The door came open before Garrick could answer it.
Cutter: Club wants her. Now.
Cutter took her by the arm and pulled her out before Garrick could stop him.
Cutter: Walk, bitch. And keep your lying mouth shut.
The bar had gone quiet. Every man in the room turned to watch her come in.
Kemp Dray sat at the head table with his big hands folded. His pale eyes did not blink.
Cutter shoved her down into a chair so hard the legs scraped the floor.
Kemp: That's enough. Sit her up straight. I want to see her face.
Kemp: You're the night clerk at the Dustline.
Corrie: Yes.
Kemp: Then tell me what you saw in room nine. All of it. Don't pretty it up.
Corrie put her hands flat on her knees so they would stop shaking.
Corrie: A woman. Red helmet. Crack across the visor.
Corrie: She was breathing hard, like she'd run there. Her hands shook when she lifted the thing she hit him with.
Cutter: A crack in the visor. That's your big proof?
Cutter: Any drunk in this room could make up a red helmet.
Corrie: I don't need you to believe me.
Corrie: I know what I saw.
Corrie: Martin's mouth moved. He was trying to say something.
Corrie: It looked like please.
The room got very still, and Corrie knew she had said something true and ugly.
Cutter's hand shot out and caught her jaw. He turned her face up to the light and squeezed.
Cutter: You sick fucking liar. You put your hands on a dead man and now you want us to cry for him?
His fingers dug in until her teeth ground. Her split lip opened, and she tasted copper.
Cutter: I know what you are. Freak bitch with dead-man hands. I'll bury you out past the highway sign where nobody looks.
Garrick's hand closed on Cutter's wrist and peeled it off her face. Then his thumb pressed the marks on her jaw, gentle, like he was checking the damage.
Garrick: Touch her again and you'll be eating through a straw.
Cutter: You believe this cunt?
Garrick: I believe her.
He said it flat, like it was nothing, in front of every man in the room.
Corrie's eyes stung. Nobody had ever stood up and said that out loud for her.
She did not want to need it as much as she did.
Kemp: Cutter. Sit down.
Kemp: Now. How old are you?
Corrie: Twenty-six.
Kemp's hands went still on the table. He looked at her a long time, like he was doing sums in his head.
Kemp: Noreen's girl. Twenty-six.
He said it quiet, to himself, and something moved behind his face and then went away.
Garrick saw it too. The president of the Gravel Hounds had just gone pale over a number.
Whatever Kemp knew, he was not going to say it in front of his own club.
Kemp: She stays in the clubhouse. Nobody lays a hand on her, and she doesn't walk out that gate.
Cutter: Kemp, she's a fucking liar and a killer.
Kemp: I said she stays. Any man who touches her answers to me.
Garrick's hand pressed her back, warm through her shirt, and steered her out of the room.
Trixie: Noreen's curse, back in the house. Fucking figures.
Corrie kept her chin up and her mouth shut, but her jaw ached where Cutter's fingers had been.
Kemp had not believed her. He had just wanted her where he could see her.
She looked at Garrick's scarred jaw and wondered how long his word would hold.