Page 118 of Double Down

“We’re not killing a senator’s wife before breakfast,” I say. “Before lunch is also off the table.”

“What about after dinner?” Storm asks.

I stare. He smiles. Phoenix glares anyway. The knot at the back of my neck loosens a notch.

Atticus paces to the window and back. “The shit with Langford is just optics, though, and we all know it. She matters, but she’s not the root of the problem. We have an in-house vendor doing off-label cosmetic crap for cash, and somebody feeding real fentanyl into our pipeline. Those might be the same person. They might be cousins. Either way, they’re using our business to run theirs.”

“This is going to sound crazy.” All eyes turn to Phoenix, who somehow seems like she could be heading a board meeting, all while dressed in Maverick’s shirt and covered in a just-fucked look. “But this stuff happening the way it is makes it all seem like it’s connected. And it’s really fucking insidious. Like, all of these things seem to be happening on their own. That girl we saved, she tried to say something before the paramedics took her away.”

“She said something about two already being gone. Vendors run beauty in daylight like it’s a billion dollar drug deal,” I say, thinking it through, “and somebody else shadows them at night with the real poison. Or it’s the same crew wearing two hats.”

“More than two hats, but one pipeline,” Maverick mutters. “They use our rooms, our VIP accounts, our laundry carts. No overhead. Maximum takeaway, and built-in patsies.”

Phoenix nods once. “And they need predictable dead zones—where doors open without anyone logging anything, where there are blind spots, where laundry and service carts don’t get searched.”

Storm looks at Atticus. “Tell me we’re not that predictable.”

Atticus stops pacing. The look he gives me says worse—they’re more organized. He taps his temple like he’s counting.

“Add this to our list,” Atticus says. “Maintenance master badges opened three equipment closets last night: the ballroom A/V on the twelfth floor, eighteen’s DVR. My integrator found a hardware tap—a little vampire clipped to the copper. Whoever it was cut thirteen minutes out of a hallway feed like it was lunch meat. Also, a process spoofed one of my service names by onecharacter. Somebody knows my system. Either they learned it or they built it.”

I follow about three-quarters of that.

Maverick groans. “Translation for the non-cyborgs?”

Atticus looks like he’s tired of everyone who isn’t him—so, everyone. “We have an asshole wrecking my system, and I can’t even prove he’s real. He’s making CCTV videos disappear and legal problems appear.”

“Number whatever to our pile of problems,” I say. “The Calhoun call. We’re on a two-day clock, and we’ve already burned one. They believe their product is here. They want it back, plus restitution for what they think we sold.”

“Okay,” Phoenix says, voice tightening into purpose. “Here are our options: push back on Langford quietly. Babysit every inch of the spa and adjacent suites. Maybe send someone in undercover—see if they get offered anything above and beyond the regular services.”

“Are you volunteering?” Storm asks, too casual.

I cut him a look that saysI will bury you. “We’d need better bait.”

She folds her arms. “You think I can’t do it?”

“No. I think they’re hunting people with money to burn, not women they know are connected to us and spend all their time working.”

She glares but then thinks better of it and lets it go.

Maverick clears his throat, slicing the tension. “What if we do a decoy? We plant the rumor ourselves: ‘The guest had a reaction;management quietly used a concierge doctor to fix the awful work.’ Let the roaches come to the sugar. See who’s pissed a legit provider is on-site.”

“And when they do?” Atticus asks. “How do we catch them if they can turn off our cameras?”

Storm leans back, fingers laced behind his head. “Go upstream. Someone’s supplying the fake meds. Check shipping corridors. Look for unusual deliveries to spa-adjacent storage. Any nighttime tote passed through back-of-house without a signature gets flagged.”

“Already on it,” I say. “Legal’s pulling vendor manifests. Atticus, mirror those against badge logs. If a delivery happens and no badge opens a door, it’s either a ghost or…one of the four of us.”

“Don’t trust anyone,” Phoenix adds quietly. I glance down to see her rubbing her hand over the old broken finger she tries to pretend didn’t happen. “You never know who is going to hurt you. So don’t trust anyone. We have no idea how high the rot goes.”

30

Storm

Yeah,I wasn’t joking about gutting the senator’s wife.

Everyone thought I was, so I went with it.