Page 94 of Make Them Bleed
Arrow steps up behind me—close enough that I can feel his heat, not so close that he corners me. His hand finds the back of my arm. “We’ll get them,” he says.
“We’ll get them,” I echo, and cap the marker like an exclamation point.
He threads our fingers together, squeezing once. I squeeze back. The clock over the sink clicks into a new minute.
“Tonight,” I say.
“Tonight,” he agrees.
We clean up the kitchen because my therapist says you should do small normal things after big abnormal ones, and I’m not about to argue with science. He puts my coffee in the mandala mug like he’s baiting fate. I roll my eyes and drink anyway. When he goes to leave to check in with Maddox, he pauses at the door and kisses me so softly I almost miss it.
After he’s gone, I stand in the quiet apartment and stare at the names until they feel less like myth and more like kindling. Fear hums in my bones. It’s low and constant. But I’ll stop at nothing to find the men responsible.
I pick up the mandala book and color one petal purple, one petal black. I breathe through my nose, trying for peace.
Tonight, we’ll watch them in the wild.
32
Arrow
Stonehouse hides behind a florist like a rumor. You step through a doorway of peonies and apology cards and the air changes—cooler, darker, lit like a secret. The main room is all walnut and low brass, bottles backlit like stained glass. The ceiling is pressed tin, and the servers glide like they’re on rails. A muted soccer match drifts from the corner TV, the sound replaced by a vinyl crackle of something old and classic.
We take a two-top with sightlines—the door in my left peripheral, the service hallway in my right. Render posts in the alley with a camera rig inside a messenger bag that reads CITY MAPS. Ozzy claims a stool dead-center at the bar, rotating a coaster with anxious precision. Knight nurses a beer near the kitchen like a man who has never once in his life actually watched a soccer match, eyes half-lidded, taking in everything. Gage is at home with three laptops open, bending membership metadata hard enough to talk.
Juno sits across from me in black, hair up, lips a shade that would get men in novels into preventable duels. Red lipstick thatmakes me want to smudge it up. She’s got her hand on her water glass, knuckles white just enough that anyone else would miss it.
I don’t.
“Breathe,” I whisper.
“I am,” she says, a hair too quick. “Your definition of breathing includes oxygen. Mine includes spite.”
“Both are gases,” I say, and she huffs, tension breaking for a beat.
He arrives on the late side of ten. Merritt Voss walks into Cicely’s like he owns equity in the concept of dim light. He’s smaller than he wanted to be when he grew up—compact, curated, wearing a navy suit with the kind of lapels you can only buy if you use the wordbespokewithout choking. He smells like expensive wood and litigation. He sits at the bar, perches, and signals for something neat the bartender pours without asking. People look. Not everyone. Enough.
“On him,” Ozzy breathes into my ear, the bone-conduction earpiece tickling my jaw. “No date. He’s peacocking solo.”
“Copy,” Render murmurs. “Alley clear. Back door propped by a bucket that saysiceeven though there’s definitely no ice in it.”
Knight takes a long drink and sets the glass down like punctuation. “He’s waiting.”
He is. Every line of him humsappointment.He checks his watch twice in two minutes. His leg bounces once—a controlled flick, like he regrets having a body. He doesn’t notice me at all. He doesn’t notice Knight. He doesn’t notice anything until he notices Juno.
It happens between blinks. His head turns in idle scan, and then his gaze snags like he’s been hooked by his lip. Recognition smacks him. It isn’t the excited kind, not theoh hey, I love your podcastbuzz Juno still occasionally gets at grocery stores when she dares to buy apples like a human. This recognition tastes like aproblem. He recognizes her likeoh hey, I killed your sister.
His face doesn’t change much. Men like Merritt train for this. But the pupils blow, the mouth tightens, the hand slides off the bar an inch like it wishes it knew how to run. He picks up his glass anyway, swallows something that burns, puts it down with careful fingers, and stands.
“Eyes,” I say, and everyone moves a millimeter closer in their heads.
Merritt doesn’t go for the front door. He slices through the room, tight smile for a man he recognizes from maybe a luncheon that raised money for something you’d never google, and finds the service hallway without asking for directions.
Juno’s chair scrapes softly. I catch her hand under the table and squeeze one beat:We go. We don’t sprint.She squeezes back:Not sprinting, just hunting.
I toss some bills on the table. Knight slides from his stool. Ozzy loses two dollars on a coaster trick and abandons it like a ship at sea. I rise, and Juno is already in motion.
The back door clicks. The alley air tastes like wet stone and secrets. Merritt’s shadow cuts across brick.
