Page 47 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

Arrow

The boom arm swings over Juno’s desk like it was built for her hands. We tightened it just enough to move when she wants and not when gravity gets ideas. The new dynamic mic hangs there, fat and matte, with the pop filter hovering like a second moon.

“Say the line,” I tell her, mostly because I like the way her mouth shapes it.

She gives me a look and leans in. “Bagels and truth,” she murmurs, and the mic eats it clean—no squeak, no room noise, just her voice coming through my headphones warm as a furnace.

“Perfect,” I say, meaning the gear and not pretending otherwise.

She peels the headphones off and drops them on the desk, hair escaping her clip in a way that makes my hand itch to touch it.

“Stonehouse didn’t send receipts,” she says, because we don’t get to do gear without doing grief. “Gage pulled the POS logs; Bob’s card didn’t hit. Club Greed holds it till morning like Devereaux said.”

“Sloppy men,” I say. “They like cash and tabs.”

She makes a face. “I hate that he’s sloppy.”

She’s about to say more when my phone chirps with Gage’s moth emoji—his way of saying he found something.

Gage: HOLO-BURST Q4 media invoice log.

Gage: Two payees, week before Arby went blonde: Arby’s shell “ARKATE STUDIO LLC” (voided), and “PikeShift Media LLC” (paid).

Gage: The wire for PikeShift didn’t originate from HOLO-BURST. It came from Nereus Brand Partners LLC → pass-through → HOLO-BURST’s agency.

Gage: Nereus. Again.

Nereus. It’s been drifting through everything for weeks—pinging the marina network, living on a member’s slip, hiding in the name of a device that shouldn’t have a name. It keeps showing up like a watermark until you tilt the page just right.

“Devin,” Juno says, low. She’s on my shoulder before I realize I moved to make room for her. “PikeShift. That’s his channel.”

I scroll. Gage isn’t done.

Gage: DM scrape (public to public) from months ago. Arby to Devin under a clip about “brand wars”: “If they’re making you bid against me, walk. They don’t play fair.”

Gage: Devin reply (deleted, cached by a fan account): “Welcome to the grown-up table. Snooze you lose.”

Gage: Two days later: Arby posts a vague “we’re making choices for our health” video. Three weeks later: she’s blonde.

The room tightens, and time does that accordion again. My scalp prickles as my hands go cold.

“Why would Nereus pay the media buy?” Juno asks. “They’re a pass-through. Ferrying money across water. Ferrying…it all.”

She reaches past me and drags a legal pad across the desk, her pen already running. Nereus → HOLO-BURST and under it Nereus → Marina Slip D4 and below that Nereus? AirPods name at Atlas . She draws a triangle and mouths why like she’s tasting it.

Gage chimes in without the moth emoji, because he’s too precise for decoration.

Gage: Devin’s channel “PikeShift” posted a teaser for tonight, 9 p.m.: “Rise ).”

Gage: If this is a victory lap, he’s about to trip on his own shoelaces.

Ozzy, from wherever he keeps his sarcasm sharp:

Ozzy: Pike’s “want it more” face makes me want to eat glass.

Ozzy: On the BLE side, I’ve seen “NEREUS-STAFF-XXX” at the marina, the club, and once at Atlas. I have not seen “PikePods” but his devices randomize names; he’s an iPhone child.

Knight: I can be parked by his building in ten. Address?

Render: Devin Pike lives at 301 Franklin Ave, Unit 4C. Loft conversion, keypad entry, elevator camera blind spot at the corner near the service door.

Render: Title is in PikeShift Media LLC, mortgage held by Gracewood Coastal (hi, Gray).

Render: His HOA hates dogs and noise complaints. He’s alone.

Alone. The word makes my stomach drop and my shoulders square at the same time.

Juno looks at me, eyes bright, jaw set. “We go,” she says.

“We go and we stay outside,” I say automatically, the new rule I wrote after Merritt. “We talk through the door. We don’t step into anyone’s house.”

She nods like she agrees. I believe her because I want to.

“Render,” I type, “get eyes. Knight, take the curb. Ozzy, scan the block. Gage, anything connecting Nereus Brand Partners LLC to Gray that isn’t a fever dream?”

Gage: Nereus Brand Partners is helmed by a woman named Etta Hoy. Former Gray Foundation staff, now “consultant.”

Gage: Etta set up three pass-throughs last year for “artist grants.” Two of the three intersect with PikeShift. It smells like Gray two degrees removed.

“Juno,” I say, routing a wire around her mic arm because I need my hands to do something besides tremble. “It’s Etta.”

“We need answers from Devin,” she counters. “We need him raw. Before he posts. Before he gets coached.”

She’s right. It’s also exactly the kind of moment that ruins people when they forget to breathe. I grab the keys.

We’re in Knight’s car in under three minutes, the city sliding by like it promised not to look us in the eye. Juno watches the city pass by in a blur. I squeeze her hand and my shoulder loosens half an inch.

“Talk to me,” I say, as Knight hits the light at Ransom and Fourth.

“I keep thinking about the DM,” she says. “Arby telling him to walk. He told her, snooze you lose. He wanted to win. If he thought she was going to ruin his payday—if she was going to talk?—”

“Then the Five weren’t hired to murder an influencer,” I finish. “They were hired to kill a problem.”

She swallows a sound that might be a laugh if we lived in a nicer world. “I want him to tell me that to my face,” she says.

“What about Etta and Bob?” I ask, and she shrugs.

“I’m not sure yet.”

We hit Franklin at a green. Render ghosts a wave from a church shadow, and Ozzy texts a coffin and a little radar dish.

Ozzy: I’m on the cross street. Nothing spicy on BLE. One “Nest-cam-4C” ping. Also a “WEMO-BARISTA”—dude really has a smart coffee machine.

Knight parks where sightlines don’t look like sightlines. Gage drops a code in the thread.

Gage: Entry keypad takes a six-digit. Building is lazy, and they keep the master as 051718 (opening date). Don’t. Use. It. Wait for a resident.

“Copy,” I type, and then I don’t use it. A woman with a dog that could have its own mortgage comes out of the building and holds the door like she’s on an etiquette show. I murmur thanks. Juno scratches the dog’s head and gets a sigh for her trouble.

Inside smells like concrete and expensive laundry. The elevator has that tilt of age converted into charm. We step in, hit 4, and ride quietly.

“Rules,” I say, because I need to hear them said.

She says them with me. “We don’t go inside. We stand where neighbors can see. We don’t touch anything. We breathe. Lemon means stop.”

“Good,” I say, and mean please let this be enough.

The hallway is industrial-chic—pipes painted matte, doors heavy, numbers stenciled like this is a safehouse in a nicer movie. 4C’s Nest cam is a tiny, stupid eye over a doorbell button that glows like a target.

Juno presses. We hear the chime inside, then footsteps, then the extra second of hesitation before he opens.

Devin Pike is younger than his playlist and older than his stubble suggests—early twenties, money in his posture, nerves in his jaw.

He smells like cologne that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be sharp or sweet and settled for loud.

His t-shirt is a brand with a subtle logo that says he likes his sponsorships to whisper luxury.

He doesn’t look at me. He looks at Juno and does that little half-smirk some men are born knowing. “No way,” he says. “Are you— you’re Juno Kate.”

“Hi, Devin,” she says, with a kind that’s sharpened. “Can we talk?”

He glances down the hallway, back at her, catalogs the under-eye circles and the set to her mouth. It takes him a second to find his footing. He tries charming. “If you’re here about doing a collab, this is not how you book my time.”

Fucker. He acts like he isn’t even guilty of killing Arby Kate.

“I’m here about HOLO-BURST,” she says.

It wipes the smirk right off him. Not fear. Not yet. Annoyance, then calculation. He leans one shoulder in the frame casually, like he watched a video about casual and learned the angle. “I don’t know what you think you know,” he says. “But you can’t just show up at my door.”

“Actually, you can,” I say, keeping my tone low and office-friendly. “The city still allows doors.”

“And conversations,” Juno adds, softer and more dangerous. “You got paid when my sister backed out. You celebrated. You taunted her in DMs and then deleted them. Nereus paid you through HOLO-BURST’s agency.”

He blinks and I can see the page turning in his head. It lands on a sentence you recognize in a stranger’s eyes when they decide you don’t get to be a person. “I don’t talk to grief junkies,” he says, and tries to shut the door.

I catch it with the edge of my shoe and the heel of my palm. It jolts him, and he steadies. He glares at me. “Back up, man,” he snaps. “What are you, security?”

“Math,” I say, because men like him hate being told numbers exist. “The kind that adds up.”

He tries to slam it again. Juno steps into the gap a fraction, face alight with the kind of calm that unsettles lesser predators. “You can talk to us,” she says, “or you can talk to Detective Huxley when she knocks. You pick the poison."

He hesitates. That half-second where fear and pride try to figure out who gets the wheel. Pride wins. It always does in boys who grew up being told they were important for showing up.

“Fine,” he says through his teeth, and swings the door open a third of the way. “Ten minutes. In the hall.”

He doesn’t mean it. I know he doesn’t mean it. His hand is already tightening on the inside edge of the door.

“Get out here,” I say, and that’s when he moves.

It’s not a punch; that would be too honest. It’s a lunge. He clamps his fingers around Juno’s wrist where her phone sits and yanks, not hard enough to break, hard enough to pull her to the threshold and off her axis.