She picks up the card and looks at it. "Not yours?"
"Mine will be occupied."
A beat. She puts the card in her jacket pocket. "Okay."
The cars are ready.
The convoy is two vehicles. Marisol with her security detail in the second, and I drive the first with Wren, Juliet, and the Siren.
The Siren sits in the front passenger seat and hums something wordless that fills the car before the city noise does. Juliet is in the back beside Wren, her leather notebook already open in her lap. She closes it after two minutes and looks out the window instead — she's figured out enough to know when work isn't the right response. Besides, we already have the mole, the rest is just details.
"What happens," Wren says after a few minutes, "after Gunner finishes with Jimmy?"
She says it quietly. Juliet is looking out her window. The Siren's humming fills the gaps.
"We'll know what the Zayas know," I say. "How much Jimmy told them. Whether there are other threads we haven't found."
She absorbs this. "And then?"
"And then we use it."
A pause. She weighs that — the weight of whatuse itmeans in this context. She doesn't ask for clarification. She understands the vocabulary of this world better than she did three weeks ago.
"Is Nico going to have enough people to defend the club?" she asks.
"Yes."
"You're sure."
"He's done this before," I say. "With fewer."
She goes quiet again and nods, just once.
The Gilded Lily is dark when we arrive.
The sign is off, the parking lot cleared, two of our people at the door and a third visible inside through the glass. I run the layout as I come through the service entrance: a long room, low ceilings, the bar running down one wall with the bottles locked away. The smell of a club at rest — residual alcohol, cleaning product, stale warmth. Barstools stacked. Stage lights off,leaving everything to the emergency strips along the baseboards and the amber glow from the east-facing windows.
Every footstep is audible over the hum of the refrigeration unit cycling in the back.
I run the sightlines. Four exits. Three covered, one that needs a second position. I speak to Pawlikowski for three minutes at the door and he adjusts.
Inside, the Siren finds a table near the far wall and sits, the humming resuming. Juliet takes a chair near the bar and has her notebook out before the chair has stopped moving. She closes it after thirty seconds and looks at the ceiling instead. Marisol talks to the security at the main door for two minutes, identifies a coverage gap, comes back inside looking satisfied.
"We're fine here," she says to me. Her eyes move to Wren, then back. "Logan."
"I'm leaving in a minute."
"Mm." She doesn’t sound convinced. Then she goes to check on the Siren, touching her shoulder briefly as she passes.
I should go.
Nico's first missed call registers while I'm doing a second pass of the exits. I call back and he picks up on one ring.
"In position," he says. "ETA?"
"I’ll be back soon."
I hang up. Walk the perimeter of the room once more. Confirm with Pawlikowski. All of it necessary. None of it why I'm still standing here when La Sirena is eight minutes away and the Zayas are massing outside it.
