Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“I run,” I finish, mouth curving despite myself. “Rule one?”
“Rule one was obey me,” he says dry. “Rule one is now trust yourself.”
“That’s better,” I say, and mean it.
We clean up the evidence of our almost—a skewed chair, a dropped mask, a crooked table that has seen things. He shoulders the case and heads for the door. I catch his sleeve.
“Gage.”
He stops. Looks. That look is a whole conversation inside a single breath.
“Thank you.”
He nods and walks out the door, and after he leaves I remember the promise I swore to myself. No more dating men I work with. But Gage is different, right?
TWENTY-TWO
GAGE
I don’t make it to the car right away.
I stand outside River’s door after it clicks shut, forehead against the cool metal, palms flat like I can push my pulse back through. The red camera light over the frame ticks steady. I force myself down the hall, down the stairs, out into the damp night before I do something stupid like knock again just to steal one more kiss.
I want to stay.
I want to stay so badly it feels like a pulled muscle—tender and hot and impossible to ignore.
Instead, I drive with the windows cracked and the radio off, letting the city wash through the open seam like a bag of ice on a bruise. Every red light is a dare to turn around. Every green one is a threat that I’ll keep going.
By the time I hit my place, my chest still hasn’t learned how to be a ribcage again.
Arrow’s on the couch with his laptop open and a bowl of something vaguely healthy in his hand. Juno’s tucked into his side, barefoot, hair up, her own laptop glowing with a dozen tabs. The TV’s muted on some nature documentary; a cheetah is making unwise life choices in 4K.
Arrow looks up. “You look like you lost an argument with a semi.”
“I kissed her,” I say.
Juno’s eyebrows arc. “Hi to you, too.”
“Sorry.” I set my keys in the dish, then set them again because my fingers forgot “down” is an option. “Hi.”
Arrow leans forward, interest shifting from feral to focused. “She okay?”
“She’s… more than okay.” I scrub a hand over my face. “I might be getting in too deep.”
“Buddy,” Juno says gently, “you already live at the bottom of that well.”
I huff a laugh, short and helpless. “You’re not wrong.”
She sets her laptop aside and pads into the kitchen, returns with a glass of water and the soft look she reserves for broken things that bite. “Tell me everything.”
I drop into the chair opposite them. The words come in a rush: the mask off, the kiss, the way River said part of me always wanted it to be you and the way that sentence is going to carve light into me for the rest of my life. Also the plan talk—Regent, ears in NovaPlay, no confidences at the office.
Juno listens like it’s her job. Arrow listens like he’s writing a strategy doc in his head.
“So she knows you’re Mask,” Juno says, confirming.
“Yeah.”
“And she didn’t throw you into the hallway.”
“She thought about it,” I admit. “She’s still angry. She has every right to be.”
Arrow nods once, satisfied. “Good. Anger keeps you cautious.”
I cock a brow. “That your couples therapy tip of the day?”
“It’s my ‘don’t get murdered’ tip.” He sets the bowl down and spins his laptop around to face me. It’s a heat map of internal NovaPlay traffic and a list of likely leak points. “Now that she knows, we can pull her in on the hunt.”
“Carefully,” Juno adds. “On her terms.”
“She wants in,” I say. “She hates feeling like this is happening to her. Today she took down a troll in under ten minutes and smiled like she remembered how.”
Juno’s smile goes soft. “That’s our girl.”
I jerk my chin at the screen. “We still don’t have Regent. And Tasha…”
Arrow’s expression tightens. “Yeah.”
I brace. “River doesn’t know about Tasha. And we’re not a hundred percent. I’m not telling her until we are.”
“Agreed,” Arrow says immediately. “We don’t accuse a friend on a hunch.”
Juno worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “Then we make it not-a-hunch. We need Tasha in a room where she drops a thread we can follow. Somewhere she thinks she’s safe.”
“HR,” I say. “Her turf.”
Juno shakes her head. “Too obvious. Too many variables. And if she suspects, she’ll sanitize before she even leaves her desk.”
Arrow swivels toward her. “What are you thinking?”
“A girls’ night,” Juno says, like it’s the most obvious op in the world. “At my place. Low-stakes. Wine, face masks, zero men allowed. I invite River because she needs a soft landing. I invite Tasha because she won’t say no to being the supportive friend. And—” she glances at me “—we invite Lark.”
My brain stutters. “My sister?”
“She’s funny as hell, people tell her things, and she can read a room like she coded it,” Juno says. “She won’t know the op details—no one will except us—but she’ll keep the energy right. River will relax. Tasha will relax. We’ll see what falls out.”