Page 7 of Property of the Bikers

The bar does maybe a third of its Friday volume, which means I can hear myself think, which means I can watch the room without working at it. Hayes and two of the mid-level patches are at the far table with a card game that’s been going on since six.

Prospect named Cole is restocking the cooler at the far end of the bar, moving bottles like someone who knows he’s being evaluated even when nobody’s looking at him directly.

I’m always looking at him directly. He just can’t tell.

That’s the thing about running a room. You don’t look at the things you’re watching. You look at everything else and let your peripheral vision do the actual work. I learned that a long time ago in a context that had nothing to do with a bar in Montana, and I’ve never stopped using it.

I’m wiping down the counter when the door opens.

Cold air moves in first. Then she does.

She’s visibly pregnant, wearing dark jeans, a gray sweater, and flat boots. Brown hair pulled back. No jewelry that I can see. One bag on her shoulder.

She stops two steps inside the door.

Most people who walk into Ruthless for the first time stop the same way, taking in the room, adjusting to the light and the noise and the atmosphere of a place that doesn’t go out of its way to make strangers comfortable. They stop, and they look uncertain, or they look like they’re reconsidering.

She doesn’t look uncertain.

Her eyes move across the room in a pattern I recognize. Exits first. Then the people, assessed in clusters rather than individually, threat-reading rather than curiosity. Then the bar, and me behind it, and she holds that for a beat before she walks forward. Chin up the whole way. Hands steady at her sides.

Pregnant and she moves like someone who knows exactly where she is and chose to be here anyway.

I set down the cloth. Put both hands on the bar and smile at her the way I smile at everyone who walks up to this counter, open and unhurried, nothing behind it that she needs to see yet.

“What can I get you?”

She doesn’t sit down. She puts one hand on the bar and looks at me directly. “I need to speak with Cade Mercer.”

Not is he here. Not I’m looking for someone. His full name, stated flatly, like a key she’s been carrying and is now using.

I hold the smile and let one beat pass. “You know Cade?”

“I know of him,” she says. “Tell him Mira Sokolov is here.”

Two flags in under thirty seconds. Full name and a direct ask for the president. She didn’t come in here lost. She came in here with a destination already mapped and Cade’s name is the address.

“Mira,” I say, like I’m trying the name out. “You want to sit down? You look like you’ve been traveling.”

“I’m fine standing.”

“Humor me.” I come around the bar and pull out the stool at the near end, the one tucked into the corner where the bar meets the wall, away from the card game and away from Cole and away from the front window. She looks at the stool and then at me and I can see her running a quick calculation, deciding whether sitting is a concession she wants to make.

She sits.

Good. She’s off her feet and out of the sightline of the front door and I’m between her and the rest of the room, which is exactly where I need her.

“Water?” I ask.

“Please.”

I go back behind the bar. Fill a glass, add ice, set it in front of her. While I’m doing that I pull out my phone with my other hand, angle it below the counter, and type a message to Ghost. Two words. Bar. Now. I send it before I’ve finished filling the glass.

She wraps both hands around the water and drinks. Her hands are steady, I notice again. Not gripping for comfort. Just holding. Whatever she’s been through to get here, and from the look of her it’s been a stretch, she isn’t rattled by it. She’s filed it somewhere and kept moving.

That’s not a civilian response. That’s a trained one, or close enough to it that the distinction doesn’t matter right now.

I lean on the bar in front of her, elbows down, keeping my posture easy. “Cade’s not here right now. I can get a message to him. Won’t be long.” I pause. “You want to tell me what this is about, or you want to wait and tell him directly?”