And they didn’t seem worried until things actually got physical.
I type back.
Ghost:Got a bad feeling about it.
The reply comes quickly.
Riot:That’s reassuring.
Riot:I’ll pull footage and run their faces.
Riot:If they’ve been around town there will be something.
I nod to myself and type.
Ghost:Let me know.
I set the phone down on the table and lean back into the couch, stretching my legs out in front of me. The apartment settles back into its usual quiet, the kind that normally helps me shut my brain off after a long day. I take another drink of the beer and stare across the room at the blank wall above the television.
But my head won’t stay quiet.
Instead it keeps going back to the same place.
The Rust Nail.
And the bartender.
Rae.
I shift slightly on the couch and rub a hand across the back of my neck while I think about the way she leaned on the bar when we were talking. She didn’t fidget. Didn’t act nervous. She just stood there like she belonged in that space and had nothing to prove to anyone around her.
That alone makes her different from most people.
Most women I meet either try too hard to get my attention or they avoid eye contact completely once they notice the cut on my back. Rae did neither. She looked straight at me the second I walked in like she was trying to figure out exactly what kind of man had just stepped through the door.
And when those three guys started leaning on Wayne, she didn’t hesitate.
She stepped in like it was automatic.
Like protecting that place was just something she did.
I take another drink and set the bottle down on the table.
The way she talked about the bar sticks with me. Not like it was just a job. Not like it was somewhere she clocked in and out every day.
She talked about it like it was home.
And the way she looked at Wayne when she mentioned him… that wasn’t just employee loyalty either. There was somethingdeeper there. The kind of connection people have when someone showed up for them at a time when nobody else did.
I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees again, staring down at the floor.
She said she started working there when she was sixteen.
Sixteen.
That means Wayne gave a kid a job and a place to land when she probably didn’t have anywhere else to go.
And now she’s standing behind that bar ten years later like it’s something worth defending.
