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)
“These better be legendary,” she says.
“Prepare to be serenaded by carbohydrates.”
We eat at the island—her knee knocking mine, my hand finding her thigh—coffee warming the edges of a morning I want to stretch forever. She licks syrup from her thumb, and I swear to keep this safe, whatever it takes.
Then the crime board on the wall looks back at us: red string, names, times. The air shifts.
“After breakfast,” she says, voice steady. “What’s the plan?”
I squeeze her hand. “We finish this, Juno. For her. For us.”
By late afternoon the plan is less a whiteboard fantasy and more a checklist with blood pressure. I lay our kit out on the kitchen table like a surgeon lining up instruments.
Bone-conduction earpieces, paired and tested.
Two push-to-talk clips disguised as jacket buttons.
A Bluetooth scanner running on a Raspberry Pi in a cigarette pack — Ozzy calls it the Smoker.
A narrow-beam mic that looks like a pen (My favorite item).
Two tiny beacons preloaded with innocuous names in case we need to mark an exit or a car (Lamp A, Plant B).
Gage’s Franken-rig: pocket camera + low-light lens + matte hood so it drinks neon and doesn’t reflect it back.
We brief in my living room. Juno sits cross-legged on the couch in a dark navy dress that looks like trouble wrapped in restraint, her leather jacket tossed over the arm like a dare. Ozzy sprawls on the rug, stringing gaffer tape around a compact battery pack like he’s crafting friendship bracelets. Knight leans near the window, rolling his shoulders like a nightclub bouncer in witness protection. Render perches on the arm of a chair in a blazer that can talk its way through any door. Gage hovers in the doorway, already tuned to the frequency of the night.
“Atlas Room first,” I say, flipping the TV to a floor-plan I built from emergency egress filings and Yelp photos. “Two entrances. Host stand here. Bar here. Mirrors behind the top shelf. That’s both a gift and a curse.”
“Gift: reflections,” Gage says, already in the loop.
“Curse: reflections,” Render echoes. “If we don’t control angles, we record ourselves recording ourselves.”
“Table picks,” I continue, “A3 and A4. A3 for Juno and me—we play polite strangers who collided at the bar if we need a cover. A4 for Gage and Knight. Megan’s expecting us. She’ll pour nothing we haven’t watched poured.”
“Street team,” Ozzy says, saluting with tape. “I’m in the hatchback with the Smoker. If Nico brings a device named like a bored rich guy, I’ll see it. Also scanning for BLE beacons. Bad guys love off-the-shelf toys.”
“Marina follow?” Knight asks.
“Gage and I split,” I say. “Knight, you take the bike and bowline the tail if he runs lights. Ozzy stays planted. Render, if we get a good look at the signet crest again, I want the high-res.”
“Copy.” Render taps a sticky note on his phone screen DON’T GET ARRESTED—the joke that’s not a joke.
I turn to Juno last. She meets my eyes, steady. We’ve done the hard talk already; this part is logistics. “Signals,” I say. “If you say cinnamon, that’s ‘come to the table now.’ If you say check please, we extract. If you touch the back of your left wrist, I move you, no questions.”
“And if I say more,” she adds, flicker of a smile despite the tension, “you keep pace.”
Knight coughs something that sounds like standing order into his fist. The room relaxes around the laugh it earns, the same way teams breathe in unison before kickoff.
I hold up the pen mic. “Voiceprint. If I get him talking long enough, we build a clean model. Later we match bar audio and Marina audio without needing a face.”
“Scary,” Ozzy says.
“Useful,” I correct.
We roll.
Atlas Room at eight is the same dim velvet cathedral it always is: a hush at the door, a hush at the bar, and a hum of conversation that acts like fog—muting, anonymizing, making secrets feel inevitable. The neon ATLAS sign flickers a low gold, and mirrors double the bottles until it looks like the world is made entirely of glass and amber.
Megan’s behind the bar with her honeybee tattoo, eyes catching Juno’s first. She gives me a look that says play nice and Juno a look that says I’ve got you. She sets two coasters with the compass rose logo just off center—and it feels like the room splits along that axis.
Gage and Knight drift to A4 with the posture of colleagues who have already closed a deal. Render dissolves toward the back wall where a velvet curtain hides a service corridor and—conveniently—gives him a dark frame to work from. I take A3 but stand long enough to point the pen at a glass shelf; in the reflection, I can see the bar, the door, the mirror toward the restrooms that doubles as a periscope. The pen hums once meaning the recorder is live.