Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Safe or not, camera on or off, Arrow near or far—none of it matters if I don’t do the one thing I promised at her grave.
Find the men who killed her.
HOLO-BURST are snakes, but maybe not our snakes. The team’s new intel made that clear: lots of money, lots of cover-ups, not necessarily murder. Which means I’m back at square one with the one lead that stayed in my head like a splinter.
Nico.
A guy with a nice smile and traveler’s tan and a name that could belong to anyone. Arby had mentioned him once, over eggs and hash browns at The Spoonery, in that airy tone she used when she didn’t want me to worry. It’s nothing, Junebug. He’s older. Fun. He travels. No photos. Keeps it simple.
No photos. Keeps it simple. Yeah, okay, assassin.
I take my coffee to the living room and drop to my knees in front of the ottoman that doubles as my archives. I pull out the shoebox that says SPARE CABLES and spill its actual contents: ticket stubs, receipts, thrifted polaroids, a tangle of lanyards from launch parties, and a rubber-banded stack of Arby’s old notebooks I can’t bring myself to throw away. My hands shake as I flip them open.
One is a brand log: ideas, quotes, schedules written in her loopy script. Another is a mess of doodles and product names: HOLO-BURST circled, then crossed out, then scrawled with PAY US, CLOWNS. The third is the one I’m looking for: a compact black Moleskine she used for randoms—lines with hearts, lists of restaurants, a stray lyric that stuck in her head for a day.
Two pages from the back: Nico – Atlas Room / smoked honey / 10:30. No date. The handwriting is frenzied happy. Beneath it: no photos (his rule) and a ridiculous winky face.
Atlas Room. I blink. That’s the cocktail bar down by the river with the velvet booths and the bartenders in suspenders who think they’re in 1927. I’ve been there exactly twice. It’s the kind of place you whisper at.
My heart starts a fast drum loop. I grab my laptop and type Atlas Room Arby Kate into the search bar. Nothing obvious. But in my camera roll, I find a boomerang from the night we celebrated her 500K milestone at Atlas—neon sign flicker, a coupe glass catching light, her forearm sliding into frame to boop the rim of my drink. The photo is mostly wrists and glass, but there’s a reflection in the mirror behind the bar—the suggestion of a man’s shoulder just beyond her elbow, a cuff with thin blue stitching. My stomach flips.
I zoom until the pixels break. The cuff has a tiny emblem stitched near the button—an anchor.
Shipping. Sailing. Traveling. An anchor doesn’t make a sailor, but Arrow’s always talking about patterns.
Arby’s archived stories are locked on her account, but I have backups. I dig in my cloud and find the Close Friends export Render helped me pull. I scrub the thumbnails for green-ringed dots, and there—blink and you miss it—a story from months before she died: a two-second shot of a matchbook with ATLAS ROOM in gold foil and a scribble under it: you + smoked honey = trouble. The background is dim; the audio is mostly bar noise. Then, muffled, a male voice with the kind of soft Mediterranean consonants movies hire for flirty villains: Bright girl. Arby laughs. Story ends.
Bright girl. The phrase punches me in the sternum. In one of my own voice memos, recorded weeks ago, I had whispered that someone at the cemetery called me bright girl and I hated that it made my stomach flutter. That wasn’t the cemetery man. That was Arby’s man.
I scroll through the rest. One blurry image of a hand with a signet ring holding a coupe glass. The ring has a crest on it—maybe a gryphon? Maybe a lion? Wealthy frat? Secret society? My pulse spikes. I screenshot and tilt the image, boosting contrast until the crest pops a little. Not a gryphon. A stylized wave under a compass rose.
Marina. My mouth goes dry.
I google Saint Pierce private marina compass rose crest. A logo pops up that’s so close it makes my skin prickle: and the Marina Club logo pops up. I remember Render mentioning Gray’s breakfast at the Marina Club with Valentino. My heart ricochets. Nico and Gray could be neighbors. Or coworkers.
Okay. So: Nico probably belongs to the Marina Club. Wears a signet ring with their crest. Drinks smoked honey cocktails at Atlas. Calls women bright girl like it’s a line.
I stand, adrenaline spiking so hard my knees go loose. I yank on jeans and a sweater, stuff pepper spray into my pocket, and cram my feet into boots. The coffee is half-cold and goes down like penance. I don’t text Arrow. If I involve them, they’ll overprotect me until I sit on my hands.