Stumbling back inside to view the handiwork of her fight, Jia works her way over to the bar and picks one of the few stools still in one piece up. She struggles onto it. The bartender’s giving her a dirty look from across the room. The woman’s glancing around her bar, surveying the damage. Jia says, “I’ll leave you out of this if you don’t stand up for them. Your call. I’ll take a drink too if it’s all the same to you.” Grabbing one of the bottles that didn’t crash to the ground, the woman pours two glasses of whiskey. She slides one to Jia and downs her own in one gulp.

Checking her phone for the first time since the fighting started, she finds twelve texts and three missed calls from Shin. He’s apparently still close by and noticed the sudden exodus from the bar and the blue one toward it. He wants to know if she and Jillian are okay. Apparently Jillian isn’t answering his texts either. Each text seems more panicked than the last.

Assuring her brother she’s fine and so is Jillian, she manages to put her phone away as the first of the police enter. Whoever called must have sold this fight as a big deal because they’ve sent three squad cars worth of officers and they enter with their guns drawn. They seem surprised to find an injured girl drinking alone in a bar that looks like a tornado just went through. Finding no threat though, they do lower their guns.

As they stream through the busted door Jia recognizes one pair. It’s the same duo who showed up the other night after Shin broke into a family’s home. Officer Cassie Klein and her partner who isn’t a fan of vigilantes. The partner already looks in a bad mood when he walks in. Seeing Jia sitting there doesn’t do anything to help. “What the hell are you doing here? Why do we keep finding you when bad shit goes down?”

Dabbing at her bloody head with a napkin, Jia shakes her head at him. “Come on, you’ve run into me three times. Two of those were the same night, a few miles apart. Tonight I had someone call you.”

His hands go to his hips. “Really? So you had them call us and say a crazy lady came in here and was causing a scene?”

Jia frowns. “Okay, maybe that wasn’t my guy. If it was I’m going to have a talk with him. I wanted you here at least. I had a friend who was supposed to call you if things got out of hand. There’s a reason they’re all gone while I’m sitting here waiting for you. So maybe stop the attitude.”

Cassie looks happy to see her, at least until she gets a good look at her. While one of the officers starts interviewing the bartender and others start looking around, she’s the one who comes up to Jia. As she sees how bad the injuries are her smile turns to a look of concern. “That cut on your cheek looks bad. The scrape on your forehead isn’t much better. We should have a doctor take a look. You probably need stitches.”

Groaning, Jia leans back against the bar. “Ya, that sounds about right. Nice to see a friendly face at least. Too bad your partner had to come along.”

Glancing at her partner, Cassie turns red. “Sorry about him, that’s his deal. He’s good though, he’ll help figure this out. What happened?”

Carefully deciding what to share Jia says, “I got a tip that a gang was operating out of here and they’d have drugs on them so I stopped in to talk. Had a couple of drinks, just trying to check them out. After I talked to the leader and told him I was a vigilante, he told them all to kill me. So you know, a Thursday night.”

Cassie puts a hand on Jia’s shoulder. “You don’t need to put on a brave face. Were they armed? How many of them were there?”

Jia pounds the rest of her drink and looks to see if the bartender’s done yet so they can get her another. “Not that many, a dozen or so. Mostly men but a couple women too. They had guns but didn’t want to mess this place up. I guess they hang out here a lot and didn’t want to clean blood off the floors or fill in bullet holes. Lucky me. Still ended up making one hell of a mess.”

Looking her straight in the eye, Cassie says, “You’re lucky. You’re alive. Coming in here alone was stupid but I’m really glad you’re okay. Do you have someone to give you a ride to the hospital?”

Nodding, Jia glances between Cassie and her empty glass. “My brother drove me. He’s probably down the road. I’ll text him when we’re done and he’ll come get me.”

A small smile creeps across Cassie’s face. “I have to do some work but stick around. We’ll probably have a few more questions and I want to talk to you before you go, okay?”

Jia watches Cassie make her way over to her partner. As she walks away Jia can’t help but admire what she sees. She seems smart, nice, she’s definitely cute. Her first thought was to make sure Jia was okay which is really sweet.

Being left alone, she sees the bartender’s done being questioned and is heading to the bathroom. Her heart sinks, she was counting on another drink to help dull the pain in her head. After a minute though she realizes she didn’t hear either restroom door swing shut. She went in there before and the women’s room door isn’t quiet. Where else would she be going?

Making an excuse about going to the bathroom, the cops wave her away. She follows the bartender and sees a door at the end of the hall is slightly cracked. There’s a light on inside. Moving toward it, she tries to stay quiet. To avoid suspicion she pushes the women’s restroom open for a moment and then lets the door creak closed. There’s a shuffling in the room at the end of the bar but when the bathroom door gets loud it stops for a moment. After a moment it starts up again. When she gets to the door, a quick peek inside finds an office with only a lamp providing light. The bartender’s quickly searching through a desk for something, her hands full of papers.

Clearly surprised to see Jia walk in, she doesn’t bother to hide what she’s holding. “Shut the door behind you. Now.”

Doing as she’s told, she stares the woman down. She’s careful to leave no crack in the door but not to latch it. “What are you doing back here? I can ask the police to come and check this out.”

“You’re not going to do that.”

“Why not?”

Smirking, the woman waves the papers in front of her face. “If you do, your brother’s as screwed as I am. I’m deleting the security cameras for tonight and getting rid of the credit card records from the last few weeks. They’ll know everyone who’s been in here for at least the last month if I don’t. You may think that’s good for taking these guys down, but your brother’s on that list. He’ll go down as hard as anyone. You said you came here tonight to protect him. Do you care more about that or about nailing these guys?”

Slumping against a wall, Jia sighs. “Why are you doing this?”

The woman goes back to looking through her papers. “Because if I don’t I’ll lose pretty much all my customers. They’re already going to stay away for at least a few months but they’ll pay me enough to get by and eventually they’ll come back. Too many junkies here in town to stay away for long. Also, they’ll probably kill me if I don’t. There’s that too. Am I deleting this stuff or not? Your call, you can obviously stop me if you want to. I saw how you fought in there, I can’t take that on.”

The idea of helping these jerks makes her blood boil. Part of her wants to jump across the desk between them and snap the woman’s neck. She knows she can’t do that though. “Are you going to delete all of them? Won’t that look kind of suspicious.”

“Of course not, just the important ones. I keep them separate. The low level guys are going to have to take the fall tonight. Nothing I can do for them except delete the video.”

“My brother’s in the important file?”

“Not yet, but he can be if you let me do it. I need you to decide now. One of those cops out there’s going to come in here any second and I don’t have a good excuse for why we’re in here.”

Feeling like she’s going to pass out from blood loss, Jia doesn’t know what to do. She has two bad options. The thought she keeps coming back to is that Shin would do this for her in a heartbeat. He’d already be out of this mess if she hadn’t come along the other night when he was stealing what they wanted him to. She feels disgusted with herself for agreeing to it but she says, “Fine, do it. I want my brother’s records though. I don’t trust you to get rid of them. Once I have them I’ll go distract the cops long enough for you to do the rest.”

The woman hesitates. “How do I know you won’t betray me?”

“Because I gave you my word and you don’t have time to argue. You said I needed to make up my mind. Well now you do.”

Flipping through pages of records, the woman finds the receipts for Shin Crawford and tears them from the pile. Snatching it from the woman’s hands, Jia stuffs them into her pocket. Feeling ill, she slips out of the dark room.