Page 73 of Make Them Bleed

I squeeze her hand. “We finish this, Juno. For her. For us.”

By late afternoonthe plan is less a whiteboard fantasy and more a checklist with blood pressure. I lay our kit out on the kitchen table like a surgeon lining up instruments.

Bone-conduction earpieces, paired and tested.

Two push-to-talk clips disguised as jacket buttons.

A Bluetooth scanner running on a Raspberry Pi in a cigarette pack — Ozzy calls itthe Smoker.

A narrow-beam mic that looks like a pen (My favorite item).

Two tiny beacons preloaded with innocuous names in case we need to mark an exit or a car (Lamp A,Plant B).

Gage’s Franken-rig: pocket camera + low-light lens + matte hood so it drinks neon and doesn’t reflect it back.

We brief in my living room. Juno sits cross-legged on the couch in a dark navy dress that looks like trouble wrapped in restraint, her leather jacket tossed over the arm like a dare. Ozzy sprawls on the rug, stringing gaffer tape around a compact battery pack like he’s crafting friendship bracelets. Knight leans near the window, rolling his shoulders like a nightclub bouncer in witnessprotection. Render perches on the arm of a chair in a blazer that can talk its way through any door. Gage hovers in the doorway, already tuned to the frequency of the night.

“Atlas Room first,” I say, flipping the TV to a floor-plan I built from emergency egress filings and Yelp photos. “Two entrances. Host stand here. Bar here. Mirrors behind the top shelf. That’s both a gift and a curse.”

“Gift: reflections,” Gage says, already in the loop.

“Curse: reflections,” Render echoes. “If we don’t control angles, we record ourselves recording ourselves.”

“Table picks,” I continue, “A3 and A4. A3 for Juno and me—we playpolite strangers who collided at the barif we need a cover. A4 for Gage and Knight. Megan’s expecting us. She’ll pour nothing we haven’t watched poured.”

“Street team,” Ozzy says, saluting with tape. “I’m in the hatchback with the Smoker. IfNicobrings a device named like a bored rich guy, I’ll see it. Also scanning for BLE beacons. Bad guys love off-the-shelf toys.”

“Marina follow?” Knight asks.

“Gage and I split,” I say. “Knight, you take the bike and bowline the tail if he runs lights. Ozzy stays planted. Render, if we get a good look at the signet crest again, I want the high-res.”

“Copy.” Render taps a sticky note on his phone screenDON’T GET ARRESTED—the joke that’s not a joke.

I turn to Juno last. She meets my eyes, steady. We’ve done the hard talk already; this part is logistics. “Signals,” I say. “If you saycinnamon, that’s ‘come to the table now.’ If you saycheckplease, we extract. If you touch the back of your left wrist, I move you, no questions.”