Chapter 7 - The Interrogation
By 2:00 AM, the diner on Highway 12 was dead quiet except for the hum of the old refrigeration unit behind the counter.
Clare sat in the back booth where she had been left two hours earlier, her hair plastered to her skull, her designer trench coat soaked through and ruined by the mud. Her feet were killing her. The heels of her Italian leather boots had snapped one by one during the two-mile trudge through the dark, forcing her to walk stocking-footed through the gravel.
The door jingled.
She didn't look up. She couldn't. She was shaking from cold, exhaustion, and a humiliation so profound it felt like physical pain.
A pair of heavy boots stopped beside her table. A cup of steaming black coffee hit the formica with a sharp clack.
"Drink it," a voice said.
Clare looked up. It wasn't Bear. It was a younger guy with a scar across his chin and a patch on his vest that said ENFORCER. He wasn't threatening her; he just looked at her with a cold, professional curiosity, the way a mechanic looks at a transmission that dropped its gears on the interstate.
"Where is my husband?" Clare whispered, her voice cracking.
"Your husband is currently sitting in his living room watching three of our guys pack up every single photo of his late wife into milk crates," the enforcer said, pulling out the opposite chair and sitting down without asking. "He didn't say a word to stop us."
Clare stared at him. "You can't do that. That's illegal. That's—"
"That's reality," the enforcer interrupted softly. "You played a stupid game with the wrong kid, lady. You think we don't know about kids? Half the clubhouse grew up in places worse than that highway. We know what it looks like when someone tries to erase a kid."
"She ruined my wall!" Clare burst out, tears finally breaking over her eyelids, hot and angry. "I spent four hundred dollars on that paint! She walked right up to it with a yellow crayon and just—just drew all over it like an animal!"
The enforcer looked at her for a long, silent second. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, folded piece of cheap lined notebook paper. He laid it flat on the table and smoothed it out with a calloused thumb.
It was a drawing. Done in crayon—yellow, orange, and green. It showed a tall, sprawling garden of flowers that reached up past the top of the page, and standing beside them were two stick figures with big smiles—one with long hair, one small. At the bottom, in shaky, eight-year-old cursive, it said: For Mom. And Bear. And Tiny.
"She drew this on the back of a parts invoice in the clubhouse twenty minutes ago," the enforcer said quietly. "She didn't cry once after we got her out of the rain. You know why?"
Clare didn't answer. She couldn't.
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"Because she figured out before she was even nine years old that nobody was coming for her," the enforcer said. "Except us."
He stood up, tossed a five-dollar bill onto the table to pay for the coffee she hadn't touched, and turned toward the door. "Your ride's outside. Arthur sent a tow truck for your ruined sedan. Pack your bags by noon tomorrow. You're off the lease."
