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“Robin,” I said.

“Glitch.”

He looked at my cut when he said it. Didn’t hide that he was looking.

Until then, I hadn’t thought about what the cut would mean to them. They didn’t see a man who’d ridden four hours to find Wren. They saw a Venom Rider who’d found the woman they’d spent a year hiding.

I opened my mouth, but the boathouse door banged before I could say anything. Somebody was coming down the pier fast.

I knew who he was before he covered half the distance. Simon Gibson. One of Robin’s partners.

“You need to get back on that bike,” Simon said.

He came in close. Close enough that Robin said his name once, low, a warning. Simon either didn’t hear it or didn’t care.

“She’s with me now,” he said. “So back the fuck off.”

Wren with another man. Had she fallen into somebody else’s arms while she was pregnant with my child? It didn’t sound like the Wren I knew. Then again, I hadn’t acted like the Glitch she knew.

Even if she had, she’d done nothing wrong. I’d kicked her out. She hadn’t owed me a year alone just because I’d spent it looking for her.

I looked at Simon and tried to read him. His jaw was tight. He’d come too close, too fast. Once, I’d have decided that meant he was bluffing.

Now I did nothing.

I still see everything. I just don’t believe any of it until I’ve checked twice. Three times. Four.

Behind him, up by the marine-supply store, a car door shut. The blue hatchback pulled out and went up the hill toward the highway.

“Simon.” Robin didn’t raise his voice. “Inside.”

“Robin—”

“Inside.”

Simon went. He took his time about it and he looked at me the whole way, and the door banged again, and then it was the two of us.

Robin waited long enough for me to understand the pause was for my benefit.

“Ask me,” he said.

“Is she here?”

“I’m not confirming anything.” Flat. Not cruel. Worse than cruel—administrative. “Not that she’s here. Not that she isn’t. Not one word about anybody else, either.”

Anybody else. He wouldn’t even give me the pronoun.

“Robin—”

“Here’s what I’ll say.” He put a hand on the truck’s hood. He didn’t crowd me. He didn’t give me anything to push against. “Anything you find out, you find out because she decided to tell you. Not me. Not one of my guys. Her. What happens from here is up to my sister.”

“I know what I did.”

“You don’t, though.” He said it without any heat at all. “You know what you did in the clubhouse. You weren’t in the car with her.”

What the hell did that mean? What exactly had happened after Wren left?

“You want terms,” he said. “Here they are. They’re not open to negotiation. If you don’t like them, you can get back on the bike and Wren doesn’t need to know you were here. Anything happens, happens on my ground. Anything happens, happens with one of my people in the room. And it happens when she says and only if she says.”