Page 36 of Shatter

"Copy." Wind roars across the speaker.

"And Gunnar." Tor's mouth flattens.

"Yeah?" The wind drops.

"Bring the prospect's bike home. It's sitting in the gravel with his fucking helmet on the seat for anybody to see." Tor jabs the screen, and the line goes dead.

He looks at the phone for a moment, then back at me.

"The Corolla." He points at me with the phone. "Gone by noon, crushed. I don't want so much as a lug nut left."

"Yes, sir." I nod once.

"Her phone." He points at the pink case. "Vanir takes it apart. Nobody turns it on inside this fence."

Vanir pulls it toward himself.

"And the girl." Tor sets his phone face down.

The room goes still again.

Tor leans back in his chair until it creaks, studying me with his fingers laced over his stomach.

"You put your cut on her." He doesn't blink. "Downstairs, in front of Rati and Emil and half the fucking club."

"I didn't know what it—" My ears start to burn.

"I don't fucking care what you knew." He doesn't raise his voice. "It's done. Every man in this club saw a prospect wrap his colors around a woman and carry her through the door, and every one of them is going to treat her the way a man treats a brother's woman. You don't get to take it back because you didn't read the manual."

I stare at the knot in the wood until it blurs.

"So she stays in your room." Tor holds up one thick finger. "She's yours to handle. You feed her and keep her from climbing out a window. Whatever she's running from, whoever's coming for her, you find out. And when it comes through my gate, it's on you."

"Yes, sir." My throat works around it.

"And for the next month, you're on every shit job this club's got." A muscle jumps in his jaw. "Toilets and trash, and gate duty every night Gorm's not on it."

"Yes, sir." I don't let my voice shake.

He stares at me a moment longer.

"Get out of my sight." He jerks his chin at the door. "Go wash her off you."

* * *

My legs give in the stairwell.

I don't fall.

My back finds the cinderblock, and I slide halfway down it and stop there, crouched, with my elbows on my knees and my head hanging.

My jaw throbs where Tor hit me, a hot, deep ache under my ear.

It's the only part of me I can feel.

The rest of me is buzzing, a thin electric hum under my skin, like the air around a transformer before a storm.

My eyes close.