He glances toward the door, then back at me, and for one reckless second I think he’s going to say something useful.
Instead he reaches up, cups the side of my neck, and leans in.
It’s not the kind of kiss he gave me in bed. Not heat, not hunger, not comfort turning dangerous.
This is brief. Deliberate. His mouth to mine for the length of one breath.
A promise, maybe. Or an apology. Or a warning in a language I haven’t learned yet.
When he pulls back, his eyes stay on mine. He tugs the kitten free of my hands, shushing my immediate protest with a finger to my lips. “I’ll watch the little booger for you. You go on. Don’t let him smell blood in the water.”
My heart trips hard enough to hurt.
“Is that advice,” I ask, my voice thin because it won’t do anything else, “or a warning?”
A shadow of his usual grin returns, tired and crooked. “That depends how smart you plan to be.”
Then he steps back, and the air between us turns cold where his body was.
“Come on,” he says, all business again. “Keep your chin up when you walk in.”
I force my feet to move.
The back corridors of Noir feel different now that I know there are rooms inside the walls. The dark paneling I barely noticed before looks deliberate tonight—too smooth, too seamless, every polished board another lie disguised as architecture.
Shiloh reaches the hidden panel without hesitation and presses his hand to a place I wouldn’t have thought to touch. The seam gives. The wall swings inward.
The dark beyond doesn’t break so much as deepen. For one irrational second, I think of a throat opening.
He goes first. I follow, because if I hesitate now I’ll hate myself for it later.
The stairwell is narrow and cooler than the bar above, the manufactured walls of the bar giving way to rough-hewn stone. The air changes—less smoke and spilled liquor, more stone and old air-conditioning. The sounds of Noir fade behind us until all I hear is our footsteps and the thud of my pulse.
That bothers me more than it should.
At the bottom, the corridor branches into smaller halls, each one plain and unmarked. Nothing decorative. Nothing inviting. Function over atmosphere. This isn’t for show. Whatever happens down here, at least in this part, isn’t meant to charm anyone.
Shiloh takes a left and stops at the last door.
Holding the kitten tucked in the crook of his left elbow, he lifts his tight hand and raps once. Then he steps asideand tips his head toward the opening with a gallows kind of courtesy that would be funny if I weren’t suddenly fighting the urge to turn around and march right back upstairs.
I refuse to be run off. I refuse to fold now, when the path I came for is finally opening. No matter what Ever meant, no matter what Nash asks, I’m here for a reason.
I step into the office before I can lose my nerve. The door closes behind me. I don’t realize until the latch clicks that Shiloh hasn’t come in.
He’s the messenger, not the shield.
The room is clean, sparse, and almost aggressively practical. A row of shelves lines one wall, neat and mostly unlabeled from where I stand. The desk is rectangular, metal, and unadorned, positioned so Nash can see the door and anyone who enters it.
Everything in the room says the same thing: useful trumps pretty.
Nash sits behind the desk like he’s been there the whole time, waiting for me to stop orbiting his business and step into the center of it.
His gaze pins me before he says a word.
“Reva…McEntire.”
The false surname in his mouth rings awkwardlyin the room.
