She did not take it personally.
She had stopped taking that kind of thing personally on a roof a long time ago, where she had learned that the men shooting at her did not hate her either. They simply had not yet met the version of the night that would teach them better.
Neither had these boys. The night was young, and it had a great deal to teach.
One of the older chiefs near the back, a man with a face like weathered teak, had stopped laughing two rounds ago. He could not have said why. He watched the woman in the mirror the way Webb watched her. A small frown had begun to gather between his brows, and he set his beer down without finishing it.
Cain, warming, hooked his boot around the leg of her stool and pulled.
It was a small thing. He moved her perhaps an inch. A shove dressed up as an accident. The kind of thing a man can do to a woman in a crowded bar and call horseplay.
She rode it without a ripple. The untouched water did not so much as tremble.
Without seeming to think about it, she lifted her glass off the rail and set it on the flat of the bar, out of the path of a spill. A small, economical motion that nobody but Webb understood. The reflex of a person who has learned to secure the loose gear before the boat takes a wave.
"Easy," Cain said. "Mark it gentle. Hands up for the camera. Just making room."
Webb came down the bar fast for a man his age.
"That's enough," he said. "Trevor. Off the lady's stool."
Cain turned, surprised, and then amused.
"Relax, Silas. We're playing."
"You're not playing," Webb said. "You just don't know it yet."
But the old man had no rank here, no team, no weight. Only 19 years of beer and a chest full of names. And Cain waved him off the way the young wave off the old. Kindly, certainly, completely.
He turned back to his audience. The bar's attention drifted on.
Webb stood a moment with his jaw working, then retreated, because there was nothing else he could do until the man he had called arrived. And he prayed the man would hurry.
The woman, for the first time, looked up from the mirror.
She did not look at Cain. She looked past him, over his shoulder, at the door. A long, level, expectant look. The look of someone waiting for a guest.