Page 27 of Make Them Bleed

Juno crosses her arms. “Great. So he knows we’re looking.”

“Maybe,” I concede, minimizing the feed. “Let’s shift.” I slap the keyboard, drag up the dossier I spent the morning ripping from SEC filings: corporate hierarchy for HOLO-BURST LLC. CEO, shell directors, venture-cap partners. Eight smug headshots appear on the left-most monitor.

“Pick your poison,” I say.

She studies each face—wrinkled executive, slick marketing bro, investor with Botox eyes. Finally she shakes her head. “Not cemetery guy. None of them.”

I nod, expected. Still, I tack a blank sheet of printer paper to the corkboard and scrawlMYSTERY MANin Sharpie. Underneath I sketch a crude silhouette with cap and HOLO-BURST logo.

“This is our phantom,” I say. “Until we give him a name.”

We work two straight hours—cross-matching corporate e-mails with burner domains, scraping old sponsorship tweets, running Arby’s final 48-hour GPS trail through public cell-tower logs. Data piles like snowdrifts; all the while Juno’s knee keeps brushing mine and each contact buzzes through the mask like caffeine.

By nine p.m. my stomach howls. She freezes mid-scroll. “Hoover, was that you or did a moose crawl through the ceiling?”

I chuckle, modulated voice glitching. “Even the Great Depression had soup lines.”

“Chinese?” she suggests. “General Tso’s solves conspiracies.”

“Order.”

“Sesame tofu, crab Rangoon, and—” she pauses, smirk curving—“do they sell straws sturdy enough for you to drink through that face?”

I huff. “I’ll adapt.”

Fifteen minutes later the delivery guy stares at the Hoover mask, shrugs, and counts his tip twice. We spread cartons across a folding table. Juno hands me chopsticks, eyebrow cocked.

“Show me this ‘adapt’ thing.”

“Observe, civilian.” I wedge the chopsticks under the mask, lever the bottom lip outward just enough to pass a noodle inside. It’s messy, undignified, and she loses it—full-body laughter, head tipped back, ponytail swishing.

“Mission accomplished,” I mutter. “Comic relief acquired.”

She wipes tears. “Okay, points for perseverance.”

We eat as the cardboard crinkles and the soy sauce pools. Conversation slides from true-crime podcasts to the grisly merits of practical effects inThe Thing. She teases my monotone; I tease her overusing the word ‘iconic.’

Halfway through, a drop of sweet-and-sour sauce slides off her fork onto her wrist. She squeaks, reaches for a napkin. Instinct overrides sense—I catch her hand first, thumb brushing the sticky blob away. Her skin is warm, pulse fluttering under my touch.

Silence expands. She looks up, pupils wide. Somewhere behind the latex I feel my face heat. The mask emboldens me—a boundary, a character. My thumb slides to her palm and lingers.

“Messy,” I murmur—the vocoder lacing the word in shadow.

Her breath hitches. “Cost of good Chinese.”

I keep her hand captive, savoring the throb of connection. “Price I’ll gladly pay.”

The sentence turns raspier than intended—equal parts promise and warning. Juno swallows, gaze dipping to the plastic grin of Hoover’s mouth inches from her knuckles.

“What do you look like under there?” she whispers.

Dangerous question. The answer isyours.Instead I turn her palm over, tracing the life-line with a gloved finger. “I look like a man focused on results.”

She shivers, and it’s not from the cold. “Is that why you boss me around?”

“Yes,” I say, more gravel. “Someone has to slow you down.”

Her lips part. “And if I don’t want to slow down?”