Page 52 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

Juno

The seventy-two hours crawl.

“Did you know?” she asks.

“Not all of it,” I say. “I knew enough.”

She breathes for a long time. “I have casseroles in the freezer,” she says. “That always felt like a joke about grief. Now it isn’t.”

Day two, I meet Chloe in a beige room with a metal table and write out, in my own hand, what happened on the dock and on the boat. I put down the names: Coleman. Etta. Bob. I put down D4 and Laurel Nine . I sign. She slides me water and nothing like pity.

“You’ll see movement soon,” she says.

Day three, my phone buzzes at 7:11 a.m.

Chloe: Today.

Where should I not be.

Chloe: Your mother’s street.

I’m across it already.

Arrow is with me, hands in his jacket pockets, eyes on every moving thing. We stand behind a maple tree and watch my childhood block come awake: sprinklers, a jogger who always waves, Mrs. Delaney dragging her trash can in slippers.

Two unmarked sedans roll to the curb in front of my old house. A marked car parks behind them. Another one drifts past and circles like it’s looking for an address. No sirens. No gun belts on display. Nice and quiet.

Chloe steps out of the first sedan in that navy blazer and T-shirt again. (Different slogan: NO ONE IS ABOVE THE RULES . I try not to smile, and I fail.) A plainclothes partner I’ve never met flanks her. They walk up the path like they’re delivering mail.

The door opens. Bob stands there in a polo and a stunned expression. I can’t hear what Chloe says, but I see the way she keeps her hands visible and calm. I see his mouth shape the word now? She nods once. He turns his head and says something into the hallway.

My mother appears behind him, robe tied hard, hair down.

She sees Chloe. She sees the cars. She looks across the street.

She sees me. For a second she doesn’t move at all, like a photo.

Then she straightens her shoulders and nods once to me, a signal I don’t understand yet and will probably unpack for the rest of my life.

Chloe reads from a paper. Words I do catch: conspiracy, kidnapping, obstruction, solicitation, wire fraud . She doesn’t say murder. Not yet. She does say accessory and after the fact and aggravated assault . She turns Bob gently, cuffs him, and asks if he understands.

He nods, dazed. He looks at Karen again. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t touch him. She steps back so the officers can come in. When they bring him out, she follows as far as the porch and stops.

He sees me across the street. For a second he looks like a man trying to find a new meaning of family and not liking any of the definitions. Then the car door opens, and he ducks his head, and then he’s gone.

Karen folds her arms around herself. I start to move and Arrow catches my sleeve. “Let her come to you,” he says.

She does. She crosses the street, robe flapping, slippers silent. She stops in front of me and puts both hands on my face like she’s checking for fever.

“You told the truth,” she says. “I raised you to tell the truth. I hate this and I love you.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Don’t apologize.” She looks at Arrow. “Do not let her do stupid things alone.”

“I won’t,” he says. “I haven’t.”

She nods, like that tracks with what she’s guessed, and then goes back across the street to talk to Chloe. They stand shoulder to shoulder like women looking at a fire.

By noon, the city knows. The local sites light up: PROCUREMENT CHIEF RESIGNS, ARRESTED IN SEPARATE INVESTIGATION . My name isn’t in the articles. Arby’s is. It hurts anyway. I call my therapist and leave a message that says, “Make room. I’m bringing a storm.”

The rest happens fast, because it has to.

Search warrants land at Stonehouse, at the marina storage office, at Unit 14 by the tracks.

Devereaux provides adjacency records with names this time, delivered to Chloe by a lawyer in a suit whose tie says I believe in rules.

Unit 14 turns out to be what we thought: a signal room and a staging area.

Routers. A server with a mirrored drive.

A cheap tripod with a broken latch that makes my stomach turn.

Rook Salazar gets picked up coming out of a gym at 5:40 a.m. with a duffel bag and a polite smile that doesn’t make it to his eyes. The arresting officer is too smart to accept help carrying the duffel. The contents do not help Rook’s day.

Beau Latham surrenders with a statement about loving the community and due process and not recognizing the “portrayal” of himself on the internet.

Ozzy DM’s me a screenshot of Beau’s pinky ring on the courthouse steps and a caption: imagine accessorizing for arraignment . I don’t laugh. I do breathe easier.

Coleman is the last to fall. He thinks he can outrun the mess.

For twenty-four hours it looks like he can.

Then Chloe and the DA walk into Club Greed’s back corridor with a judge’s signature and Devereaux’s cameras and a marina ledger that shows Laurel Nine billed for a private security crew on the night Arby died.

Coleman sees Chloe and, for the first time, looks like a man who miscounted his moves.

Etta is arrested too, but not at Club Greed.

Not on a yacht. At an office that doesn’t have a sign, in a building that probably smells like new paint.

She has a lawyer on speed dial and a calm face that makes me think she’ll trade half the board for the other half.

Gage texts the group chat: Hoy flipped. Conditional.

She’s naming the conduit and the sign-offs.

I type Gray? and Gage replies she says “orbit.” not “orders.” DA is patient. Of course he is. Saints take time.

Chloe keeps me looped in without giving me anything that would turn me into a witness I’m not ready to be. “We’ll need you later,” she says on the phone, steady. “Not for the past week. For the dock and the boat.”

“I’ll be there,” I say. “I was there.”

Two days after Bob’s arrest, my mother comes over with a bag of groceries and her wedding ring on a chain. We cook in silence for a while, chopping peppers and onions like they might confess under a knife.

“Did she know?” she asks finally. “Arby. About him and… that woman .”

“She did,” I say. “She tried to make him tell you. She tried to make him stop.”

My mother nods, tears starting finally, slow and steady. “Of course she did.” She looks at my crime wall, at the names and lines, at the red thread I haven’t cut yet. “Take it down when you’re ready,” she says. “Keep the picture you like in your head. Not the last one.”

I leave the wall up for now. I’m not finished with it. But that night I add one new card in the corner: KAREN . I draw a circle around it and a line to ME and leave that line bold.

When the indictments drop, the language is dry and heavy and exactly what I want: conspiracy to commit kidnapping, conspiracy to commit assault, felony murder for Coleman, Beau, and Rook, racketeering for the business that built the scaffolding.

Etta’s charges are listed as pending with a note about cooperation.

Bob’s list is long and ugly. His lawyer releases a statement about regret. I don’t read it.

We don’t celebrate. We exhale.

At Arby’s grave, I sit alone for an hour before I can say anything that isn’t a noise.

“They’re going to trial,” I tell the stone. “It’s not all of them. But enough to start. You were right. The deal was poison. I wish you could say ‘told you so’ and roll your eyes and steal my bagel. I wish I had more for you than this.”

A breeze nudges the flowers I brought. It feels like nothing and it feels like permission. I cry then—real crying, the kind that empties your insides in a way that makes room for air again.

Arrow waits by the gate, letting me come to him. He doesn’t ask what I said. He does take my hand, and we walk back to the car like people who get to try again.

We go to Chloe’s office the next morning.

I give my formal statement about the shop, the alley, the van, the dock, the boat.

I say Etta . I say Coleman . I say Bob .

I do not make speeches. I answer questions and drink water and ask for a break when my chest gets tight.

Arrow sits behind me, chair angled so I can see his knee, which is somehow better than seeing his face.

After, Chloe closes the folder and leans back. “You can post again,” she says. “I can’t tell you to. I can tell you it won’t wreck anything we’re doing. Don’t gloat. Don’t poison a jury. Speak like a person who understands you’re not the only one who lost something.”

“Okay,” I say. “I can do that.”

I go home and stare at the mic for ten minutes and then hit record.

The episode is called Light Without Masks .

I tell my listeners I took a break because I had to; because sometimes you stop making noise so you can make decisions.

I tell them what I’m allowed to say about networks with friendly names and rotten cores.

I talk about rules and rooms, about how power hides in systems and rooms and men and sometimes women who know better and do worse anyway.

I don’t say Bob’s name. I don’t say Etta’s.

I say: “I loved my sister. She was loud and sharp and she changed her hair when a chapter ended. This one ended wrong. We’re working on the sequel. ”

I finish with, “If you are in a room where someone uses your friendship as leverage, leave. If you are offered a deal that makes you smaller, walk. If you can’t walk, call someone who will stand outside the door and wait.

” I look at Arrow as I say it. He’s standing in the kitchen, wiping the counter like it insulted him.

He hears his name even when I don’t say it.

The episode goes up. I turn my phone over and don’t look for an hour. When I finally do, the first message is from my mother: I’m proud of you. The second is from Chloe: Good line about doors. The third is from Arrow, and it’s a heart emoji.