“All right,” Mike said, and went back inside, scanning the crowd for Annie. She was trying to make her way toward the exit but got stuck in the bottleneck. Plenty of people wanted a look at the scuffle, which, thankfully, had ended with just one solid kick.
“We need to go,” Mike shouted into Annie’s ear over the music. Annie nodded and said her jacket was still at coat check. Mike took her hand and the two of them started pushing through the crowd.
Coat check was on the far side of the club. People were drifting back toward the dance floor, loudly rehashing what they’d just seen, with Mike as the evening’s unexpected main attraction. The crowd kept carrying them off course, and what should have taken a minute dragged into fifteen.
At last they got Annie’s jacket and headed for the exit, but suddenly a wave of agitation swept through the room. When they got close to the doors, they saw why. Several police cruisers and a van full of officers had pulled up outside Storm.
The exit was blocked. Clubgoers who had been on their way home argued loudly with the officers at the entrance, but within a minute they were all forced back inside. Confusion hung over the place for nearly half an hour.
During that time, several plainclothes officers—detectives, by the look of them—spoke with the security staff. Then one of them spotted Mike in the crowd and pointed him out. A plainclothes officer started walking straight toward him, and Mike didn’t move.
If this was about the kick he’d given Annie’s attacker, he was ready to answer for it. But that wasn’t what the officer wanted. “Good evening,” the man said to Mike. “Would you come with me, please?”
“What for?” Mike asked evenly. “We need your witness statement in connection with a serious crime that took place behind this club tonight.” “A crime?” Mike said, baffled. He added that he knew nothing about it.
“Fine,” the officer replied. “Then you can put that in writing.” Mike had no real choice but to go with him. The last thing he saw inside that cursed club was the smug smile of the same guy who had harassed Annie.
The man looked straight at Mike, grinning and making little taunting gestures only Mike seemed meant to understand. Mike didn’t know exactly what the creep was trying to say, but he had a bad feeling the man was behind this strange turn of events. The worst of it began at the station.
Mike went from witness to suspect in no time. They put him in handcuffs and locked him up. The case included planted witnesses—club patrons who claimed they had seen Mike at the scene of the crime.
The key point was that one of the security guards confirmed Mike had left the club at the exact time listed in the report. When Mike finally got a chance to speak, he pointed to the witnesses and the man in the security jacket and asked the officers, “Are you even sure these people were actually in the club?”
“Check their wrists for the UV stamp. The real security staff stamped everyone coming in. I can show you mine.” Mike rolled up his right sleeve and showed the mark he’d gotten at the door.
“Why so quiet now?” Mike went on, looking at the supposed guard. Then it hit him. “I get it—you don’t even work there. Look at him.” Now he turned back to the officers, appealing to plain common sense…
