The Lock Door

Chapter 2:

"Lock the door."

The words go through the room like a switch flipping.

The man at the bar — the one with the snake tattoo — puts his glass down and stands up. The kid with the new patch gets to his feet. Two more men by the window move at the same time, and the front door's chain comes up off the hook and rattles through the handles.

The bell over the door swings once and stops.

I hear the bolt turn.

And then twenty men sit back down.

Not all at once. In pieces. A chair scrapes. A bottle clinks. Somebody mutters something low and the laugh that follows is short and mean. But they sit, and they turn back to their drinks, and the room fills up with the sound of a bar again like nothing happened.

Except nobody's looking at their drinks. They're all still looking at me.

The big one hasn't moved.

He's standing ten feet away with his hands loose at his sides and his eyes on my face, and he's got a look about him like a man who's already decided something and is waiting for the rest of the room to catch up.

"Back room," he says.

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"You're bleeding on my floor."

"Then I'll bleed on it somewhere else."

The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile. Close to one.

"You see that chain on the door?" He tips his chin at it. "You put it there yourself when you pushed through. Which means either you stay in here with me and my boys, or you go back out there where whatever's chasing you is still chasing you."

I don't answer.

"That's what I thought." He turns. "Dutch. Watch the door."

"Prez."

He walks past me, toward the back of the bar.

He doesn't grab me. He doesn't put a hand on me. He just walks, and after about four seconds of standing in the middle of a room full of men who are all still looking at me, I follow him.

---

The back room is small and smells like old paper and motor oil.

There's a desk with a lamp on it. A couch that's been patched with duct tape. A filing cabinet with a padlock. And a chair.

He pulls the chair out and sets it in the middle of the room.

"Sit."

"I'll stand."

"You'll sit." He leans against the desk and crosses his arms. "You've been on your feet for a while. You're favoring the left one. And you keep holding your side every time you breathe in."

I look at him.

"You noticed that."

"I notice everything." He tips his head. "Sit down, doll."

I sit down.

---

"Name."

"Elara."

"Elara what?"

"Just Elara."

He studies me for a second.

"Alright. Just Elara." He reaches back and pulls a bottle off the desk and pours two fingers into a glass and sets it on the arm of the chair. "Drink that."

"I don't want it."

"It's not for the nerves. It's for the lip. It's gonna hurt like hell tomorrow if you don't clean it."

I pick up the glass.

I don't drink it. I hold it.

"You gonna tell me who did that to your face?"

"I fell."

He laughs. It's short and it's ugly and it doesn't reach his eyes.

"You fell." He tips his head. "You fell, and you've got four fingerprints on your throat, and your ribs are cracked, and you ran barefoot through gravel in a wedding dress at one in the morning."

I don't say anything.

"I'm gonna ask you one more time." He leans forward. "Who did it."

---

The chain on the front door rattles.

Every head in the bar turns. I hear boots. I hear a voice through the wood, flat and loud and official.

"Open this door."

Kael doesn't move.

"Open the door. Sheriff's department."

"Stay here," he says to me.

He walks out.

I get up.

I don't know why. I don't owe him anything and I don't know him and every instinct I've got is telling me to find a window. But I get up and I follow him to the doorway and I stand in the dark hall where I can hear.

The chain rattles again.

Kael's voice, easy. "Can't do that, Deputy."

"You've got a woman in there. I saw her run in."

"You saw a woman run into a bar. That's not against the law."

"Open the door."

"Come back tomorrow. Sun's up, I'll make you a coffee."

"Open the door or I'm calling the sheriff."

"Call him."

Silence.

Then a radio crackles. A voice, older, tired, tinny through the speaker. I can't make out the words, but I hear the deputy's tone change.

"But Sheriff—"

More tinny words.

"That's not—" Pause. "Yes sir."

The boots step back off the porch. The cruiser door opens and shuts. The engine turns over and fades down the street.

And then it's just rain on the roof.

---

The chain comes off. The door closes again. The bolt turns.

Kael comes back down the hall and stops when he sees me standing there.

"I told you to stay."

"I don't take orders from you."

He looks at me for a second.

Then he huffs out a breath that's almost a laugh.

"Come on."

---

We sit in the back room again. This time I drink the whiskey.

It burns the split in my lip so bad my eyes water, and I don't make a sound.

"Who's the deputy?" I say.

"Pruitt. Works out of Ashford. He's got no jurisdiction in Blackpine."

"And the sheriff?"

"Sheriff's been taking my calls for sixteen years. He doesn't much like it, but he takes them." Kael sits down on the corner of the desk. "Nobody in Blackpine's gonna come through that door tonight. Not Pruitt, not the county, not your husband."

I look up.

"I didn't say anything about a husband."

"You didn't have to." He tips his head. "You're wearing a wedding ring on a chain around your neck."

My hand goes to my throat before I can stop it.

"I'm not married."

"You've got a tan line on your finger and a ring on a chain. You were married long enough to leave a mark. You took it off the night you left." He tips his head. "That's the thing about rings. They don't come off easy."

The room's quiet.

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know you've got four fingerprints on your throat and a cracked rib and you ran from a house with a gate that's never open." He leans forward. "What I don't know is how long he's been doing it. So I'm gonna ask you one more time, and then I'm gonna stop asking, because a woman who won't answer a question usually won't answer it the fifth time either."

He waits.

"Who did it."

---

I look at him.

And something in me breaks.

Not loud. Not the way it did in the car, or the way it did in the kitchen when Marcus got me in the ribs. Something small and quiet and exhausted.

"His name's Marcus Sterling," I say. "He's got a house on fifty acres outside the capital. He's got a lawyer and a judge and a state senator who comes to dinner. His family's owned half this state for a hundred years."

Kael doesn't move.

"And he's been putting his hands on me for two years."

The room goes very still.

"He doesn't yell. He gets quiet. He takes my phone so I can't call anybody and he tells me I'm confused and I remember things wrong and after a while I started believing him." I look down at the glass in my hand. "I'd have stayed. I think I'd have stayed another two years. But tonight he was dragging me by the hair toward the stairs and I bit him and he backhanded me and I ran."

I set the glass down.

"That's the whole story. You want to call the sheriff back, he can come get me. I don't have anywhere to go."

Kael doesn't say anything for a long moment.

Then he gets off the desk. He walks over and crouches down in front of the chair, so he's below me instead of above. His face is level with mine.

"I'm not calling anybody," he says.

"He's going to come looking."

"I know."

"He's got money and lawyers and a family name—"

"I heard you the first time." He tips his head. "And I'm telling you, nobody's coming through that door tonight."

I look at him.

"Why?"

He doesn't answer.

He reaches up, slow, and takes my chin between his thumb and his finger and turns my face toward the light. He's looking at the bruises. The split lip. The fingerprints on my neck that are going yellow at the edges.

His jaw works once.

Then he lets go and stands up and walks to the door.

"I'll get you a room," he says. "There's one upstairs. It's got a lock on the inside."

"Where are you going?"

"To talk to my boys."

"What about?"

He stops in the doorway.

"About what happens when a man with a family name comes to my town looking for something that's mine."

Chapter 2 Ends.