Page 58 of Make Them Bleed
“Cookies are essential to any op,” Knight says solemnly.
Arrow spins the whiteboard toward us—timeline tight and legible:ATLAS → MARINA → NEREUS → UNKNOWN TEXT.He boxesNicolas Armandand draws arrows toMarina Membership, Boat Registration, Atlas Tabs, Cell Pings.
“Two tracks,” he says. “Soft and hard. Soft: social engineering, human contact. We use Atlas and Marina Club to pull what people will give us if we look confident and slightly annoying. Hard: metadata. Plates, cell towers, public cams, vendor crumbs.”
Gage nods. “I’ll sit in a car and become a bat.”
Knight claps him on the shoulder. “Bats are underappreciated.”
“Atlas,” I say. “Megan said he came back twiceafter. Alone. Watching the door. If he thinks I’m coming back?—”
“Bait,” Render finishes, eyes thoughtful. “We can set a perimeter and let him give himself away.”
Arrow’s jaw tightens. “We control the room if we do that. Two plainclothes at the bar, one at the door, one outside on comms. You never order a drink we haven’t watched poured.”
“Dad voice,” Ozzy stage-whispers, and Knight coughs “standing order” into his fist. Gage doesn’t look up but I catch the twitch of a smile.
Heat crawls up my neck. I try not to smile and fail. “He’s not wrong,” I say, and Arrow’s shoulders subtly drop half an inch.
“Marina,” Render continues, businesslike again. “Armand’s paper trail is thin—LLCs that lead to shells. But the club loves a list. I’ll work the membership angle. Juno, do you know anyone in their orbit? Sponsor reps? That PR girl who invited Arby to the Gracewood thing?”
“Etta,” I say, making a face. “She’d answer if I DM with the right amount of faux glam and moral superiority.”
“Do it,” Render says. “Ask about ‘Nico’ like he’s a known quantity and you haven’t been in mourning. People love to fill gaps with their own info.”
Gage flips open his tablet. “I can build a facial composite from theClose Friendsreflections and the Marina cams. Not perfect. Good enough to trackifhe goes past the angles we can borrow.”
Knight leans on the table. “And thisbright girltext?”
“I’ve got the last tower ping before that phone went swimming,” Render says. “Under the bridge by the rowing sheds. I can drop a micro-crawler there to sniff for any burner that goes live in the same square foot. Creeps are habitual.”
Gage sucks in a breath. “Pizza for Render. Extra cheese. Forever.”
They move like a machine that learned to dance. I watch and feel the panic loosen, a centimeter at a time. Then Knight turns to me.
“What do you need?” he asks. “Like, specifically. What gets you through the next forty-eight without detonating?”
I blink. The question is a hand held out in a dark room. “Structure,” I admit. “A schedule. Check-ins that aren’t lectures. And… someone to tell my mom I’m not sleeping with a knife under my pillow even if I am.”
“Copy,” Gage says, tapping his phone. “I’ll text Karen from ‘Unknown Number’ with a tasteful check-in. Kidding. I’ll textyoureminders andyoutext Karen. No fake-outs.”
Arrow draws a rectangle on the board and writesTODAYinside it, then bullets the plan:
Atlas: Megan, staff briefed, perim on Juno.
Marina: Render → valet logs & membership whisper; Gage → vehicle path; Knight → eyes on Nereus slip.
Digital: Ozzy & Arrow → plate/FOIA-scrape, cell-tower brick-by-brick, Nico alias graph.
