Page 84 of Make Them Bleed
She does. It’s not careful. It’s not staged. She just folds, a building finding its baseline after a quake. I catch her, wrap, and hold. Her face goes into my shoulder with a sound that would make anyone with a pulse want to set the world on fire. I breathe her hair. I breathe in her shampoo, her skin, all of her.
“Got you,” I say into the crown of her head. “I’ve got you.”
She shakes. Not dainty tears, not cinematic grief, but full-body aftershocks. I let it happen, sway with it, keep my hand splayed warm between her shoulder blades and the other at the back of her head like I’m covering a wound from the weather.
“I miss her,” she says, muffled. “I miss her so fucking much.”
“I know,” I say, and I do. Not because I’ve lost like she lost, but because the absence she carries has a shape even an idiot can memorize.
She hiccups a broken laugh. “I’m supposed to be tough and charming and a little terrifying, and instead I’m crying in your sweater.”
“Youaretough and charming and a little terrifying,” I say. “And crying doesn’t cancel any of that.”
Her fingers curl in the back of my shirt. She nods, a small, stubborn movement against my chest like she’s agreeing to terms with oxygen.
“Bedroom?” I ask quietly.
She sniffles, steps back enough to look up at me, eyes red and fierce. “You carry me and I won’t fight you.”
I bend. She’s light in my arms, lighter than what she’s been holding all week. I walk the familiar path to the bedroom where the bed is half-made and the mandala book is face-down on the nightstand like a shallow apology.
I lay her down and then lie down beside her, mirroring, not crowding. She turns toward me on her own, finds my chest again like that’s where her head goes. I angle us into the hollow that makes us fit.
We breathe.
After a while the sobs taper to hiccups; the hiccups to the long, shaky inhales of someone who’s decided not to drown yet. My thumb draws slow circles on her upper arm, and I watch the ceiling fan do that lazy spin thing.
“I brought news,” I say, when her breath evens out. “But it can wait.”
She tips her face up, cheek damp, mouth wrecked into a half-smile. “Do the thing where you give me mission objectives so my panic has a spreadsheet.”
“Dean looked at your photo,” I say. “It’s Club Greed.”
Her brows knit. “Likethe…?”
“Exactly that. Sex club. Devereaux Huxley owns it. Dean knows him. He got us a guest slot for tonight in the Pride gallery. We go in as observers.”
She inhales, a quick, sharp thing. “He took her there,” she says, anger threading through the syllables like wire. “Weeks before she died.”
“We don’t know what that means yet,” I say carefully. “But it’s a start. Club Greed has cameras that see faces tokeepthem safe, not to leak them. Devereaux won’t burn his members, but he doesn’t protect predators. If we show him enough evidence, he might tell us what we want to know.”
Juno’s jaw tightens. “Do you think we’ll see Nico there?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe not. Men like Nico like to show off their taste. Club Greed is a peacock runway. If it’s his haunt, he’ll strut. If not, he’s one degree away from someone who will.”
She swallows. “Okay.” Then, smaller, “What do we wear?”
I kiss her hair—quick, not careful, and pull myself back before I make the part of my brain that loves plans forget why we’re on a bed in the first place. “You in the black dress that thinks it’s armor and the boots that scare me in a good way. Yellow band for conversation-only. We’ll pick it up at the door. No phones. Bone-conduction comms at whisper. A private safe word that isn’t one they use.”
“Lemon,” she says immediately. “It’s a nonsense word, and easy to say when terrified.”
“Lemon,” I echo. “If you say it, we’re done. No negotiation.”
She nods, eyes on my mouth like she’s reading my lips for subtext. “And the team?”
“Ozzy will sit on BLE from the street. Render will stare at the doors. Knight will idle in the car right where he pretends he’s not a wall. Gage’s on the line ready to become fire marshal, owner, phantom membership liaison, whatever we need to make a door open.”
“Detective Huxley?” she asks. “Is she his wife?”
