I drag a hand down my jaw. “We’re not killing her.”
Yetgoes unspoken.
JT leans in. “But we are taking everything. Her files. Her backup accounts. Even the hidden burner she’s been using to send the texts. I’ve got a tracer on it. If she tries to upload or send those photos to anyone else—”
“They’ll disappear,” I finish.
“And?” Will adds. “We send her a warning?”
“No.” I shake my head. “She won’t even know she lost the power. We let her try to swing first.”
JT raises a brow. “And then?”
“Then I swing back.”
Silence settles over the room.
Will wiggles the last coaster into perfect alignment and tosses the rag over his shoulder. “You want me to tail her again?”
“Yeah,” I say, tipping my coffee toward him. “But take thebeater. Not the Challenger.”
Will groans, dramatic as hell. “Come on, man. I spent two hours under the hood yesterday. She’s spotless. Even the damn spark plugs are shining. She’s sex on wheels right now.”
I shoot him a look over the rim of my coffee mug. “Yeah, and she sounds like a jet engine and turns every head within a ten-mile radius. You really want to tail Bat Shit in a bright red muscle car with blackout tint and racing stripes?”
He throws his hands up. “It’s not even that loud.”
“It backfires when you downshift.”
Will winces. “Okay, yeah. But the beater?”
The beater’s a war-torn 2001 Ford F-150, sun-faded paint, rust spots on the bumper, and a mysterious smell that might be mildew or old jerky—we’ve stopped investigating. The headliner sags low enough to graze your scalp, the driver’s side window jams halfway down, and the windshield sports a crack shaped suspiciously like a boot print.
He stares at me in disbelief, as if I just asked him to throw loyalty out the window and light it on fire. “I just vacuumed the Challenger.”
“And now you’re driving the rolling crime scene. Because that truck doesn’t get noticed. It gets ignored. And that’s exactly what we want.”
He sighs long and loud. “Fine. But I swear to God, if I get tetanus from touching the steering wheel—”
“We’ll add it to the list of things you’ve survived.”
He mutters something about hepatitis and lost dignity as he heads toward the back.
I watch him go, and that old familiarity tugs at my chest.
Will grew up with parents who forgot to pick him up from school, and never asked where he went at night. He used to show up at my house just hoping for leftovers. Looking for structure. Looking for rules.
It calmed him. Still does.
Now he makes good money. Keeps his life clean and in perfect order. The car. The shoes. His damn sock drawer. That Challenger is spotless because he’s earned the right to own something beautiful. Proof he finally has something good, and he knows how to take care of it.
But when I need him in the mud, he never blinks.
Even if he bitches the entire fucking time, making sure we all know how put out he is.
JT starts packing up his laptop but pauses, looking at me. “You good?”
I sip my terrible coffee and think about Sable’s voice in my ear last night. The sound of her laugh. She called me.
