Page 54 of Shatter

Tor finds me in the trees a few minutes later.

I hear him coming, heavy boots on pine needles, not bothering to muffle them.

He stops beside me and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his cut and shakes one loose.

He offers me the pack.

I shake my head.

He lights his, and the lighter flares orange across the gray in his beard.

Then it's dark again except for the red coal at the end.

"The girl's got something." He blows smoke up at the pine branches. "Whatever she pulled out of that diner."

"Yeah." My voice comes out hoarse.

"You know what it is?" He flicks ash into the dark.

"No, sir." I stare into the trees. "I didn't ask."

Tor turns his head and looks at me for a long moment in the dark.

"You didn't ask." He says it slowly, like he's tasting it.

"She wasn't ready to tell me." My hands curl at my sides. "She's had people taking things off her all her life. I wasn't going to be one more."

He doesn't answer for a while.

The cigarette burns down.

"Find out." He drops the butt and grinds it into the pine needles with his heel. "Tomorrow. Not because I'm telling you to take it off her. Because some Canadian with a lot of money is calling people on the Gulf right now and asking about my patch, and I need to know why before they show up at my gate."

"Yes, sir." I don't move.

He starts to turn away, then stops.

"You were steady in there." His voice drops lower. "Real steady, for a first timer."

My throat locks up.

"Don't let it scare you." He looks at me over his shoulder, his face all shadow. "And don't let it get comfortable, either. The day it gets comfortable is the day you've got a problem."

He walks off through the trees toward the lights of the clubhouse.

I bend over with my hands on my knees and wait to throw up.

It doesn't come.

The shaking comes instead, out here in the dark with nobody watching, starting in my fingers and working its way up my arms until I have to grab a pine trunk to stay upright.

* * *

It's almost five when I get back to my room, the sky over the fence going gray.

Vail's gone.

The dresser isn't in front of the door, but the door is shut, and when I knock, there's a long pause before she answers.