"Your arm—"
"It'll be fine. Little burn ointment, it'll be gone in a week." He looked at her, and for the first time all night there was something warm in his face, a faint crinkling at the corners of his eyes. "I'm sorry for the trouble, Sarah. I never meant to bring any into your place."
"You didn't bring it, honey. It walked in the front door all by itself."
He nodded. Then he turned toward the exit.
Damien was still on his knees in the middle of the floor. Leon had crouched beside him and was talking to him in a low voice. Brad had finally lowered the phone, though the screen was still lit up and the little red dot was still blinking. As Dominic passed, Brad flinched, as if he expected to be hit, and then looked embarrassed by his own flinch.
Dominic didn't even glance at him.
He walked around Damien without slowing down, the way you would walk around a puddle, and reached for the door.
"Wait," Damien said.
Dominic paused, his hand on the door handle.
Damien had turned his head and was looking up at him. His face was pale and blotchy, his eyes red at the rims. He looked, for the first time all night, exactly as old as he was, which was twenty-eight, and in the strange flickering light from the window he looked even younger than that.
"Who are you?" Damien asked.
Dominic thought about it for a moment.
"Nobody," he said. "Just a man who wanted to finish his book."
He opened the door. The wind threw rain across the threshold in a cold gust, and the bell above the door jangled crookedly on its bent hook.
Then he was gone, a dark shape crossing the flooded parking lot under the red and blue glow of the half-dead neon sign, and a few seconds later they heard the deep diesel cough of a truck engine turning over.
Nobody in O'Malley's said a word until the headlights had swung across the front windows and disappeared toward the interstate.
* * *
It was the old roughneck who finally broke the silence.
His name was Raymond Pruitt, and he was seventy-one years old. He had worked in the oil fields of the Permian Basin for forty-four years, right up until a bad back and a worse heart had forced him out. He came to O'Malley's most nights because his wife had passed two winters ago and the house was too quiet to sleep in. Most people in town knew him as the old guy who sat at the counter and never said much.
Fewer people knew that before he had ever touched a drill bit, Ray Pruitt had spent two tours in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne.
He turned back around on his stool, picked up his coffee, found it had gone cold, and drank it anyway.
"Well," Ray said to nobody in particular. "That was something."
Sarah was still standing by the empty booth with the bar towel in her hands. "Ray. Did you see what he did?"
"I saw it."
"I didn't. I mean, I saw it, but I didn't see it. It was like a magic trick."
"Wasn't any trick." Ray set his cup down. "I knew a man once who could do that. Back in sixty-eight. Special Forces sergeant. Little guy, wasn't much bigger than you, Sarah. Ran a training camp up in the highlands for the Montagnards. I watched him put a big boy from Alabama on the ground three times in thirty seconds and never once break a sweat. Afterwards the boy from Alabama asked him how he did it, and the sergeant said, 'I've done it for real.'"
Ray glanced toward the front door, where the rain was still sheeting across the glass.
"That fella had the same look," he said. "Same tattoo, too. Little arrowhead with a knife through it. Don't see that one much."
"What does it mean?" Sarah asked.
Ray shrugged. "Means he's done it for real."
At the counter, Damien had gotten to his feet with Leon's help. He was still holding his right arm against his body, though he had stopped shaking. He stood there looking at the door with an expression that none of them could read.
"I need to sit down," he said.
Leon guided him to a stool.
Hector pushed open the swinging kitchen doors, carrying three plates. The ribeyes were black on one side and gray on the other, ruined.
"Uh," Hector said. "Your steaks."
Nobody touched them.
Sarah walked around behind the counter, set the bar towel down, and poured three cups of fresh coffee. She set one in front of Damien. Then she leaned on the counter and looked him dead in the eye.
"You're lucky," she said.
"I know."
"No. I don't think you do. Not yet." She tapped the counter twice with one finger. "But I've got a feeling you're about to find out."
She turned to Brad, who was still holding his phone like it was a live grenade.
"And you," she said. "You put that thing on the internet, and I'll never serve you another egg as long as I live."
Brad looked at the phone. Then at Damien.
Then he put it in his pocket.
He didn't delete it.
* * *
Dominic drove west through the storm for forty minutes before he pulled over.
He stopped at a rest area outside Monahans, where a few other rigs were sleeping in a row under the sodium lights with their engines idling. He parked at the end, killed the headlights, and sat for a long time with both hands resting on the steering wheel.