

“I don’t know. Buzz cut, ‘yes sir,’ veins popping out of your neck?”

He laughed quietly. “I was a satellite communications geek. Spent most of my tour in a shipping container full of servers outside Bagram. Still cold, though. Different continent, same teeth chattering.”

Silence settled again, softer this time. Somewhere high above, a pigeon cooed in the rafters like it was judging them.

Mia’s shivers were slowing, but not gone. Alex watched her hug herself and felt the decision form before he could talk himself out of it.

“Body heat’s the fastest way,” he said. “If you’re comfortable with that. No pressure.”

She studied his face for a long moment. Whatever she saw there decided her. “I trust you,” she said simply.

He stepped closer. She stood. They rearranged the jacket so it draped over both of them like a shared cape, arms sliding around each other’s waists to keep it in place. The first contact was clinical (two people conserving energy, nothing more). Then her cheek found the hollow beneath his collarbone, and his chin settled on top of her head, and clinical went out the nearest loading dock.