Page 52 of Make Them Bleed

Stake out Marina Club public boardwalk at dusk. (Bring puffer jacket + patience + pepper spray + portable charger.)

Ask Render to triangulate Unknown number location (is this even a thing?).

Check Arby’s Dropbox for any files titled “N,” “Nico,” or emoji-coded (she did that when she thought she was clever).

Don’t text Arrow. (Try. Fail. Try again.)

I take my phone to the couch and open Arby’s Dropbox. Search: “Nico.” Nothing. Search: “N.” Too many. I add “Atlas,” “Marina,” “matchbook,” “smoked honey.” One ping: a photo of my hand clinking a coupe glass, captioned in her private shorthand:BG.Bright girl. I swallow a laugh that breaks halfway out of me and sounds like a sob.

The apartment hums. The Ring is dark. The dead zone makes everything feel both vulnerable and quiet. I sit there until the streetlights flicker alive and my resolve hardens into something that feels like purpose.

I put on my puffer and laced boots and slide pepper spray into my pocket. Before I step out, I look at the black rectangle of the Ring where the blue light used to blink.

“I’ll turn you back on,” I tell it, like I’m making a promise to a friend. “When I can do it because I want to, not because he tells me to.”

My phone buzzes one last time. Render:

Render: Unknown = prepaid. Last ping near river. Burner likely tossed. Also: Nereus Marine has two LLCs. Both list registered agent: Nicolas Armand. Boom.

My heart goes double-time.Nico A.Armand.

You’re amazing.

Render: Bring me cookies later. And backup now.

I’ll bring both.

I crack the door, step into the hall, and breathe. Fear comes. So does the feeling I get right before a horror-movie final girl grabs a weapon and walks into the dark.

I’m still angry at Arrow. I’m still hurt. Both things can sit beside the fact that I’ve never felt safer in my own skin than I do right now, making choices for myself, not because someone’s watching me breathe on a grainy screen.

Nico Armand. The man with the ring. The voice that saidbright girl.

The next time he says it, I’m going to make sure the brightness he sees is the spark lighting his carefully constructed world on fire.

When I barrel out of my apartment building I donotexpect who I see.

20

Arrow

Render’s last update is still buzzing in my pocket when I see them—Karen and Bob—standing at the corner across from Juno’s building like two parent-shaped exclamation points. Karen’s scarf is a riot of sunflowers against the gray morning. Bob’s got the posture of a man who doesn’t trust city parking meters. They spot me the second I check both ways to jaywalk and wave like we’re the cavalry arriving.