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)
“And me?” I ask, even though I already know.
“You’ll sit with me at a table,” he says. “And when one of them does the stupid little check with his finger, I’ll put my hand over yours and we’ll handle him.”
I breathe. My face does that thing where it betrays gratitude by softening despite my best efforts. “I trust you,” I say, and mean it like a vow I’m not willing to break. “I don’t love that you went to Paul without me. But I understand why. Don’t make a habit of it.”
“I won’t,” he says. “Unless the habit is living long enough to tell you first next time.”
“Good habit,” I say, and crawl up his chest just enough to kiss him slow and certain.
We lie there for another minute, pretending time isn’t a thing, and then the coffee in the other room guilt-shouts in my brain and I roll away with a groan. “Our bagels and coffee are getting cold,” I announce, standing up from the floor and grabbing his sweatshirt on my way, because I am a thief with priorities.
He follows me to the kitchen in socks and sweats, hair a little worse for the best reasons. I plate sesame and cinnamon-raisin like it’s a sacrament and give him the fancy cream cheese because he will scowl if I don’t and I enjoy the scowl but not at breakfast.
We eat at the counter like it’s a normal morning and not the fork in a road. He tells me more details about Paul—how he cried, how he looked like a man trying to feel something on purpose at a place designed for it.
He pulls a folded sheet from his back pocket and slides it over: his tidy block letters with the five names, underlined, boxed, arrows to Stonehouse / Cicely’s / Unit 14.
“Can I?” I ask, nodding at the crime wall.
“It’s your wall,” he says. “Write them as big as you need.”
I cross the room, uncap a thick black marker, and add the names to the center column, the one that used to say FIND THE FIVE and now says each of their names in bold ink. I feel like a certain piece is missing, but can’t figure it out.
Arrow steps up behind me—close enough that I can feel his heat, not so close that he corners me. His hand finds the back of my arm. “We’ll get them,” he says.
“We’ll get them,” I echo, and cap the marker like an exclamation point.
He threads our fingers together, squeezing once. I squeeze back. The clock over the sink clicks into a new minute.
“Tonight,” I say.
“Tonight,” he agrees.
We clean up the kitchen because my therapist says you should do small normal things after big abnormal ones, and I’m not about to argue with science. He puts my coffee in the mandala mug like he’s baiting fate. I roll my eyes and drink anyway. When he goes to leave to check in with Maddox, he pauses at the door and kisses me so softly I almost miss it.
After he’s gone, I stand in the quiet apartment and stare at the names until they feel less like myth and more like kindling. Fear hums in my bones. It’s low and constant. But I’ll stop at nothing to find the men responsible.
I pick up the mandala book and color one petal purple, one petal black. I breathe through my nose, trying for peace.
Tonight, we’ll watch them in the wild.
32
Arrow
Stonehouse hides behind a florist like a rumor. You step through a doorway of peonies and apology cards and the air changes—cooler, darker, lit like a secret. The main room is all walnut and low brass, bottles backlit like stained glass. The ceiling is pressed tin, and the servers glide like they’re on rails. A muted soccer match drifts from the corner TV, the sound replaced by a vinyl crackle of something old and classic.
We take a two-top with sightlines—the door in my left peripheral, the service hallway in my right. Render posts in the alley with a camera rig inside a messenger bag that reads CITY MAPS. Ozzy claims a stool dead-center at the bar, rotating a coaster with anxious precision. Knight nurses a beer near the kitchen like a man who has never once in his life actually watched a soccer match, eyes half-lidded, taking in everything. Gage is at home with three laptops open, bending membership metadata hard enough to talk.
Juno sits across from me in black, hair up, lips a shade that would get men in novels into preventable duels. Red lipstick that makes me want to smudge it up. She’s got her hand on her water glass, knuckles white just enough that anyone else would miss it.
I don’t.
“Breathe,” I whisper.
“I am,” she says, a hair too quick. “Your definition of breathing includes oxygen. Mine includes spite.”