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)
Footsteps approach. We separate with the kind of reluctance that makes me want to file a grievance with time. Juno smooths her mouth with the barest touch of her thumb. I sit back and become the man who looks like he belongs anywhere.
“Mr. Huxley will see you now,” Adele says, somehow not smirking despite catching our oxygen theft. She leads us through the discreet corridor to a side salon: low light, a pair of leather chairs angled toward a small table, a credenza with nothing on it but water and rules framed like art.
Devereaux Huxley is already there. He has the posture of a man who signs checks without asking for pens. Crisp suit, open collar, a wedding band that would read as ostentatious on anyone else and looks like minimalism here. His eyes are the kind that learn rooms and don’t forget.
“Ms. Kate. Mr. Finn,” he says, offering the sort of hand that doesn’t insist. His voice is a quiet instrument. “I’m Devereaux. Thank you for meeting me as guests, not vigilantes.”
“We do both,” Juno says, and I’m proud of her for the way she says it.
A corner of his mouth lifts. “As do I, depending on the board.” He gestures us to sit. “My house is very fond of its house rules. I understand you are fond of your sister.”
He says are, not were. I like him better for it.
“I’m not here to ask you to betray your members,” Juno says. “I’m here to ask you to value your house more than you value their illusions of privacy.”
“Good,” he says. “Because betraying members is how a house like mine dies. And because privacy without consent is simply camouflage.”
He steeples his fingers in a way that would be a cliché on a lesser man. “Detective Huxley is my wife. We keep our jurisdictions separate. She doesn’t ask me for tapes, and I don’t ask her for warrants. We both prefer to wake without ethics hangovers.” His eyes flicker, amused.
“Chloe’s good,” I say. “She’ll find them.”
“She is,” he agrees. “But your clock and hers are not synced. So here is what I will do, and what I will not. I will not hand you names. I will not show you faces unredacted without a lawful request. I will not undermine the premise of a room designed to keep people safe from other people’s cameras. I will—” He tips his head. “—pull transaction adjacency, seating adjacency, and entry adjacency for the men you’ve mentioned. Who sat with them. Who followed them into a hallway and came out adjusting a tie. Who consistently arrived thirty minutes before and left four songs after. We call it shadow-mapping. It’s a genealogy of bad decisions.”
“Patterns,” Juno says, leaning forward. The word is a soft prayer.
“Yes. Patterns. You can build names from patterns if you are careful. And when you bring Chloe something that looks like a pattern and smells like a plan, she can ask a judge for a warrant I can’t ignore.”
“What’s the cost?” I ask. Men like Devereaux do not offer this without a ledger.
He nods, pleased. “You keep my house intact while you hunt. You do not cause scenes on my floors. If you must cause a scene, you do it outside, where civility is only a suggestion. You share with me, within reason, when a predator thinks my rooms are their hunting ground. You trust that when I tell you no it’s because there are lines under this rug you do not want pulled.”
“Done,” Juno says, and the word is blade-clean.
He studies her for the length of a heartbeat, recognizes the kind of woman who means what she says, and turns to a lacquered tablet on the table. “I can pull three years of adjacency in under an hour,” he says. “Longer if you want Marina cross-reference. Our docks have better cameras than the city, for obvious reasons. If your men have met here, or lured here, or hid here, they left a shadow.”
“Nico?” Juno asks, voice like a piano wire. “He’s the ferry. He moves between rooms like he owns the water.”
Devereaux’s gaze sharpens. “He has not paid us in years,” he says simply. “He prefers other lights. But men who like to be seen prefer men who like to steer. I’ll map adjacency between your Five and his known nights at other houses.”
He taps the tablet. I can almost see the graph bloom in his head—nodes and edges, weight and direction. “You will not get names from me tonight. You will get a map and I will place you on the right street.”
“Street is good,” I say. “We can walk from there.”
He nods once and then tilts his head, amused. “And now I will give you a gift that is not a gift. If you do not want to see something you cannot unsee, say so now and I will put you in Pride for fifteen minutes and bring you back when the sightline has cleared.”