Nineteen minutes. He could do nineteen more minutes.
The door opened behind him.
Awareness crept up the back of his neck, and he turned.
Everything went quiet.
His breath. His heart. His frayed nerves. His demons. Everything in him went still in a way that hadn’t happened in a long, long time.
She walked in like she’d never for a second doubted her right to be here, and she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
She carried a battered, black guitar case. The latch was held shut by a bungee cord and a prayer, and the shell was delaminating in a fan of loose material that she’d reinforced with duct tape gone gray with age. The case itself had probably been inexpensive when new. It was a long way from new.
She was in her mid-twenties, lean. Her blonde hair was loosely knotted at the back of her head with pieces falling free around her face. A silver ring through her septum caught the neon when she moved. Flannel over a faded band tee he couldn’t read from here, jeans with the knee blown out, boots with serious mileage on them. She moved as if she were protecting her ribs, her core slightly braced.
She walked to the bar without looking at him and ordered a whiskey neat, sliding a folded bill across the bar top before the bartender had poured. She picked up the glass, threw it back like it was a shot, then walked to the stage and opened the guitar case. She settled onto the barstool, fit the guitar into her lap, and adjusted the mic stand down two inches. Checked the tuning by ear, made three small adjustments, checked it again.
And she started to play.
The first song opened with four bars of fingerpicking— spare, the notes falling into the silence without apology. Her voice came in on the fifth bar, full of grit and smoke. The words were about a highway and a wrong turn and a decision that couldn’t be unmade. He didn’t know the song.
By the end of the first verse, the two men playing pool had stopped. The bartender set down the glass he was drying and turned his attention to the stage.
She closed her eyes for the last line, voice dropping into a breathy, aching hush that Evander felt in the hollow behind his breastbone. When she finished, there was a split second of pure silence, then the bartender said, “Shit,” under his breath, and one of the pool guys let out a single, sharp whistle.
Evander didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until Tilly exhaled at his feet.
The next song had more drive, more edge.
Halfway through, the door blew open and hit the wall hard enough that the impact cracked through the bar like a gunshot.
The song stopped as three men walked in. Black leather cuts, the back patches reading Sons of Sin in an arc over a bottom rocker that said MONTANA. Club property, not weekend riders. The lead man was broad through the shoulders with a shaved head and a beard going gray at his chin. He walked to the center of the room and stopped there, and the two men behind him spread out to either side without being told. The singer’s face went white as he grinned at her.
“Rainey, sweetheart. We’ve been looking for you.”
Most people, when three men with cuts walked into a room and spread out like that, took a step back. It was self-preservation. Instinct. But Rainey sat on that stool with her guitar still in her lap and her hands gone still on the strings, and she didn’t move. Her shoulders slumped, and she closed her eyes for a heartbeat.
Like she’d been waiting for this.
The lead biker took two steps toward the stage.
Tilly rose to her feet.
Evander set his beer down, turned around, and took a read of the room in three seconds flat. Two pool players backing toward the far wall, smart enough to understand this wasn’t their problem. The bartender’s hand had gone below the bar, which meant either a phone or a weapon, and it didn’t matter whichbecause neither would be fast enough. The two flanking bikers were watching Rainey. Not him. They hadn’t clocked him yet as anything worth watching.
Good.
The lead man stepped up onto the stage. He was big. Not Bear-big, but still a man who’d never had to wonder whether he’d win a fight. He closed a hand around Rainey’s upper arm.
She flinched. The guitar hit the stage floor with a hollow thud and a discordant ring of strings.
“Did you really think you could hide from us?” He yanked her off the stool by her arm, but she didn’t go easily. She swung at him with her free hand, the heel of her palm catching him under the chin, and his head snapped back. For half a second, it looked like she might actually get loose.
Then the knife came out.
The blade pressed flat against the side of her neck just below her jaw. His other hand had her by the hair now, her head pulled back at an angle that had to hurt.
“Try that again,” he said quietly, “and I’ll open you up right here.”
