Page 96 of Make Them Bleed
Juno tilts her head, Ghostface a white oval that knows how to haunt. “Tell me about the Five,” she says. “Coleman. Rook. Beau. Devin. And you. Tell me what you did to my sister. Who hired you? Why?”
“I wasn’t there,” he says, fast enough that I know he came here prepared to say that sentence to himself in the mirror. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Too late for that,” I say. “You were there.”
He laughs again, softer this time. “Do you think you can scare me? Because you’re wearing masks? That’s precious.” His eyes flick to Juno. “And tragic.”
Something tilts. I see Juno’s shoulders tighten, her breathing shift three beats into a pattern I know meansvolcano. I step closer, still careful. “Don’t talk to her,” I tell him. “Talk to me.”
He does, because he’s the kind of man who thinks men make the rules even when women are writing the story. “You don’t know what you’re playing with,” he says. “You don’t knowwhoyou’re playing with.”
“We do,” Render says. “We have names now.”
Merritt’s smile flickers. “Then you know whose house you just?—”
He doesn’t finish. The whiskey he spilled finally finds the slick edge of the rug. Merritt steps back to reclaim space, heel catches pile, and his body does a surprising, ugly thing—fishtails. Knight moves—too late, wrong angle. Merritt pinwheels. The back of hisskull clips the beveled corner of the stone hearth with a sound I will hear in my dreams on the nights I forget to invent new ones.
He drops.
Silence is not actually silence. It’s breath and blood and the house deciding it’s going to keep its lights on because antler chandeliers don’t know what death is. Juno stands perfectly still in a mask shaped like a scream, and for half a second I think she made no sound and then I realize she made all of them at once, inside.
We move the way people who care about living move—fast, urgent, competent. I’m at Merritt’s side in two strides, two fingers at his carotid. The skin is too warm; the pulse is not there. I say his name like that matters. It doesn’t.
“Arrow?” Juno’s voice is small and ninety miles wide.
I look up. Shake my head once. The shape of her shoulders collapses and reconstitutes into something that has to survive. Knight swears under his breath in a language made for swearing. Ozzy shifts slightly. Render goes still in a way that meansI’m watching our perimeter and also trying not to think.
“This wasn’t—” Juno says, and then, helplessly, “I didn’t?—”
“You didn’t,” I say. “He fell.”
“And hit his head,” Ozzy says, voice numb. “On a very rich rock.”
“Arrow.” Gage’s voice snaps into my ear like a rubber band. He hadn’t been on comms, but he is now. “What happened?”
“Accident,” I say, because that’s the catastrophic truth. “He’s down.”
“Do not narrate details,” he says, too brisk to be anything but terrified. “Knight, time?”
“Forty seconds since impact,” Knight says, eyes on the window and the street beyond.
“Then listen very carefully,” Gage says in a low voice. “Leave. Now. You will not discuss anything here on a line that can be traced. You will not tidy. You will not gift-wrap a crime scene. You will—Arrow, are you listening?—you will get Juno out of that house.”
“Wait,” Juno says, voice shaking into anger. “I’m scared.”
“I’ve got you,” I say, and my own voice comes back to me calmer than I feel. “We’re making a call.”
Ozzy whips his gaze to me. “Arrow?—”
“We are not leaving an unreported body,” I say. I spot Merritt’s phone lying on the counter, unlocked and ready for phone calls, and for once I ignore Gage’s hissed objection because this is a thing I amnotwilling to be wrong about. I hit the one button I’ve avoided all year. 9. 1. 1.
“Sir, what is your emergency?” a woman asks, patient and exhausted.
I grab the voice modulator out of my pocket. “There’s been an accident,” I say, my voice unrecognizable. “Man hit his head. He’s— he’s not breathing.” I give the address because ethics don’t care if they’re bad for your op. I end the call before the operator can ask a name.
Render is already at the front window, peeking through a slit in the curtain like a spy novel illustration. “Neighbor lights on,” hesays. “No one in the street. We have ninety seconds before the first siren wails.”
“Go,” Gage says, a prayer disguised as an order. “Now.”
