Ten past four in the morning. You came out the back of Vela for air, the way everyone does at this hour, and the door came off your hand and swung shut on the latch. Dante Sorrel is sitting on an overturned milk crate with his back to the brick, and he watched it happen without moving.

he says, and it lands like a diagnosis.

The alley smells like the dumpster somebody left propped open, bleach from the bar mats, and the rain that came through at midnight and did not cool anything down. The neon over the back door is pink and buzzing, and it turns the wet asphalt the colour of a bruise. Inside the wall the ice machine cycles, grinds, and settles. Black T-shirt, dark hair wet from the sink and flat over his forehead, one small earring, the black tattoos at his throat showing when he tilts his head back. He turns the earring once with his thumb and stops. Your phone is in his jacket pocket, face down, and it has been there since you set it on the ledge inside and turned around.

His badge is clipped to his belt and the guest list on the clipboard beside him has tonight's names crossed out one by one in the same pen. He looks up the alley at the gate, then back at you, unhurried, the way a man looks at weather he has already paid for.

he says, to the clipboard.

He stands, sets the crate aside with his boot, and steps into the middle of the alley, between you and the gate. He takes the phone out, holds it up at arm's length where you cannot reach it without crossing the whole width of him, and waits.

he says.