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)
Arrow is already nodding. “Juno runs point inside. We run point outside.”
I can see it—Juno pouring wine, Lark telling some ridiculous story about me falling off a skateboard when I was twelve, River laughing until her shoulders lift and drop and stay dropped. Tasha watching, calculating. The places in the conversation where HR policy knowledge leaks into bathroom gossip. The names she shouldn’t know, the timestamps she shouldn’t have.
“Clues,” I say slowly. “Not a gotcha. Just enough to anchor a warrant. Or to justify an internal audit so thorough Regent gets heat rash.”
“Exactly,” Juno says.
Arrow taps keys, new boxes popping on the screen like a constellation. “I’ll set an RF sniffer in the hallway outside your place and on your fire escape. If she uses her phone, we’ll get MACs, signal strength, app chatter. If she’s on a work device, even better.”
“Render can float the building with a passive cam in a plant across the hall,” I add. “Time stamps on comings and goings. He loves pretending to be David Attenborough for urban fauna.”
Juno laughs. “He does. It’s unsettling.”
“And Knight?” Arrow asks.
“He’ll shadow the route to and from Juno’s,” I say. “If Tasha detours, we follow. If she meets someone, we meet them too.”
Juno’s phone buzzes. She glances and grins. “Speak of chaos: Lark just texted me a cursed meme. She’s in for Friday if there’s pizza.”
“Of course there’s pizza,” I say automatically, already texting my sister. Friday. Juno’s. Girls’ night. Bring your gremlin charm. Be kind to River.
Three dots. Then: Was born kind. Will deploy gremlin charm at 20% unless escalation warranted. Proud of u, idiot.
I exhale through a laugh I didn’t know I had left.
Arrow sobers. “We keep River out of any sharp edges. Juno asks soft questions: How’s HR handling the fallout? Who triages reports? Has compliance changed policy? Watch for tells.”
Juno nods. “No traps. No corners. I’m not trying to break her. I’m trying to see who she is when she thinks she’s not being watched.”
“She’s been watching River,” I say flatly, rage surfacing like a dorsal fin. “From the inside.”
Juno’s hand finds my elbow. “We’ll prove it. And we’ll do it clean.”
I rub my thumb along the edge of my watch, a nervous habit I’ve had since Lark gave it to me for graduation. The leather’s worn into the shape of my wrist. Everything is shaped into the shape of River now—my day, my night, the way I breathe when a notification pings at 2 a.m.
“She told me not to disappear,” I say.
“Then don’t,” Juno says simply. “Tell her where you are when you can. Give her lights instead of shadows.”
Arrow’s gaze sharpens. “You told her how you feel?”
“Not… in a sentence,” I admit. “But she knows I’m in it. She knows.”
Juno’s smile turns smug. “About time.”
Arrow points his fork at me like a gavel. “New boundaries, then. No dropping in on the feed when you’re not on watch. No ‘just one more text’ at 3 a.m. We keep our heads. If Regent escalates, we need you smart, not feral.”
“Define feral,” I say.
“Your wall has a fist hole from the splash screen day,” Juno reminds me.
“Fair.”
Arrow’s face softens by degrees. “We’ll get him.”
“We’ll get them,” I correct. “Regent and whoever else is hiding behind the HR firewall.”
He nods. “Them.”
I push up from the chair and pace, because sitting still makes the thoughts too loud. “We need fail-safes. If Tasha doesn’t bite, we pivot. If she does, we need to capture without exposing Juno. I’ll stage a Faraday sleeve for her phone—‘charger’ that blocks outbound. If Tasha asks to charge, we sandbox it.”
Juno winces. “She’s not dumb.”
“Neither are we,” Arrow says. “And we’re patient.”
My phone buzzes with the team thread lighting up.
Knight: Got a whisper. Regent scheduled a late-night mod sync Friday, 10pm. If Tasha’s on that call, we’ll see the traffic.
Render: I can get eyes on the alley behind Compliance. They use it as a smoking area / gossip fountain.
Ozzy: I’ll park on the next block with my prettiest antennae. If anyone sneezes in LTE, I’ll know their blood type.
I type back: Girls’ night Friday. Juno + River + Tasha + Lark. Keep it quiet. We want signal, not fireworks.
Thumbs-up emojis roll in.
Juno stands, stretches, and kisses Arrow’s temple—a small, domestic thing that hits me like a flashbang because I can suddenly see River in this room, bare feet, hoodie, claiming a mug. The world tilts again and lands a millimeter to the right.
“She’s going to be okay,” Juno says, reading my face like a debug log. “You know that, right?”
“I want her to be more than okay,” I say before I can talk myself out of it. “I want quiet mornings and stupid fights about laundry and a world where her name only trends when she writes something brilliant.”
Juno grins. “Tell her that.”
“I will.”
“Good.” She pads toward the kitchen. “I’m going to start a group text that pretends to be about face masks and is actually about entrapment.”