Page 24 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

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.

“Arrow!” Karen calls, already crossing. “We were just thinking of you.”

Bob lifts a paper bakery bag like a trophy. “Got cronuts. Don’t tell my cardiologist.”

I paste on a smile and lock everything fragile behind my teeth.

The truth is I’ve been orbiting the block for ten minutes, arguing with myself about whether texting Are you home?

counts as pressure. Four days since the fight and every time I stare at my phone the word spyware burns a hole through it.

“Morning,” I say, juggling hellos and guilt. “You two visiting?”

“Thought we’d surprise our girl.” Karen squeezes my forearm, her eyes blue, bright and worried. “You headed up, too?”

I should tell them it’s not a good time. I should tell them Juno and I are…complicated. But Karen’s hand is warm and Bob is already looking for the building number like a man who refuses to be deterred by nuance.

“Uh, yeah,” I hear myself say. “I was on my way.”

The lobby door swings open and Juno rockets out like misfired artillery—hood up, bag slung across her body, keys already in hand. She nearly plows into us and stops so fast her boots squeak.

She blinks, recalibrates. First at me—eyes guarded. Then at her mom—eyes softening, almost breaking. “Mom?”

Karen is on her in a heartbeat, arms around shoulders. “Junebug.”

Juno melts for one beat, cheek pressed to her scarf. Then the steel slides back into place. “What are you doing here?”

“Cronuts,” Bob supplies, arriving with the bag as if he’s presenting evidence. “And a surprise hug. Hi, kiddo.” He kisses her hair, then squints at me. “Told you we’d catch him, Karen. Man’s always hovering.”

I aim for a sheepish shrug. Don’t say because your daughter is trying to find a murderer alone . “Right place, right time.”

Juno steps back, wiping her cheek with the heel of her palm like she’s mad at it for leaking. Her gaze hits me and sticks for a fraction of a second, guarded and bright. “Where are you going?” I ask, before I can soften the edges.

“Out,” she says. Then, to her mom: “I was just—um—headed to the riverwalk.”

Karen’s glance flickers between us, seeing too much and not enough. “Could we come up for five minutes? Your stepfather will eat all the cronuts if we don’t share.”

“I only eat half,” Bob says. “Repeatedly.”

Juno’s jaw tightens. She looks at me, then at the bag strap cutting across her chest, then at the sky like maybe God will throw her a rope ladder. Finally she sighs. “Five minutes,” she says. “Then I really have to go.”

We climb the stairs in a knot. On the second landing, Karen tells Bob to stop taking them two at a time or he’ll “hear about it from his knees.” I trail behind Juno, counting the things I don’t say.

Inside, her apartment smells like laundry soap and the floral ghost of Arby’s diffuser.

The air has that still quality spaces get when they’re loved but not slept in.

On the entry table, her Ring camera sits like a dead eye.

I clock it, then tear my gaze away. She told me not to watch.

I haven’t. That has to count for something, even if Render’s texts make my conscience feel like a loophole.

Karen steps in and immediately fusses with a throw blanket on the couch, as if smoothing fabric could smooth the week. “You look thin,” she says, which is code for you look tired and also please let me feed you . “Have you been sleeping?”

“Define sleeping,” Juno says as a polite deflection. She tosses her bag on the armchair and moves to the kitchen. “Coffee? Tea? I have…water.”

Bob wanders toward the far wall and stops dead. “Whoa.”

The crime wall is quieter than the one in the loft—no screensaver glow, fewer cables—but it hums like a second heart: printed screenshots, maps, sticky notes in her neat, impatient hand.

Red twine connects corners like constellations.

In the center, a line in all caps— FIND THE FIVE —has been struck through and replaced by NICO? in darker ink.

Karen’s mouth tugs down. “Juno,” she sighs, equal parts worry and weariness. “Honey.”

“I’m not taking it down,” Juno says over her shoulder, pouring water into a kettle like pouring water into a kettle is a battleground. “Don’t ask.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Karen lies.

Bob leans in, hands on his knees like he’s inspecting a classic car. He squints at a Post-it that says Polk owes me tacos and barks a laugh. “Who’s Polk and why does he owe you Mexican food?”

“No one,” Juno says too quickly. “An inside joke.”

“Inside your head?” Bob grins. “Because that’s where most of my jokes live.”

I drift to the kitchen doorway. “I can make tea,” I offer, because my hands need a job and my mouth shouldn’t have one. “Or coffee.”

“I’ve got it,” Juno says, without looking at me. She drops teabags into two mugs like she’s dealing cards to someone she doesn’t trust. “Mom?”

“Tea is lovely,” Karen says. She reaches over, touches Juno’s elbow. “How are you, really?”

Juno exhales through her nose. “Working. Eating. Coloring in circles so I don’t start screaming.”

Karen smiles, eyes wet. “The mandala book.”

“Yeah.” Juno sets the kettle down harder than it needs to go. “Balance.”

Bob straightens from the wall, points at a photo of a black-and-white motor yacht and a brass plaque: NEREUS MARINE LLC – Legacy Slip D4. “This one looks like a Bond villain’s Uber.”

Juno moves like she might block the view, then stops. “Just a lead.”

Karen follows his finger, mouth flattening. “Junebug, this isn’t your job.”

“It is,” Juno says. No heat. Just certainty. “If I don’t do it, I’m just sitting here with… nothing.” She flicks her fingers toward the couch, the air, the invisible weight of grief.

Bob scratches his jaw. “Let the cops do cop things. What’s that woman’s name? Detective… Huxley?”

“Huxley,” I say, seizing a lifeline I don’t believe in but might throw anyway. “Chloe Huxley. She’s good.” Smart, careful, and wholly hamstrung by a caseload and a department that likes metrics more than messes.

“See?” Bob says, as if I’ve closed the argument. “Let Huxley find the bad guys. You are… what’s the word… biased. You got skin in the game. And when you have skin in the game, you do dumb things.”

Juno’s mouth curves in something that isn’t a smile. “When you have skin in the game, you’re alive,” she says. “When you don’t, you’re watching from the bleachers.”

Karen flinches like that landed too close. She looks at me, pleading for backup. I wish I had a script that ended with everyone fed and safe.

“I don’t think you should do it alone,” I say carefully. “That’s all.”

Juno finally looks at me. Her eyes are flint. “Noted.”

Karen squeezes her mug. “Arrow’s right, Junebug. If you insist on—” she gestures helplessly at the wall, all the red threads twisting into names “—then…do it with help. Please.”

Juno takes a breath like she’s about to jump into cold water and exhales it as steam over the sink. “I have help.”

I try to catch her gaze, try to tell her with mine that my definition of help is me , is not abandoning you even when you bolt the door . She slides past it like a fighter slipping a punch.

Bob wanders back to the wall and tries to read without touching. “HOLO-b… HOLO-blast?”

“Burst,” I correct, and immediately wish I hadn’t.

“Ridiculous name,” Bob declares. He points to a blurry still of a man in a cobalt suit with his mouth shaping the word funeral . “This one looks like the guy at the country club who complains about the temperature of the sun.”

“Valentino,” Juno says softly, as if naming a snake.

“Valentino,” Bob repeats with relish.

Karen reaches for a dishtowel like she needs to hold onto something. “Could we sit? Maybe… talk about anything else for five minutes?”

We move to the couch. Karen takes the end seat like she’s bracing for a deposition.

Bob perches on the ottoman, teabag string hanging over his thumb like a kite.

I settle on the arm of the chair, a safe amount of not-next-to Juno.

She finds the seam in a cushion and picks at it like if she worries it long enough, buttons will appear and fasten things shut.

“How’s Bob’s new beagle?” I ask, because small talk might be the life raft we need.

“Still alive and loudly so,” Bob says. “We named him Dennis because he menaces the mailman.”

Karen gives him a fond side-eye. “Dennis ate three socks. He looked me in the eye while doing it, too.”

Juno’s mouth twitches. “Power move.”

“Stupid move,” Bob says. “They were my lucky socks.”

“You have lucky socks?” Juno asks, and for a breath her voice is easy, the old cadence of razzing him in kitchens.

“I had lucky socks,” Bob corrects. “Now they’re in God’s hands.”

Silence, then. Not awful. Just… full.

I clear my throat. “Juno, can we…” I gesture toward the kitchen, vague. “A minute?”

She doesn’t look at me. “We’re visiting.”

“Just a minute,” I try again, softer.

She smiles at Bob like she didn’t hear. “Tell me about Dennis’s sock-based diet. Does he pair reds with whites?”

Bob warms to the bit. I sit back, swallowed by the sofa fabric and the realization that she’s not ready to give me even sixty seconds on neutral ground. It’s fair. It also feels like slow drowning.

Karen watches both of us and sips her tea like it’s fortification.

She leans forward. “Juno, honey… the wall…” She catches herself, and softens.

“I know it makes you feel in control. I know it helps. But every time I look at it, I see the last thing your sister ever did, and I want to smash it with a chair.”

Juno’s throat works. She doesn’t look at the wall. “Don’t.”