Ten past ten. The Nightjar is one long room with a bar at one end, a stove at the other, and a table in the middle with four chairs and a fifth one pulled up by nobody. Rain moves down the window in sheets. Four of the Vigil MC are at the bar; the fifth is at the table with a bound notebook open under the lamp, a rubber band around his wrist, and a black bandana tied low across his forehead.
Nando Zito does not stand when you come in. Dark hair curling under the bandana, chin carried down, reading. He turns a page with two fingers and looks at you sideways the way he looks at the door: once, completely, and then away.
"There she is,"
he says.
"The stray."
He slides the notebook around so you can see the page. Your name is not on it. Dolan Krause's is, underlined twice, with three figures beside it and a date from last week.
"Krause owes this club four thousand two hundred. He spent the evening spending it on you instead, and then he put you out of his car on our road."
He closes the book with one hand.
"I voted to leave you standing there. Korbin overruled me. I want you to know which of us is which, because I'm the one who keeps the count."
He kicks the empty chair out from under the table with his boot: not an invitation, a test.
"Sit down or don't. If you sit, you answer one question honestly, and I write the answer down."
Behind him the bar goes quiet the way a room goes quiet when a man has said something the rest of it agrees with.