“Okay, I have an outline that I can work from.”
“Then we give you a room where outlines turn into orders.”
I look down at Zeus. He stretches, casts a doubtful eye toward the leash he hates, and then thumps his tail in surrender. Traitor. I clip him in anyway.
Jace moves to the peephole and checks the hall. “Clear,” he says. “Cal’s on the desk. Your staff is pretending they don’t know you’re here, which is how I know everyone knows you’re here.”
“Perfect,” I say, and tug my shirt down. I grab my tablet. I grab nothing else. The men can keep their suits and their headlines. I want a lobby and a microphone that works, because nothing else really matters.
The elevator ride is ten floors and a lifetime. I watch the numbers light and go blank, light and go blank, and make myself breathe on the even ones. Jace and Ortiz stand in front of me, one step apart. They frame the door when it opens and then peel away when they see what waits.
Kendra sees me first. It’s always Kendra. Her hand flies to her mouth and then she remembers herself and drops it, shifts her face into friendly neutral like she didn’t just want to cry.
Cal clocks me next and gives a small nod, one of the ones we agreed means “all clear, watch left.” The lobby hums. The fountain does what fountains do. Somewhere, a slot machine sings fake joy and someone believes it.
I step onto the marble and feel the building recognize my weight. People are looking without looking. The rumor that the Queen has her own guard shows up in the way the operators appear out of nowhere and then become part of the wallpaper. Spencer ghosts to the right where he can see every door. Jace flanks my left. Ortiz walks two paces ahead and then stops beside the column so I can go alone.
I cross to the front desk. Kendra straightens. “Ms. Jones,” she says, professionally, eyes bright. “Welcome back.”
“Thank you,” I say, and turn to face the room I picked, the one with the chandeliers and the thousand decisions per minute and the people who will either make me or break me with their approval. “Can I borrow five minutes?”
The lobby answers with that particular quiet it gives a show right before the curtain lifts. Somewhere in the crowd, a woman who cried in a dorm-style shower a few nights ago watches me with her chin up. Somewhere else, a man with a security badge who used to look away at the wrong things decides not to.
The television in the bar behind the hostess stand runs the river footage one more time. The caption scrolls. The camera pans. The whole city pretends what washed up is a surprise. It isn’t. Nothing men like that do surprises me anymore.
I take the breath I’ve been saving since the door slammed on a steel box and say the first line of the speech I didn’t write down because I’ve been writing it since I was eighteen.
“Good afternoon,” I say. “I’m Phoenix Jones. If you work here, you probably already know me. If you don’t know me yet, you will.”
Zeus sits at my heel like he’s known he was born for this the whole time. The men are somewhere between the garage and the lobby, I can feel it, a pressure change in my skin. The staff leans in. The cameras on their phones glow and lower. The chandelier listens. My hands stop shaking.
He’s dead, I think, without apology.
I’ll be fine.
And Conrad—wherever he is in this building, whatever he has on his hands—has the only kind of closure a man like him ever gets.
That will have to be enough for now.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” I say, and start my new life with a smile on my face.
31
Phoenix
Zeus launches like a torpedo,paws knifing the water, teeth snapping up the neon ring before it can sink. He paddles back with the smug tilt dogs get when they’ve done the obvious and expect a parade. I whistle, and he hauls himself onto the ledge and shakes a sheet of glittering water all over my legs.
“Show-off,” I tell him, flicking droplets back. He licks my ankle and drops the toy at my toes, already vibrating for the next throw.
The cabana is ridiculous in the way rich things are: gauzy curtains breathing in the salt air, a ceiling fan barely moving, a spread of fruit and pastries we’re not touching. Two of my guards—Jace and Ortiz—are actually sitting for once, shoes off, ankles crossed, the radio clipped to the table between them. They’re talking about normal things—Ortiz’s little girl lost her first tooth, Jace’s wife wants chickens—and it feels like I dreamed the container and woke up here.
Spencer leans back on the chaise beside me, a Bloody Mary sweating on the side table. He doesn’t drink it; he just plucks thevegetables out one by one like a rabbit at a lawn party. “These are the only tolerable part,” he says, biting a celery stalk.
“Tragic for the vodka,” I say, winding my hair tighter. The sun warms my shoulders; the cool concrete under my thigh feels like permission to keep breathing. For ten minutes, everything is soft.
The guards go quiet first. It’s a different kind of quiet—pulse-check silence, shoulders straightening without a word. I don’t need to look to know why, but I turn anyway.
Four men stand at the edge of the cabana, dragging the light down with them.
