Page 79 of Oath
"Well?" she asked, raising a single brow, lips painted just enough to be taken seriously.
“You look…” I trailed off, tried again. “You look like something people start wars over.”
“Not helpful, Lunchbox,” she said, but her smirk told me itwas.
Still, I didn’t like this.
Not just the dress. Not just the heels. Not even O’Rourke, who I trusted about as far as I could throw him—and considering the guy was built like a water heater filled with bad decisions, that wasn’t far.
It was the whole damn setup.
There wasn’t much room for a weapon in that dress. This wasn'tthatkind of mission. She couldn’t go in armored to the teeth. She needed to play the part: arm candy, not assassin. Which meant her only weapons were what she could say, how she could move, and the hope that O’Rourke didn’t screw us all sideways for whatever price someone had whispered in his ear.
Grace could handle herself. I didn’t doubt that. But I hated the idea of sending her in alone—like this.
“Turn,” I said, motioning with two fingers.
She gave me a look, but spun slowly, her movements smooth even in those ridiculous heels. I scanned the length of her back, waist, hips, ankles. Nowhere to stash anything heavier than a lip gloss tube.
"You're stalling," she said.
“Damn right I am.” I scrubbed a hand through my beard, brain working overtime. “You don’t have any way to protect yourself if things go sideways.”
She patted the small clutch in her hand. “No taser, but I have all the bugs and the little pellets Alphabet wants me to drop. Just like we agreed.”
I really hated the lack of a weapon for her.
Like—despised it.
“I’ll talk my way through it,” she said, easy. Confident. But I still caught the flicker of nerves behind her eyes.
That sealed it.
"Stay here. Ten minutes."
I didn’t wait for her to argue. Just turned and headed for my gear. It was new, most of it repurposed, but Voodoo had done a full supply run. We didn’t have everything here, so we made do with what we had. I had enough to cobble together a decent bench, and enough tools to build or break damn near anything in a pinch.
What I needed was small. Concealable. Something we could use to keep O’Rourke in line. Something that didn’t look like a weapon, butwasone.
I found the casing for a magnetic RFID patch—a leftover from something—and started modifying it. Stripped out the original tracker guts, replaced them with a micro-shock circuit, not enough to kill, but plenty to get someone’s attention.Especially if it was placed near the base of the spine. Added a remote trigger, paired it to one of our encrypted comms channels.
Took longer to solder than I liked, but it needed to work, not win awards.
By the time I came back out, Grace was sitting on the edge of the couch, scrolling through her phone like she wasn’t about to walk into a lion’s den. She looked up as I held out the patch.
“Another tracker?” she asked.
“Better.” I motioned for her to stand. “Turn around.”
She hesitated a beat, but complied. I peeled back the top layer of the dress just enough to press the patch to the inside, at the base of her back, right above the zipper. It held fast—good. Seamless. Invisible. I smoothed the dress back over it and stepped away.
“What does it do?”
“If O’Rourke eventhinksabout turning on you, I hit this button—” I held up the trigger “—and he’s on the ground, pissing himself. Doesn’t knock him out. But it hurts like hell.”
Her mouth curved. “You turned me into a remote-controlled cattle prod?”
“Think of it as a shock collar,” I said. “Except it’s for the asshole walking you in. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt you. Probably only good for one or two uses, but that should be enough.”
