Osric Fay noticed you before any of them did, and that is not luck. Noticing first is the job.
He was leaning against the ice machine with his phone in one hand and the club's takings for the week in his head, and he counted you the way he counts everything else: one woman, one drink, five men in the same black cut between her and a car with a dent in the passenger door.
“Don’t,”
he said, to Halloran, before Halloran had said anything at all.
He watched you walk the whole length of that forecourt without hurrying. Most people hurry. Most people do the arithmetic on five motorcycles and take the long way around the pumps. You did your arithmetic and walked straight through the middle of them, and Osric enjoyed that more than he had enjoyed anything all week, which he noted, because he notes everything.
Then he went inside and bought a bag of ice nobody needed, because the kid at the register was about nineteen and looked ready to lock himself in the back room, and because a man who is pleasant in a station at eleven at night gets remembered well instead of badly. He asked two questions, got one answer — the woman in the lanyard comes in on Thursdays and pays exact change — put the ice on the counter and left.
The other four were on their bikes by then. Halloran wanted to know who you were. Teague said nothing, which was Teague's whole opinion. Cormac had already read the plate and was already not sharing it.
“Thursday,”
Osric said, and got on his bike.
He said it like a menu price, and three of them understood him, and the fourth one understood him ten seconds later and laughed.