The woman with the highest ponytail drags her gaze over me, cataloging my sins. Then she jerks her chin down the street. “Keep goin’. It’s a couple blocks down...brick buildin’ with an iron balcony. You’ll see it.”
Her voice is sweet the way saccharine is sweet in tea.
I tip my chin. “Thanks.”
My hands tighten on the wheel as I creep down the block, then another, the buildings crowding closer to each other the nearer I get.
Heat seeps in through the open window and spreads over my skin like a film. I’m too hot in all the wrong places and the closer I get to whatever Noir is, the harder it is to breathe.
Then I see it. A two-story brick building with an iron balcony ringing the upper level, dark windows like eyes.
And I forget how to breathe entirely.
Because something in my bones recognizes danger even when my brain is still trying to pretend this is a normal day. If I’m going to find answers, this is the place.
This is the first step.
Hesitation gnaws as I pull into a tiny, crowded lot and find a spot along the side. I sit there with my hands on the wheel, listening to Lucille’s engine tick as she cools.
The rubber bands bite my wrist. I snap them once.
Just once. Then I look at the door, at a discreet sign that reads ‘HELP WANTED, INQUIRE WITHIN,’ and I make myself move.
The air shifts the second I step through the door. It’s cooler inside. Dimmer. Not quiet exactly—just…contained.
A few patrons line the bar, and a few of the tables are occupied. Not nearly as many as I expected, but enough that the room feels busy.
Most of the patrons keep their voices low, revealing an unspoken kinship that I’m intruding on—rules that have nothing to do with posted signs.
My stomach dips. If Noir has a code, I need to learn it fast.
The man behind the bar marks me the second I step into his space. His hands pause mid-wipe. His eyes lock on mine, his focus latching on like a surveillance camera catching motion.
I look away first, because I’m not stupid.
He’s the most dangerous man in the room, and he knows it. Tattoos dust his forearms beneath a sprinkling of dark hair like they’re just as much a part of his DNA as his eye color. Nothing about him says welcome, from the uncompromising line of his mouth to the unblinking stare.
Nothing about him says cruelty either. Just competence.
And those eyes…dark brown or gray—hard to tell in the dim light of the bar—with long lashes I’m immediately jealous of… They’re neither warm nor cruel. They drag up and down my length, assessing.
I take a deep breath and cross the room anyway, shoulders squared as though I’m walking into a predator’s den. Resignationand dread and hope churn together in my stomach.
“Hey.” I give the bartender a bright smile. “I saw you had a sign about a job. I’m here to apply.”
He doesn’t blink. “No.”
My brain stutters, and my brows pull together. “What do you mean, no?”
“Exactly what I said.”
His voice is a smooth baritone that has no business coming out of a real man behind a real bar. It belongs to a faceless voice reading sexy audiobooks on my Kindle. It slides into the spaces between my ribs and makes my body register him in every cell before my mind can keep up.
I clamp down on the reaction and grind my back teeth together.
“Look, I could really use the position. I’m here for a fresh start.” I glance around me. “Boyfriend trouble. I needed a place to get away, and this town looked like?—”
His face stays blank. His rag keeps moving, methodical, polishing the same spot over and over.
