Page 13 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

Arrow

I jog the last block to the Riverside loft, rubber Hoover mask stuffed in my backpack, pulse hammering hard enough to fog my sunglasses.

Juno texted five minutes ago— Here. Upstairs.

The projector’s humming like a beehive—did you install surround sound?

—and the mix of pride and terror in my chest is a ridiculous cocktail.

Inside, the air smells faintly of printer ink and cold metal. Fluorescent strips buzz overhead. I tug the mask on before I reach the office door; gripping the warped latex nose like a talisman and sliding back into the deeper, darker version of myself she thinks she’s met.

She’s already seated at the central workstation—my old gaming tower repurposed as a surveillance juggernaut—lit by three curved monitors.

Her ponytail swings as she scrolls; blue glow outlines the determination in her jaw.

Seeing her in this space—my space—feels intimate in a way I’m not ready to unpack.

“Hoover, hey,” she says, spinning when I step inside. “I loaded cemetery coordinates into the city-wide CCTV network.” She gestures to the map overlay. “Think we can track Creepy McNo-Watch?”

“Let’s find out.” I lower into the chair next to her, the mask squeaking. “City traffic cams keep seven-day rolling backups. If he walked any main road, we’ll tag him.”

I launch a remote shell, hijack an unsecured CCTV node (thank you, lazy municipal IT dept), and start feeding YoloV5 an image of the HOLO-BURST shirt logo. My fingers dance faster than my thoughts, and behind the mask my breath grows hot and shallow.

Juno leans in, chin almost touching my shoulder. “Smells like mint gum in here,” she murmurs.

“That’s the tower’s thermal paste,” I deadpan through the modulator. She snickers, and the sound skitters down my spine.

A dozen thumbnails populate—blurry street angles of pedestrians. Creepy McNo-Watch—designated Target Alpha —appears twice but each time the bastard’s head tilts down, baseball cap brim hiding his face perfectly. He knows camera locations. Professional, or instructed.

“Ugh,” Juno groans. “He’s like a vampire avoiding mirrors.”

I scrub frames manually, no luck. “Whoever he is, he studied the grid.”

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 scrawl MYSTERY MAN in 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 in The 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 is yours. 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?”

My pulse spikes. I release her hand only to slide two fingers beneath her chin, tilting her face up. The mask’s rigid lips hover an inch from hers. “Then I keep pace.”

She exhales a shaky laugh—half arousal, half disbelief. “You talk big for a guy hiding behind a dead president.”

“Dead presidents have secrets,” I whisper. “But they still hold power.”

Her eyes search the black eyeholes. “Show me yours.”

I freeze—temptation a live wire. One pull and this entire ruse shreds. I could lift the mask an inch, let her see my mouth, prove I’m flesh and not phantom. But the cost—trust broken, plan imploded—flashes like hazard lights.

Instead I dip my head till plastic lips graze the corner of her mouth, a feather-light nudge. She gasps, hands fisting in my hoodie. Latex squeaks; the kiss isn’t a kiss, but the spark it detonates is real.

I straighten—only a beat, but long enough for her eyes to glaze. “Eat,” I order softly. “Then we hunt.”

She blinks, cheeks blazing, tries for a smirk and fails. “Bossy.”

“Efficient.” I sit, pretending to focus on lo mein, though my heartbeat rattles the modulator.

We finish dinner in charged quiet. Every rustle of chopsticks feels like foreplay. She keeps sneaking glances at the mask. I keep replaying the near-kiss until the plastic smells vaguely of her strawberry lip balm.

At last she clears her throat. “Ready to dive back in?”

“Let’s torch a corporation,” I agree, voice steady only because the mask holds it in place.

We return to the monitors—HOLO-BURST brass plastered on the left, Mystery Man blank sheet dead center. But the war room hums differently now, as if charged by the static still crackling between us.

She scrolls as I code. Outside, river fog curls against dirty windows, hiding us from anyone who might look in.

Inside, Herbert Hoover’s rubber face watches Juno Kate with hungry eyes she can’t see, and Arrow Finn—the man she trusts, the friend who loves her—realizes he might be one heartbeat away from becoming the very phantom she’s longing for.