Chapter 5: The Welfare Check

The deputy in the lot only wanted to see that I wasn't tied to a chair.

It was Clint's young partner, the one with the sunburned neck.

Lo gave him a slice of pie and let him look at me through the kitchen door. He said, "Sorry, ma'am," twice and left without eating the pie.

I slept that night in a room above the diner with a mattress on the floor and a Black Anchor flag for a curtain.

In the morning I wore Lo's spare apron and carried a coffee pot.

Dread was at the counter when I came down.

He had changed the bandage on his arm, and he drank his coffee black without looking up.

"You took my phone out of my hand yesterday," I said.

He set the cup down.

"You ordered me to hand it over before I'd explained anything. You watched my video before you believed me."

"I watched it because you showed it to me."

"After you ordered me to."

"I order everyone." He still didn't look at me. "I'd have done the same to a priest."

"Next time, ask."

"Ask what?"

"Ask whether I'm lying."

Now he looked.

He had grey eyes, and the scar through his left eyebrow caught the light.

For a moment I thought he might say something that was not an order.

"Refill," he said, and held out the cup.

I filled it.

By noon the lunch crowd had come in off Route 9.

There were truckers, the Saturday old men and six bikers in the back booths.

Thirty people ate under the buzzing neon, and every one of them knew who I was.

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