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“You call him?”

“Twice. Straight to voicemail, both times.”

“Then don’t call him again,” Fox said. “Katy’s waited for that man’s undivided attention. She gets her time.”

“That’s what I figured.” I put both hands on the table. “Hospital was out. Gunshot means a mandatory report. There’s a vet clinic on County 9. Anesthesia, suture, saline, and a table that drains, and not one Goddamn legal obligation to call anybody.”

Surge looked up from his laptop. “A vet clinic.”

“A vet clinic.”

“Who was in it?”

“One tech. Working late. Alone.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hornet said.

“She closed both wounds. Put a drain in. Freak keeps the arm. Freak rides again.”

“No paper,” Fox said.

“No paper. No police. No report.”

Nobody said anything for a second. Boots shifted. Leather creaked. The overhead light sat on the table and made the beer rings look like a map of something.

Clean by every measure the club used. A brother shot, a brother saved, nobody outside the fence any wiser.

Hornet’s elbows hit the table. “So what do we do about the woman?”

It wasn’t a question. It was the thing the whole room had been holding since my first sentence, and Hornet said it out loud because Hornet always said it out loud.

“What do you mean, what do we do?” Brazil said.

“I mean she’s got Freak’s blood under her nails and a face she can pick out of a lineup. I mean I don’t know her, you don’t know her, and Patch doesn’t know her.” Hornet spread his hands. “That’s what I mean. Don’t look at me like I’m the asshole for saying it. Somebody was going to.”

“You’re always the asshole who says it,” Surge said, not looking up.

“Somebody’s got to.”

Fox didn’t fill the silence. He sat with his forearms flat and his hands loose and his eyes on me, and the room did what the room always did, which was wait for the man who’d made the call to say what he intended to do about it.

“I’ll handle it,” I said.

Hornet’s jaw worked once. “Handle it how?”

“Handle it.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one you’re getting.”

“He’s answered you,” Fox said mildly, and Hornet shut his mouth.

Surge had stopped typing. Gunner’s shoulder came off the wall about half an inch, which from Gunner was a speech, and I only caught it because I’d been counting his tells for twenty years.

Brazil said nothing at all. From Brazil, silence was agreement. The full kind. We’d said all of it already, in a hundred rooms, and neither of us needed to say it again.

“You volunteered,” Hornet said. “Before Fox assigned it. You want to tell the room why?”