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“You remember what I did to Bea,” he said. “After Danny. I caught the hallway feed outside my room—a woman walking out at two in the morning—and thought I’d cheated.” He paused. “Burned the best thing in my life to the ground over it.”

I remembered.

“And then there was you,” he said. “You pulled that night’s footage and ran it backwards. Found how she got in there—some drunk bastard steering her through the door, the two of them too far gone to know it was the wrong room. She’d already sworn it wasn’t me. You’re the one who proved it since I was too out of it to know any different. Put his face up on a screen and showed I didn’t cheat.” He tapped the bar twice. “By then I’d already lost her. Took a lot more than your footage to get Bea back. But you’re the reason we knew the truth. You never stop at the easy answer. That’s you.” He leaned down until I had to look at him. “So don’t you sit there and tell me you can’t look at a screen. You look all the way. You always have.”

Colt was next. He dropped onto the stool beside me, stared at the bottles behind the bar, and said, “You remember the first time you met Lilac?”

I nodded.

“There was me out in the street with my hands on Lilac, screaming at her in front of her boys, because my old club showed me photos of her with another man that proved she’d cheated.”

“Colt—”

“You saw what I couldn’t.” He finally looked at me. “You sat up all night and proved it. Every one of those photos was a fake. My own brothers cooked them up to bury what they’d done to her, and I believed them without question.” He dragged a hand down his face. “You’re the one who looks, brother. You did it for me when I couldn’t do it for myself.” He stood. “Somebody sent you a picture. Go look at it.”

Handful didn’t come with a story like the others. He just stood in the doorway with his arms crossed.

“I’ve watched you keep this club from doing stupid shit for years,” he said finally. “You’re the one who says slow down, wait, check it. I wouldn’t have Austen. Holden wouldn’t have Bea. Colt wouldn’t have Lilac back. Hell, Dutch wouldn’t have Indira. You looked when none of us could.” His jaw worked. “But you couldn’t do it for yourself because you were too scared to press one button?”

“Get out,” I said. My voice didn’t have anything behind it.

“Yeah,” Handful said. “That’s what you told her, too.” He walked away.

The old ladies were next but they didn’t come one at a time. They came together, which should have told me something, because the last time those four moved as a unit somebody had ended up in the hospital. Some piece of shit who’d put his hands where they didn’t belong—I never got the full story. What I got was a call at two in the morning and a job to do. I made an hour of parking-lot footage cease to exist, wiped two phones back to factory, and planted a false trail. Dutch did the rest the way Dutch did things—a little cash in the right pockets, a quiet word in the wrong ones, and the one witness who felt like being a hero decided he didn’t. Nobody saw the inside of a cell. And the guy had earned every minute of that hospital bed and then some, so I never lost a second of sleep over it.

Austen led today’s delegation. She crossed the common room, stopped a foot from me, and looked me dead in the eye. She and Wren had gotten close these last few months, and I braced for her to lay into me for what I’d done.

“Where is she, Glitch?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“Well, I care.” Austen’s voice stayed level. “I want to know where my friend went last night after you threw her out.”

I looked at the other women. “Which one of you has got the cheating, lying bitch?”

“Say that again and we’re going to have a different conversation.” Austen’s voice stayed even. Both hands were clenched at her sides. “And you think that wasn’t the first thing we checked? Every one of us went to bed last night sure somebody else had her.”

“I thought she was with Austen and Handful.” Indira’s arms were crossed tight. “That’s why I told Dutch not to worry about it.”

“I figured she was with you, Indira.” Austen shook her head. “She never came to our place.”

“I called Austen’s and Indira’s houses at seven this morning.” Lilac said it quietly. “Before I even tried yours, Bea.”

“And she wasn’t with me.” Bea’s face was pale. “She didn’t pick up when I called last night. After what happened, I figured she just didn’t want to talk, so I let it be. I thought she’d turned in early somewhere safe.” Her voice cracked. “We all did. Every one of us thought she was tucked up in one of the others’ houses.”

“We put it together an hour ago, on the phone.” Austen’s voice had gone hard, and she brought one of those fists down on the bar beside me. “She’s not with any of us. Her phone’s off. She spent last night God-knows-where because the man who was supposed to keep her safe threw her out into the dark with nothing but her purse.”

Where would she go? What would she do? I’d figured she was at Austen’s. Or in one of the empty rooms in the clubhouse. Or crashed on the couch in the back office at Venom Virtues, where she knew every code on every lock because she was one of Handful’s trusted advisers.

“Did anyone check the clubhouse? She could’ve taken an empty room. Or gone to Venom Virtues, let herself in—”

“You think we didn’t consider that?” Austen threw her hands in the air. “Indira had the prospects search every room in this clubhouse. Handful drove out and checked Venom Virtues himself. She is not in any of those places, Glitch.”

The list in my head kept shrinking. Not our bed. Not a room down the hall. Not the strip club. Which left a motel. Or it left him.

“She cheated on me, Austen. There’s a video. Maybe she’s with him.”

“I don’t care if there’s a hundred videos.” Still that voice—the one she used on a man who was about to find out he wasn’t coming back to her bar. “I know Wren. I’ve watched her light up every single time you walk into a room. I’ve listened to her talk about you until I wanted to throw up, it was so sweet. Wren does not have it in her. Not the cheating. Not the lying. Not any of it.” Her voice finally cracked, just once. “She’s the most honest person I’ve ever met. You humiliated her in front of everyone I love and then you sent her out the door.”