Page 102 of Make Them Bleed
“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 younoit’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.”
Juno frowns. “What sightline?”
Devereaux turns his head just enough that the mirror behind him picks up an angle of the main room. “Your stepfather,” he says. “Entered seven minutes ago. Green band. He is currently at the north banquette with a woman who is not your mother.”
Time folds. Juno’s breath leaves in a small, personal collapse. My hand finds her knee without thinking. She doesn’t flinch. Her eyes burn—shock first, then insult, then a fast, airy grief that looks like the moment before glass breaks.
“No,” she says. It’s not denial. It’s a vow.
I stand already, because if she rises fast she’ll tip intoactand we are not acting yet. Devereaux holds up a palm once—rules—and lowers it again. “Do not break my house,” he says gently. “If you want a closer look, come with me. If you want to breathe, stay and I’ll close the mirror.”
“I want to see,” Juno says, voice very calm, which is my least favorite tone on her because it lives three inches from the edge of a cliff.
Devereaux leads us to a sightline in Pride that might as well have been designed for interventions. We look like people admiring a painting. In the mirror’s angle, I see him: Bob. Khakis made fancy with a blazer he thinks hides the office badge in his blood. Green band. An expression I recognize from Sunday dinners when he expected applause for remembering to bake pie.
The woman across from him is mid-thirties, sleek hair, a dress that saysI belong here, or I know how to pretend convincingly.She laughs at something he says. He touches her wrist in that automatic, territorial way some men think reads as charm. It’s not lurid. That almost makes it worse. She looks familiar.
“Who is she?” I whisper.
“Etta Hoy,” Juno answers, voice breaking. Juno’s jaw tightens until I worry about her teeth. Her fingers crush the red band in her palm. “He took her? Here?” she says.
“The influencer? The one Arby knew?” That can’t be a coincidence.
“He brings people where he feels powerful,” Devereaux says, not unkindly. “This room is safer than most of the rooms he uses toimpress. It is also not a place to confront a man if you want the confrontation to count.”
She breathes once, hard. I can feel the moment where she pictures walking across the room and setting everything on fire. I can feel the moment where she chooses to set something else on fire later.
“Is he… connected?” I ask Devereaux. “To the Five?” The question tastes like a dare. Paul worked under Bob. The finger gun. The donor dinners. The adjacency is right there like a wire we could pull.
“Your stepfather isnotwho you think he is,” Devereaux says. “He tips like a man who thinks tips buy silence.”
Juno swallows. She sets the band on the table very gently, like an egg she refuses to break. “We don’t confront him here,” she says. “We watch. We follow. We see who he sees. We learn why he came here. And we follow her too.”
“Good,” Devereaux says. “You are angry and you are not stupid. My favorite combination in a guest.”
He gestures a staffer over with a look. “Please seat Ms. Kate and Mr. Finn in Pride’s corner again. Inform me when Mr. Kate—” he pauses, corrects kindly, “—Mr. O’Neill—moves theaters.”
We retake our seats. Juno trembles once in the way you tremble when you don’t have time to fall apart yet. I angle my knee to her knee, and she presses back so lightly it might be an accident. Her eyes never leave the mirror.
