Page 51 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)
Etta steps between us and the muscle, palms out.
“Everyone shut up for thirty seconds.” She looks at Juno.
“Listen to me. You want the people who ordered this to face consequences. If you die today, you give them a martyr they can spin into a cautionary tale. If you walk out, you keep driving the knife they fear… daylight.”
Juno stares her down. “Then untie me.”
Etta weighs it. She looks at Coleman, and he shrugs. She looks at Bob. He looks like he’s going to be sick.
“Cut her,” she tells the muscle guy.
He hesitates. Coleman nods. The man bends, slices the tie at Juno’s wrists with a pocket knife.
She flexes her hands, blood rushing back, jaw set.
She doesn’t move for my ties. She doesn’t make it a fight.
She just sits up and folds her hands in her lap like she’s in a meeting and says, very clear, “Arrest your way out of this.”
Coleman sighs. “We tried civility.”
Etta’s eyes cut to him. “And now we try logic. Detective Huxley will look for these two if they go missing for more than an hour. Devereaux will notice a disturbance at his dock. Your yacht will not be where you left it. We delay and we look messy. We let them walk with conditions, we stay in control.”
“What conditions?” Juno asks.
Etta lays it out like bullet points. “You stop publishing for seventy-two hours. You do not go to your mother’s house tonight. Bob resigns today. He tells your mother tonight. He names names privately to Detective Huxley tomorrow morning. You do not mention me, or Coleman. Or Bob.”
“No,” Juno says.
“Yes,” Etta says. “Or you go in the river after sundown.”
Juno’s breath hitches. I catch her eye. “We take it,” I say. “We walk. We regroup. We burn them legally.”
She looks at me a long second. “Seventy-two hours,” she says to Etta. “Not a minute more.”
“And Bob resigns today,” I add. “Publicly. Statement by close of business. If he doesn’t, we drop a compilation at six.”
Coleman shakes his head, bored. “So many lines you can’t enforce.”
“You’d be surprised,” I say.
Etta considers, then nods once. “Agreed.” She looks at Bob. “Call your office.”
Bob fumbles for his phone. His hands shake. He scrolls. He stares at his reflection in the black screen for a beat too long, then dials.
Juno watches him. She isn’t blinking much. I want to put my hand over hers. I press my shoulder against her shoulder instead. She leans into it a fraction.
Etta slices my ties herself, quick and efficient. The muscles bristle but stand down at her look. Blood surges back into my hands as pins and needles scream. I flex, catch Juno’s wrist, and squeeze once.
Bob speaks into the phone in his office voice. “Hi, Janette. I need to send a statement. Personal reasons. Effective immediately.” He swallows. He looks at Juno. “Yes. Today.”
He ends the call. He can’t even look at us.
Coward.
Coleman checks his watch like this bored him. “Take them off the boat,” he tells the muscle. “If they post anything in the next three days, we’ll finish this.”
Juno looks ready to kill. She doesn’t say a word, and Etta gives her a knowing smile. They think they’ve won. They think they can outrun this.
“Clock starts now,” Etta says, tone flat. “Don’t be stupid.”
They march us to the hatch. The world is gray and cold. The dock smells like rope. My legs remember how to walk. At the top of the gangway, Etta stops us with a hand.
“One more thing,” she says.
Juno turns her head. “What.”
“Stay away from Karen tonight,” Etta says. “Let Bob tell her without you in the room.”
“You don’t get to ask that,” Juno says.
“I’m not asking,” Etta says. “I’m telling you how to keep her safe from the whiplash you’re about to cause.”
Juno breathes once. “She’s stronger than you think.”
“I know exactly how strong she is,” Etta says. “It’s not the point.”
Coleman is already moving away, bored again, talking into his phone. The muscle guide us down the gangway and off the dock. No one runs. No one shouts. It almost looks normal.
On the walkway, Juno stops. She turns. She looks straight at Bob.
“You put a price on my sister,” she says. “You put a price on me.”
He shakes his head, desperate. “I didn’t?—”
“You did,” she says. “Go home. Tell my mother. Then call Detective Huxley and tell her everything, including what you just did to us.”
He nods, broken. “I will.”
“Good,” she says, and then she turns and we walk.
We don’t talk until we hit the parking lot.
I text Knight a single pin. His car pulls in two minutes later.
Render appears from nowhere and takes a picture of the stern of Laurel Nine , casual as a tourist, then deletes it in front of me and nods.
Gage texts: Signal lost at shop. You good? I send back alive and nothing else.
In the car, Juno stares at her hands, then at me. “I thought we were going to die,” she says, voice small.
“I did too,” I say. “But we didn’t.”
She nods and swallows. “Seventy-two hours,” she says, like she’s putting a timer in the air between us. “Then we end them.”
“We do it clean,” I say. “No more rooms without witnesses.”
She exhales. “Okay.”
I take her hand. She doesn’t pull away. We drive, slow, quiet, out of the marina, into a city that has no idea how close it came to losing us today. We have a window. We’re going to use every minute.