Page 49 of Shatter

Hakon

She still has the drive locked in her fist when I leave her at my door.

She hasn't let go of it since the walk-in.

Not on the drive back, with her head against the truck window and her eyes open, staring at nothing.

Not when I walked her up the stairs, one slow step at a time, my hand hovering an inch off the small of her back.

"Vail's coming up to sit with you." I stop in the doorway. "Lock it if you want. I'll knock."

"It doesn't lock, remember?" She doesn't turn around. "You told me."

"Then push the dresser in front of it." I wait until she looks at me. "I won't be offended."

She almost smiles.

It doesn't make it all the way to her mouth, but I watch it try.

Then her eyes drop to my knuckles, to the fresh blood drying over yesterday's scabs, and the almost-smile goes out like somebody pinched a wick.

"Where are you going?" Her voice goes thin.

I don't answer.

She doesn't make me.

She turns and walks to the bed and sits down on the edge of it with her back to me, her fist closed in her lap.

I pull the door shut and stand there with my forehead against the wood until I hear Vail's boots on the stairs.

* * *

I cut behind the shop, past the dark bay doors and the row of bikes ticking as they cool.

The gap in the back fence is where it always is, a flap of chain-link somebody cut years ago and nobody ever fixed.

I duck through it, and the wire snags my shirt.

I don't stop to free it, and the fabric tears.

The smokehouse sits a hundred yards past the back fence, in the pines, where the ground goes soft and the trees close in.

Nobody's smoked anything in it for thirty years.

It's a squat cinderblock box with a tin roof and a steel door, one bare bulb hanging from a cord in the middle of the ceiling and a drain in the floor.

A hose hangs coiled on a hook by the door.

Everybody knows what the hose is for.

Nobody says it.

Aren's Charger is backed up to the door with the trunk open when I walk out of the trees.

He leans on the rear fender with his arms folded, dark eyes moving over the tree line like he's expecting it to do something.

He nods at me once.