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)
She inhales, a quick, sharp thing. “He took her there,” she says, anger threading through the syllables like wire. “Weeks before she died.”
“We don’t know what that means yet,” I say carefully. “But it’s a start. Club Greed has cameras that see faces to keep them safe, not to leak them. Devereaux won’t burn his members, but he doesn’t protect predators. If we show him enough evidence, he might tell us what we want to know.”
Juno’s jaw tightens. “Do you think we’ll see Nico there?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe not. Men like Nico like to show off their taste. Club Greed is a peacock runway. If it’s his haunt, he’ll strut. If not, he’s one degree away from someone who will.”
She swallows. “Okay.” Then, smaller, “What do we wear?”
I kiss her hair—quick, not careful, and pull myself back before I make the part of my brain that loves plans forget why we’re on a bed in the first place. “You in the black dress that thinks it’s armor and the boots that scare me in a good way. Yellow band for conversation-only. We’ll pick it up at the door. No phones. Bone-conduction comms at whisper. A private safe word that isn’t one they use.”
“Lemon,” she says immediately. “It’s a nonsense word, and easy to say when terrified.”
“Lemon,” I echo. “If you say it, we’re done. No negotiation.”
She nods, eyes on my mouth like she’s reading my lips for subtext. “And the team?”
“Ozzy will sit on BLE from the street. Render will stare at the doors. Knight will idle in the car right where he pretends he’s not a wall. Gage’s on the line ready to become fire marshal, owner, phantom membership liaison, whatever we need to make a door open.”
“Detective Huxley?” she asks. “Is she his wife?”
“Yes.”
“We should tell her something.”
“I’m sending her a packet that says ‘I’m not being weird, you’re being weird’ in legalese. If anything gets spicy, she has the trail to pick up without us there to get arrested.”
Juno exhales, a long ribbon of air. “You’re good at this.”
“Planning? Or lying on your bed pretending I’m not thinking about kissing you?”
“Yes,” she says, and the corner of her mouth tilts.
I let myself smile back, then sober. The thing I’ve wanted to say since the door opened is a pressure in my throat. It comes out before I can translate it into something safer.
“I’ll find the men responsible,” I say, voice low and even. “And I will end them.”
Her eyes widen, some new mix of shock and recognition. I don’t mean it as an Instagram threat; I mean end in the way you end a story that’s harming the listener—by closing the book, by breaking the pen, by removing the author from play. My hands curl reflexively.
She studies my face, searching for the place where vow becomes bravado. She finds none. Her eyes soften, and she lifts a hand and cups my jaw.
“Don’t die doing it,” she says. “That’s not romantic. That’s stupid.”
“I’m too petty to die,” I say, and she snorts, half-sob, half-laugh.
“Promise me something else,” she says.
“Anything.”
“That you’ll always tell me the plan, even when you think I’ll hate it.”
“Standing order,” I say. Then, because it’s true and it needs air, “I will always take care of you.”
Her eyes shine, and for a second I think I’ve overpromised—like I’ve sworn to outrun gravity. But she nods like she was waiting for exactly that arrangement of words and tucks herself closer, hand fisted in my shirt.
We lie there and let the hurt turn into a quieter thing. After a while she asks if she can borrow my chest for a nap and I tell her my chest doesn’t charge hourly rates. She threatens to review me on a freelancer site. We almost laugh ourselves into breathing like regular people.
By six, we’ve moved from horizontal to operational. She showers as I sit at her kitchen table texting the team, and compiling the Club Greed checklist: clean IDs; cash; a simple ring we can pass as a fidget not a mic; gum. I pen-print a tiny map of the Pride gallery and circle corners with sightlines. I write Lemon in the corner and doodle a lemon because I am under-slept and not okay.
Juno emerges, hair up, the black dress carving lines I have to respect with all the discipline I can muster. She catches my eyes, sees all of it, and lifts her chin.
“Ready?” I ask.
“No,” she says.
I smile, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll be beside you the whole time.”
We lock her door—she checks the knob twice, then a third time—and head down into a city that doesn’t know it’s about to introduce us to a sin in a nice suit.
In the car, I shoot a final text to the group:
Club Greed. 10 p.m. In. Pride. Let’s go.