Austin rushes over, breathless. “Jesus. Holy shit! I got the whole thing on video.”
“Delete it,” Clare hisses at him.
“Are you kidding me?”
“We need to take her home,” Clare says. “Do you know where Charlotte went?”
“Probably back to my place,” Austin says. “Must have been a lover’s quarrel.”
“You’re such an asshole,” Clare says.
“You’re the one who pulled a gun.”
The din of the bar is louder now, some people fixed to their phones, surely recounting the scene they’d just witnessed to whatever contact is on closest tap. Clare’s head hurts. She looks to the door, certain the man will return, maybe with his own gun. She has to leave. She needs to get Kavita out of here too. But then the door opens and in walks Patrick Germain, striding her way.
“Her?” he asks the bartender.
The bartender points at Clare. Yes. Her. Germain approaches, and the bar quiets again. This time people lift their phones to film whatever might come next. Clare can barely draw in a breath. She meets Germain’s eyes.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, her voice low.
“Give me your gun,” he says. “And do it nicely.”
For a moment Clare considers her options. She turns and lifts her shirt to allow Germain to withdraw the weapon from her belt. Then she spins to face him.
“You’re the beat cop on duty tonight, detective?” she asks.
“Charlotte called me about twenty minutes ago. Asked me to swing this way and check in on Kavita. On my way over I get a radio call about a woman pulling a gun. Just so happened I was already on my way.”
“Bullshit,” Clare says. “You were following me.”
“Jesus Christ.” Germain removes the handcuffs from his holster.
“Can we just walk out?” Clare says to him, pleading. “Please? A scene would be bad for me.”
“You know I have to arrest you.”
“No you don’t.”
“He was an off-duty cop,” Germain says.
“A friend of yours?”
“Don’t fight me on this,” Germain says, closing in. “Don’t make this worse than it needs to be.”
Germain tries to get behind her, but Clare turns so her back is to the crowd. She won’t give anyone the pleasure of her expression as this unfolds. Germain takes hold of her arms and pinches her wrists behind her back. Clare doesn’t fight. He locks handcuffs but leaves them loose enough that Clare knows she could wriggle out. He leans forward until she can feel his breath on her ear.
“We’ll go out the back door,” he says.
“He was going to hurt her,” Clare says through clenched teeth.
“Maybe. But you can’t pull a gun in a bar. You’re not a cop.”
“He was going to hurt her,” Clare repeats.
Germain is reading Clare her rights loud enough for anyone within twenty feet to hear.
“Lock her up,” one of the man’s friends says. He lifts his beer in cheers when Clare looks his way.
Germain leads Clare to the back door to a chorus of boos. When they emerge into the alley Clare rips herself from his grasp, stumbling forward with the effort. But she is able to right herself before she falls. She turns to face Germain, her jaw pulsing with rage.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says.
Germain scoffs. “What do you think this is? The wild west? You’re in Lune Bay. You don’t have free rein. Not here. We won’t tolerate it.”
“Take the cuffs off,” Clare says. “Now.”
“I can’t do that,” Germain says. “You’re under arrest.”
THURSDAY
The cell door slams, jolting Clare awake. She sits up on the bench, squinting against the sharp fluorescent lights, rubbing her eyes. Her mouth is gritty with thirst. The guard fiddles with the key to lock the holding cell behind him. The newest arrival to the cell, a young woman, stumbles crying to the bench across from Clare and plops down. Her T-shirt reads BRIDE2BE. A ripped and dirty veil hangs from her knotted ponytail.
There are seven women in here now. An hour might have passed since Clare phoned Somers, her voice mail picking up right away, her phone off. The guard had allowed Clare a second call only because Germain said so. She left a message for Douglas Bentley. She could think of no one else.
“Where is Germain?” Clare asks the guard.
“Who knows?”
“Can you call him for me? He said he’d be right back.”
“I don’t call detectives at three a.m.,” the guard answers.
The wall clock over the officer’s desk is frozen at midnight, the time Clare assumed it was when Germain led her to this holding cell at the back of the detachment. An older woman sits in the middle of the far bench, flanked by four younger cell mates. Clare and the drunk bride-to-be are the only two who sit alone.
“Don’t stare,” the older woman says to Clare. “Stop staring. We don’t stare in here.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
The woman’s command is more teacherly than threatening. There are infinite reasons these women might be here. One has a black eye and scratches up and down her arms. They all look disheveled. Clare is sure she does too. The only other time Clare was in a holding cell was when she was much younger, strung out in her hometown. She’d sat alone in that cell, the young guard an acquaintance who’d finished high school a few years ahead of her. That night Clare was so certain of her release, of her father’s sway, that it never occurred to her to be scared. What a difference it might have made in my life, Clare thinks now, if I had been scared. If someone had scared some sense into me then.
In the corner, the bride huddles with her knees to her chest, her tears marked by black streaks of mascara down her cheeks. She rips the veil from her hair and begins dry heaving, her body lurching forward with the effort. Clare crosses the cell and
