I just know she needs to leave, now, so I can process.
We need to wrap our heads around this. I know we wereasked to watch over her, but asking for Midnight… I’m not sure Nash knows that’s why she’s down here.
Reva’s face changes. It’s nothing dramatic, just a small, controlled break like something inside her slips but she doesn’t want to let it show.
She licks her lips, then nods once and picks up that knapsack she carries around with her from where she stashed it behind the bar.
Then she leaves.
The bell over the door jingles, and the sound makes me want to break something.
I step out from behind the bar before I’ve decided to. Shiloh’s already moving too, wiping his hands on a towel, eyes tracking the door.
“Well, this changes things,” he mutters.
“Never should’ve opened the door without the whole story.”
“Eh…Nash tells us to keep an eye out, we keep an eye out,” he says. “We just—all of us—needed to know from the start that she wanted to hire Midnight. That’s…”
He reaches behind his head, scratches the base of his neck.
“It’s not a small detail,” I finish for him. “We need to know for who.Why.”
“Right.”
Because we both felt the room move the second she said it. She wasn’t fishing. Not really. She was looking to open a door, a very specific one.
And if she’s looking for that door, it means one of two things—she’s desperate enough to get herself killed.
Or she’s dangerous enough to get us killed with her.
I glance around. Sonny and a few other staff are still in the building—laughing, cleaning, counting tips. Too many curious ears.
“Tell Sonny to lock up behind us,” I tell Shiloh.
His brow lifts. “Now?”
“Now. We still have a job to do.”
He doesn’t argue. He grabs his keys, murmurs a few quiet words to Sonny, then falls into step beside me.
We push outside together.
Reva is already halfway down the sidewalk, headed toward the city parking lot most of us use to avoid cluttering up the small one close by the restaurant/bar.
There’s zero urgency in her pace. She’s not hurrying away, running like she’s upset or rattled by what just took place. She’s just…leaving.
Shiloh leans close as we fall in behind her, a good distance away, voice low. “You know what she was asking for.”
“Well, there is only one fucking Midnight.”
His jaw tightens.
There are rules to this work. Hard ones. Rules that keep you breathing.
First rule: you don’t work for anyone you don’t know, or at least without knowing who sent them. You don’t take a job without the story. Without the target. Without the why.
Not knowing everything is how you end up in the ground.
