She’d never missed having Shane at her back so much.

Derrick took in a deep breath, twitched all over, and forced out a smile that was all teeth. ‘All these people are witnesses. I never raised a hand to her, okay? She’s the one who assaulted me.’ He raised both hands, brushed the ice out of his hair, and backed away from the table, and Claire. ‘Damn, girl, back off the caffeine. I’m out.’ He sounded like a regular guy now, bemused by her reaction, and the clapping faded off. ‘Sorry if I scared you, I didn’t mean to.’ It sounded sincere. All of a sudden, the tide of popular sentiment was turning around them.

‘Yes, you did,’ Claire said flatly. ‘You know it and I know it. But you don’t scare me, Derrick. I’ve—’ Killed scarier things than you, she almost said, but that would sound way wrong in this place, this time. ‘I’ve known plenty of guys worse than you. I’m still standing.’

‘Chick’s crazy,’ he said, to no one in particular – just a pronouncement, and it seemed like some of the others agreed with him. Some didn’t. One girl was frowning at Derrick, clearly alarmed; at least a couple of guys were not on his side, either. One of them – a big enough fellow – stood up.

‘Maybe just go, man,’ he said.

‘Why not her?’ Derrick shot back.

The guy shrugged. ‘Well, she’s got pizza. You don’t.’

It was a mild, but valid, point, and right then, one of the employees – probably the manager, Claire thought – came out from behind the counter and fixed Derrick, then Claire, with quelling looks. ‘Whatever’s going on, it stops here,’ he said. ‘Or I call the cops.’

‘No problem,’ Derrick said. He was still holding up his hands. ‘I’m going, man.’

He did, backing through the door, but as he walked past the plate glass window where Claire had first seen him, he sent her a quick, sideways look that was so malignant it might have caused cancer.

She was shaking all over, she realised – the aftermath of the adrenaline flood. She put her chair back upright and asked at the counter for some paper towel. The soda had mostly landed on the floor around Derrick’s chair, and she cleaned it up without complaint, and quietly apologised to those around her. They shrugged it off.

The pizza tasted like dust and cardboard, delicious as it probably was, and she ate fast, with her eyes fixed on that plate glass window.

Dreading the moment when she would have to step outside.

‘Hey.’ Claire flinched, but it was the boy who’d stood up to Derrick at the end; he’d walked up to her side, but she hadn’t noticed, because she’d been so intent on the window. ‘You worried about him?’

She laughed shakily. ‘A little, yeah.’