Page 25 of What We Bury

She huffs. “This is bullshit. I don’t even know who you are. I don’t know who any of you are. What am I going to say to anyone? Who would believe me if I told them what I saw?”

“I’m Holden.” I offer her my hand. She ignores it, so I shrug, dropping it back to my side. “And you know plenty, wildcat. But that’s for later. Now it’s time to move.”

I gesture in the direction of her work, and she just stares at me. I can see her brain working, processing, hating every syllable that’s come out of my mouth, but unable to find a flaw in the logic.

“I don’t start work until twelve.”

I grin. “Amazing. We can talk first then. There’s a diner two blocks that way. Not yours—a different one. We’ll sit, we’ll eat, we’ll have a nice chat about ground rules, and then you can go to work, I’ll continue to hover, and you can pretend I’m not there. Sound fun?”

“Nothing about this sounds fun.”

“That’s the spirit.” I start walking. After three steps, I hear her follow. She’s not happy about it. Her footsteps have thecadence of a woman who’s considering pushing me into traffic. But she follows.

Good girl.

The diner is the kind of place built for hangovers and regrets: sticky vinyl booths, a dead ceiling fan, a waitress who calls everyone “hon”. I slide into a booth near the back. Sage sits across from me like she’s taking a seat in an interrogation room, which, to be fair, she kind of is.

The waitress drops two menus. I order coffee, black, and a stack of pancakes because I haven’t eaten since before the op and my blood sugar is being a bitch. Sage orders coffee and nothing else.

“You don’t want to eat?” I ask, tapping the menu. “Everyone loves bacon.”

“I already ate.”

“There’s always second breakfast.”

She gives me a droll stare.

I shrug, handing my menu to the waitress. “Just the coffee for her then.”

When the waitress leaves, the silence stretches. She comes back with our coffees and Sage wraps her hands around her mug, staring into it like she’s reading tea leaves. I take a sip of mine, watching her over the rim.

“So,” I say. “How you doing?”

The look she gives me could curdle an entire dairy. “How am I doing? How the fuck do you think I’m doing?”

“Well, let’s see. You got assaulted, got saved by a bunch of guys in skull masks, then rounded out the festivities by taking out a guy who, while he absolutely deserved it, also happens to be kind of a big deal around here. That’s a hell of a night even by my standards. So—how you doing?”

“I’m spectacular. Thank you for asking.”

“Sass under pressure.” I grin. “You know, you’re really doing it for me.”

She doesn’t smile. Just keeps staring at the coffee, turning the mug in slow quarter-rotations with her fingertips. I think about those hands wrapped around a knife handle, knuckles white, tendons standing out. I think about the sounds she made while she was swinging. I think about a lot of things I shouldn’t be thinking about across a diner table this early in the morning.

“What do you want from me?” she asks.

“Right now? I want you to drink your coffee. Can you do that?”

She says nothing, which I take as assent.

“Here’s where things stand.” I lean forward, elbows on the table. “Your pincushion is gone.”

“Pincushion?”

I gesture at the mostly empty restaurant. “You really want to say his name here?”

She winces. “Go on.”

“As far as anyone will ever know, he left town of his own volition. His car is on its way to an airport, his phone has been texting, and by tomorrow there’ll be enough digital noise to make it look like he had a quarter-life crisis and ghosted his life here. No body, no crime scene, no investigation.”