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)
Across from me, Juno orders in a clear, easy tone. “Smoked honey, please—Megan’s call.” The way Megan’s mouth tightens tells me we made the right kind of noise in the right kind of hive.
“Coming up,” Megan says. To me, under her breath as she moves, “North booth at ten o’clock has two guys who think they invented venture capital. Not him. Accent at the rail at eight o’clock—French? Not him either.”
“Merci,” I murmur.
Our comms chirp once as Ozzy’s voice slides into my ear. “Smoker live. I’m seeing fifteen devices within ten meters: three phones with random MACs, one tablet named Isabelle’s iPad, six wearables, two security cams broadcasting BLE, and an AirPods case named… NEREUS-NAV-PRO.”
“Say again?” I reply, heart rate quietly redlining.
“NEREUS-NAV-PRO. Could be a coincidence. Could be exactly our brand of terrifying.”
“Angle?” Render whispers.
“Northwest of the front door,” Ozzy says. “Signal strength says just came into range and paused.”
I don’t turn. I watch the mirror. A man steps in with the kind of posture that’s more habit than choice—upright, practiced. He hands a coat to the hostess and takes the room’s temperature with a slow sweep that reads as bored if you don’t know what you’re looking at. Tailored navy suit, white shirt, no tie. The cuff—blue piping, an anchor embroidered near the button. The ring: signet, compass rose over waves.
My pen mic picks up Megan’s exhale. “That’s him.”
Juno’s fingers find the bottom of her glass on the bar and skate, just once, around the perimeter—a minuscule circle only I would clock. She does not look at the door. She shifts so her profile faces the mirror, pretends to check her lipstick reflection, and lowers her chin half an inch.
“Juno,” I say.
“I’m okay,” she breathes before I can ask her.
The man’s accent lands before he does. Mediterranean edges filed smooth by money and time. He takes the rail at Juno’s ten o’clock. Megan slides him a napkin like a perfectly executed handoff. His fingers brush the napkin as his ring flashes and my stomach drops with it.
“What is it tonight?” he asks Megan, tone wry. “Do you still smoke the honey?”
“Still do,” she says, unruffled. “Stronger wood. Less pretense.”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Pretense makes the world tolerable.”
“Disagree,” Megan says, and moves to the smoker, giving me a sliver of line-of-sight.
Ozzy again: “Same device name. Closer. RSSI minus forty. He’s parked.”
Gage: “Marina called back—membership confirms Nicolas Armand. Etta DM is read, no reply.”
Render: “I’ve got the crest: high-res, forty-five degree. I can match to Marina signage later.”
Knight: “Bike ready. I hate cocktail bars.”
“Focus,” I whisper. “Armand’s talking.”
He is. To Juno.
“Forgive me,” he says, leaning just enough to suggest but not impose. “Do I know you?”
Juno doesn’t flinch. She turns like she’s been interrupted in a pleasant thought and grants him a half-smile that would make lesser men confess to tax fraud. “Saint Pierce makes everyone look familiar after a while.”
“True,” he says, chuckles like a man conditioned to being charming without appearing to try. “You have that—what do they say—photographic face.”
“That’s not a thing,” she says, and sips. She lets the pause stretch a half heartbeat too long, then tilts her head. “Nico?”
He blinks. The sort of blink a man perfect at lying allows himself when someone loads the correct password on the first try. He recovers with applause-level smoothness. “Do I owe you money?”
“Maybe,” she says, breezy. “Maybe you owe me a drink.”
Megan places his smoked honey with surgical neutrality. He doesn’t look at her. He looks at Juno’s mouth like it has inconvenient gravity. “Then I am in your debt.”
The pen mic catches his accent. He’s not French. He’s from the coast where vowels take their time and consonants turn to smoke—the kind of man who could talk his way past a guard and send a text to have the guard fired in the same breath.
A certified asshole.
And if he keeps looking at Juno like she’s his next snack I may just abort this whole mission and smash his face in.
“Juno, you okay?” Render breathes in my ear, only half joking.
“Hold,” I say. “Let him handle his rope.”
Nico glances down at Juno’s glass. “Megan’s call?”
“She knows where the bodies are buried,” Juno says, too casually. “Figuratively.”
“Figuratively,” he repeats, amused. “Good.”
He leans a fraction closer. “You were at the Delphine, weren’t you? I thought I saw you in passing. All the masks.” He smiles like a man who loves a theme. “And now we are here without them.”
I flex my hand on my thigh to avoid putting it through the table. He’s not guessing; he’s testing. The word masks may as well be a flare.
Juno doesn’t rise to it. “Did you like the party?” she asks. “I heard it was a funeral with better lighting.”
He freezes again. Tiny. But it’s there.
“Funeral?” he echoes, buys time with a sip. “One must be careful with metaphors. They take on lives of their own.”