No Girl Here

Chapter 4:

I wake up alone.

The bed's cold on his side. The shotgun's gone from the nightstand. The deadbolt's still turned.

Downstairs I hear voices.

Not many. Two. Maybe three. Low and steady, the kind of talking men do when they don't want to be overheard.

I get up.

I'm still in his shirt. My dress is draped over the back of the chair where I left it — torn, bloody, useless. I put my jeans on from my bag and leave the shirt on because it's warm and it smells like leather and I don't want to think about why that matters.

Then I go down.

---

The bar at six in the morning looks like a different room.

Chairs are up on the tables. The floor's been swept. The lights are half off and the neon's dark and the whole place smells like bleach and old beer.

There's three men at the end of the counter.

Dutch — the one with the snake tattoo and the beard, the one Kael called by name. The kid with the new patch, who's maybe twenty-five and looks like he hasn't slept. And a third one, older, gray at the temples, with a nose that's been broken at least twice.

They all stop talking when I come down.

Kael's behind the counter with a cup of coffee and a rag.

"Morning."

"Morning."

"You sleep?"

"Some."

He nods and slides a cup across the counter. It's already poured. Has been for a while.

"Dutch. Callum. Denny." He tips his chin at each of them in turn. "This is Elara."

They don't say anything.

"She's staying here. Upstairs. For now." Kael sets the rag down. "Which means nobody in this town says a word about her. Not to the sheriff, not to a reporter, not to a friend from out of town who's got questions."

Callum — the one with the nose — is the one who answers.

"Prez. She's wearing your shirt."

"I know what she's wearing."

"That's a claim."

"It's a shirt."

"It's a claim." Callum's not being smart about it. He's not pushing. He's stating a fact. "You put your shirt on her, she's under your patch. Everybody in this town's gonna know by noon."

Kael's quiet for a second.

"Then they'll know by noon."

---

Dutch and Callum and Denny go.

Not far. Dutch takes a chair by the window and turns it around and sits with his arms crossed. Denny takes the door. Callum goes out to the lot and I hear a bike start up and idle and settle.

Kael comes around the counter.

"Eat something."

"I'm not hungry."

"You're going to eat something." He sets a plate in front of me. Eggs and toast and a strip of bacon. "You've had a whiskey and a shower in the last eight hours. That's not a meal."

I eat the eggs.

They're terrible. Too much salt. The toast is cold. I eat all of it.

---

"Now," he says, sitting down across from me. "We're going to talk about what happens next."

"Are we."

"We are." He folds his arms on the counter. "Your husband's going to wake up this morning in a house with a broken fountain and an open gate and no wife. What's he going to do?"

I set the fork down.

"He's going to call his lawyer."

"Before that."

"He's going to look in the garage and see the Honda's gone. And then he's going to call his lawyer."

Kael's quiet.

"What's the lawyer going to do?"

"File a missing person report. Contact the state police. Put out a statement." I look at the counter. "He's very good at being worried on paper. He'll say I've been having an episode. He'll say I'm confused. He'll say he's afraid for my safety."

"And the police will believe him."

"The police always believe him." I look up. "He's got a house and a name and a family that's owned half this state since before my mother was born. And I've got a torn dress and no shoes and no phone."

Kael's quiet for a moment.

"You've got a torn dress and no shoes and no phone," he says. "But you've also got a bar full of men who don't like being lied to by rich men."

I look at him.

"That's not going to be enough."

"It's been enough before."

---

The phone rings at seven.

Not my phone. There is no my phone. The bar's phone — an old rotary on the wall behind the counter, black and heavy, the kind that's been there since the eighties.

Kael doesn't move.

It rings again.

Denny looks over from the door. Dutch looks up from his chair.

It rings a third time.

Kael walks around the counter and picks it up.

"Vipers."

He listens.

And his face changes.

Not a lot. Not the way it would on another man. But something behind his eyes closes like a door.

"Yeah," he says. "She's here."

I stand up.

"Don't," he says — to me, not into the phone.

He listens again.

"Ain't no girl here, asshole."

He says it flat. Not loud. Not angry. Like a man correcting a weather report.

Then he listens for a long time.

I can hear the voice on the other end. Not the words. Just the shape of them. Fast and sharp and used to being obeyed.

Kael doesn't interrupt.

He stands there with the phone against his ear and his jaw working slowly, chewing on nothing, and he lets the man on the other end of the line talk himself all the way out.

Then he says, "You done?"

Another burst of sharp sound.

"No," Kael says. "Now you listen to me. I'm gonna say this one time, and then I'm gonna hang up this phone, and then I'm gonna go back to drinking my coffee."

Silence on the line.

"You put your hands on her. I don't know when and I don't know how many times, but I know a handprint when I see one, and I saw four of them on her throat."

The line's quiet.

"You come to Blackpine, you bring whatever you want to bring. Lawyers. Deputies. Your daddy's name. And I'll be standing on the same street I've been standing on for sixteen years. And I'll tell you what I told the last man who came here thinking he could take something that wasn't his."

A pause.

"You'll leave with less than you came with."

He hangs up.

The phone settles on the hook with a sound like a door closing.

---

Nobody says anything for a while.

Dutch's chair creaks. Denny shifts his weight. Outside, Callum's bike idles on.

Kael picks up his coffee and drinks it and sets it down.

"Dutch."

"Prez."

"Get me a count. Every man we've got within an hour's ride. I want to know who's in town and who's not."

"Tonight?"

"By noon."

Dutch gets up. He doesn't ask why. He puts his chair back where it belongs and he goes out the front door and the bell rings behind him.

Denny's already got his phone out.

"Denny."

"Prez."

"Not you. You stay on that door until I tell you different."

"Yessir."

Kael turns to me.

"Now."

---

He goes to the closet behind the bar.

Not the liquor closet. The other one, the one with the padlock. He pulls out a key and opens it and pulls something off the top shelf.

A leather jacket. Black. Heavy. The kind that's been worn so long it's soft as cloth at the elbows.

He shakes it out and holds it up.

"You see the patch?"

I see the patch. A viper coiled on a rock, silver thread on black. And under it, the words.

PRESIDENT

"You see it."

"I see it."

"This is the thing that tells every man in this state who I am." He tips his head. "You put this on, and every man who sees you knows you're not alone. You're not some woman with a torn dress and no shoes who wandered in off the road. You're under my patch. Which means if somebody wants to get to you, they've got to get through me first."

I look at the jacket.

"And if I don't put it on?"

"Then you're a woman in my bar with no protection and a husband looking for her. And the first man who sees you on the street is going to know exactly how easy you are."

I look at him.

"You're not asking."

"I'm not asking." He holds it out. "Put it on, Elara."

I take it.

It's heavier than it looks. Warm from wherever it's been sitting. It smells like leather and smoke and whiskey and rain.

I put it on.

It hangs off me. The sleeves swallow my hands. The shoulders are so wide I could fit twice inside.

Kael looks at me.

And then he does something I don't expect. He reaches out and takes the collar in both hands and pulls it straight. Then he smooths the lapel down over my chest. Then he steps back and looks at me.

"Alright," he says.

"Alright what?"

"You're mine now."

"That's not—"

"Not like that." His voice is flat. "Not your body. Not anything you don't hand me. But you're wearing my patch in my town and every man in this state is going to know it."

I look down at the jacket.

It's the warmest thing I've ever worn.

"You hear me?"

"I hear you."

"Say it back."

I look up at him.

"I'm under your patch."

"That's right." He tips his head. "And what does that mean?"

"It means anybody who wants to get to me has to get through you."

"That's right."

He picks up his coffee and drinks it.

And then he looks past me at the door and something in his face changes.

The bell's ringing.

Denny's already moving. Dutch is coming back through the door behind whoever just walked in. And Callum's bike cuts off in the lot.

There's a man standing in the doorway.

Forty. Gray suit. Rain on his shoulders. A folder in his hand and a smile on his face that's there for one reason and one reason only.

"Good morning," he says. "I'm looking for a woman named Elara Sterling."

Kael sets his cup down.

Chapter 4 Ends.