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“The bartender has heard of a wild dog pack in the area, so that seemed to be what took the old man. No one tricked you. We tried, very strenuously, to stop you from going out.”

“Fuck off.”

Caleb throws up his hands. “Really?”

“Ignore him,” I say. “He’s an asshole who isn’t going to respond with anything but asshole behavior.” I turn to the man. “Henry is a paramedic, but you are free to tend to your own wounds. What you are not free to do is threaten us, and I shouldn’t need to even point that out. There’s one of you, and four of us.”

The guy sniffs and looks away. We have been dismissed.

“Asshole,” Caleb mutters.

The man settles in a chair and pulls up his trouser leg. Henry wordlessly goes behind the counter and begins running water. The bartender hands him a bowl and digs up a clean cloth. Henry takes the hot water and cloth to the man, who ignores it until Henry sets it down and then he deigns to accept the offering and starts cleaning his leg.

“You should also put some alcohol on that,” Henry says. “Disinfect the bite.”

The man ignores him.

“Can we ask what you saw?” I say.

“Go outside and find out,” the man snaps.

“No one is going outside,” Noemi says, her voice kind but firm. “We’re asking what you saw so we can compare stories and figure out what’s going on.”

“What’s going on is that I don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on.”

“If you could just tell us what happened.” She pauses. “Please.”

The bartender brings over a bottle and sets it on the table, along with a shot glass. The man stops cleaning his leg and lifts the bottle, examining the label. It’s scotch, and from the fact that there’s an age on it, I’m guessing it’s expensive. The man sniffs, as if it’s still not up to his standards, but then he pours a shot and downs it. Then he pours some on the cloth for his leg, ignoring the bartender’s protest at using the scotch for that.

He turns to Noemi. “What happened, girlie, is that I didn’t get anywhere, despite having a bike.”

“You didn’t get far?”

“No, I didn’t get anywhere. I was riding up the road, in the direction that supposedly has a town, and then something started chasing me, and I rode faster and then I saw my car. Up ahead.”

Caleb frowns. “You got turned around?”

“Yeah, kid. I got ‘turned around’ on a straight road.”

“I don’t understand,” Noemi says.

“No fucking kidding!” the man explodes, enough to make her flinch backward and everyone else to move his way, as if to ward off an attack. But he only pours and downs another shot. “I headed north, away from the accident, on a straight road, and I came up behind the accident, like a hamster on a wheel, running his little heart out and getting nowhere.”

“I don’t—” Noemi starts, and then stops herself, as if she’d been about to repeat that she doesn’t understand. Because, really, what else can you say?

I look at the woman on the barstool. She knows what’s going on here. I know she does.

“Ellie?” Henry murmurs.

I look at him, and then at the woman, quietly conveying my concerns about her to Henry.

I think I’ll need to say more, but Henry nods, as if my look is enough for him to fix on something he’d already been considering.

“What are you two whispering about?” the man says.

“Uh, no one’s whispering,” Caleb says.

“They’re doubting your story,” the bartender calls over.