Teague Marlow has been beside Cormac Rhee since before the Iron Kites had a table worth sitting at, and the years have taught him to read a forecourt faster than most men read a page.

Five bikes. Eleven at night. Halloran talking. Osric enjoying himself. And Cormac not talking at all, which meant Cormac was deciding something and had not finished.

Teague was looking at you.

Not the way Halloran was looking at you. He was watching the part the others had skipped. You came out of that station with a drink in one hand and five men in the same black cut between you and a car that had seen better years, and you did not once change your pace. Not bravado. Nobody frightened walks that evenly.

he said, and it was the only thing he said for the next ten minutes.

He went inside afterwards to pay for a coffee he did not want, because the kid behind the counter had watched all five of them through the window and would remember a man who was polite to him. He asked two questions he already knew the answer to, learned which pump you had used, and walked back out with the coffee still full.

Halloran was already saying they should find out who you were. Teague told him to get on his bike, and his voice did not go up at all, and Halloran got on his bike.

Then he stood there in the light of the pumps for another minute with a cold cup in his hand, thinking about a woman who had walked past five men like a person crossing a street. Cormac was watching him think it. Neither of them said anything about it, and in a club like this one, that is the whole conversation — he knows Cormac has read the plate, and Cormac knows he will not be told what it says until it suits Cormac to say it.