And when they finally take the hood—the backpack repurposed as a hood—off her head, she sees what the inside looks like, too. It’s nearly as austere as the outside. Wood paneling on the walls. Couple doors at the far wall. Tin tile on the ceiling. Folding chairs stacked against a wall, and a podium at the far end. In the corner sit boxes of blaze-orange clay pigeons and an old hand-thrower. On the wall: guns, framed pictures of members, war memorabilia, a handful of deer heads, a ram’s head, a bear’s paw upturned so it looks like it’s giving the room a furry, black middle finger.

In the corner, a jackalope head.

Skank stands in front of her. Arms crossed. Smoking a cigarette.

Smiling as if she just took a real satisfying dump.

John Elvis paces. Itchy. Twitchy. Like either he’s on fresh meth or he needs to be soon.

And Chris sits next to her. The capillaries have burst around his left eye, and when he turns toward Atlanta she sees the white of that eye is pink and veiny, too. John Elvis must’ve popped him one.

No sign of Mitchell.

“We’re gonna fuck you up,” Skank says.

“Mel—” John Elvis says, speaking what’s apparently the Skank’s name.

Skank ignores him. “That’s a promise. Faggot and the fag hag. Sharing a single grave.”

“Mel.”

“Or maybe your bodies in a ditch somewhere.”

“Melanie, shit!”

She wheels on him and screeches: “What? What, you fucking asshole, what? Can’t you see I’m having a conversation here?”

It’s then that everybody gets quiet, hearing raised voices coming from behind the one door. Male voices. Atlanta can’t quite make out what they’re saying, but the one voice sure as shit-fire sounds like Mitchell Erickson’s. The other voice is a booming rumble of thunder. And the thunder god sounds pissed.

Then the voices stop, and Atlanta hears a sound like a dog yelping behind that door.

The door flings open.

The man who stands there is too big for the doorway. Got a chest like two beer kegs lashed together with fat and muscle. Square jaw. Beard not so much trimmed as it is sculpted onto his face.

Blue polo. Dark jeans. The signs of wealth: a ruby ring, a gold watch, a hand-cannon revolver hanging at his hip in an oiled brown-leather holster.

With thick fingers, the man turns the ruby ring from palm back to knuckle.

He scowls. “Melanie. Show the girl into my office, please. And cut her damn hands free.”

“Sir—” Melanie the Skank protests.