Whitey wriggles his way into the trailer. Ears up. Shoulders forward. Looking around.

“Guy,” she says. Her eyes feel hot and they start to sting and she quickly wipes tears away before they form and fall. “What . . . what happened?”

“I was gonna call you, but they bashed my phone to shit.”

“They? They who?”

“Who you think? Wayman. And his little inbred white-boy nephews.”

She moves toward him to hug him, but her skin crawls and cymbals crash in her head and she pulls away suddenly—the panic comes fast and without invite as it always does, leaving her feeling cold and clammy and freaky-aware. Feels like she’s having a stroke and a heart attack all at once. In her mind she hears a shotgun blast. She sees blood on a bed.

Shuddering, she backs away from Guy, mumbles a mousey, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He sighs. Pulls the frozen corn away to reveal a busted-up eye. The white’s gone red, the whole eye ringed in a knotted bruise. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It’s my fault.”

“Yo, I drove you up there. My choice, not yours.” Way he says it doesn’t sound like he means it, though. He won’t look at her, either, gaze drifting near her but never at her.

Shane finally stomps in through the door, panting. He takes one good look around: “Holy crap.”

“’Sup, vato,” Guy says.

“Uh. Hey. Um. You look bad.”

Guy flips him off.

“Did Wayman say anything about me?” Atlanta asks.

“’Cause it’s all about you, right?” Guy’s nostrils flare. “Sorry. Yeah, we talked about you. He wanted to know where you lived and shit. Wanted to maybe pay you a visit. I didn’t tell him. I don’t give nobody up. I’m no snitch, not to cops, not to crooks.”

“Thanks,” she says. But then adds, “That doesn’t make sense, though. Kucharski knew who I was.”

“She doesn’t know where you live, and I guess they figured best way to get that information was to beat it out of me.” Guy again molds the bag of corn to his eye. “Or maybe they just wanted to send a message. Big man wants his dog back.”

“He can’t have him.” Nobody can but me. She’s surprised at her own stubbornness on this point as her mental heels dig in. She scratches Whitey behind the ear. His head tilts and his eyes close.

“Yeah. Well. Guess you gotta wonder how far you’re gonna take this, then.”

“I guess I do gotta wonder.” She chews on the inside of her cheek. It’s a question she doesn’t want to ask, much less answer. “Did he give you a way to contact him?”

Guy winces as he stands, feels around the countertop by the microwave, comes back with a slip of paper. A phone number sits scrawled across it in hasty black marker. “There.”