“Hurry up before the men catch up to us!” one of them squealed, yanking my arm. “We kinda split on the prospect—the guy trying to patch in, you know, the apprentice wannabe? Left his ass at the gas station with a fake text from Tank. Move!”
Regan threw the SUV in park, hopped out, and bodily shoved me into the middle row like I was a reluctant suitcase. “Fuck, did you guys ditch the SIM cards from your phones? We left all our real ones back at the clubhouse. Burners only from here on out.”
“Yep, I’m on it,” Tina said, already waving a cheap flip phone. “We’ve got burners here. No tracking, no royal-bastard boyfriends crashing the party.”
They slammed the door behind me and the SUV peeled away from the curb before I could even get my seatbelt on. I was sandwiched between two glitter-covered women who smelled like a candy factory had exploded in a liquor store. One of them—some cousin of Regan’s, I think—grabbed my face with both hands and grinned inches from my nose.
“Don’t even try to run, girl. It’s her bachelorette and there’s strippers involved. Oh my God, our men are gonna kill us if they see another man’s dick or a woman in G-strings. But that’s the point!”
Regan caught my eye in the rearview mirror, laughing so hard she had to swipe at her mascara. “Told you— you needed this. Now sit back, drink this, and try not to look so much like we just kidnapped you.”
I took the plastic cup she passed back—something sweet and lethal—and stared at the chaos around me: body glitter on every surface, burner phones glowing, the prospect they’d ditched probably already calling Tank in a panic. My escape plan, Dolores, the road out of town… all of it dissolved under the thump of whatever bass-heavy playlist was blasting.
I took a long swallow, the tequila burning all the way down, and thought,Well, shit.
At least Bandit wasn’t here to judge me for it.
The Airbnb was tucked into a quiet cul-de-sac on the east side of Santa Fe, one of those beige stucco boxes that looked like every other house on the block. Regan had booked it under her cousin’s credit card and some fake Airbnb account that Hacker supposedly couldn’t trace—at least not for the next forty-eight hours. “Burner life, baby,” she’d announced when we pulled up, waving a key fob like it was contraband. The girls cheered like we’d just robbed a bank. I just sat there in the back seat, sticky with sweat and glitter that had migrated from their skin to mine, wondering how the hell I’d gone from walking off my problems to being kidnapped into a bachelorette party.
Inside it was chaos. The living room had been transformed into a shrine to bad decisions: penis-shaped straws floating in a punch bowl, inflatable cocks taped to the walls like party balloons, and enough body glitter on every surface that the tile floors looked like a disco ball had exploded. The AC was fighting a losing battle against ten drunk women and the desert heat still radiating off the walls. I was hot, sweaty, and irritated in a way that had nothing to do with the plastic dildos dangling from the ceiling fan. My mind was still out in the scrub brush with those water samples, with Dr. Harlan’s scared face, with the Oakley name glowing on my laptop screen like a warning label.
I tried. I really did. I took the fruity drink someone shoved at me, laughed when they made me wear a sash that said “Maid of Dishonor (For Now),” and even danced a little when the playlist turned filthy. But my head wasn’t in it. The serious shit—thekind that could get people killed—was sitting on my chest like a lead blanket, and no amount of penis straws was going to lift it.
Then the doorbell rang.
The girls shrieked like it was Christmas morning. “Stripper time!” someone yelled. The door flew open and in walked the guy—tall, ripped, oiled up like a showroom car, wearing nothing but a G-string and a smile that screamed “I’ve done this a thousand times and I’m very, very gay.” He started the routine, hips rolling, music thumping, and the girls lost their collective minds. One of them—some cousin of Regan’s—pushed me forward like I was the guest of honor.
He dropped into a squat right in front of me, junk swinging two inches from my face, and gave me a wink that saidrelax, honey, this is just theater.
I didn’t think. I just shoved both hands against his chest—hard enough that he rocked back on his heels—and stood up so fast the room spun.
“I can’t,” I muttered. “Not tonight.”
The music kept thumping. The girls stared. Then the snickering started.
“Dude, it’s a bachelorette party,” Tina drawled from the couch, drink sloshing. “Who invited the crasher?”
“Uptight scientist in the house,” another one laughed, not even trying to be quiet. “Bet she’s never seen a dick that wasn’t in a textbook.”
I didn’t wait for the rest. I shoved past the stripper, past the inflatable cocks, past the glitter and the giggles, and stalked straight out the back slider into the tiny fenced yard. The night air hit me like a slap—still warm, still carrying that faint creosote smell—but at least it was quiet. I dropped onto the concrete step, head in my hands, elbows on my knees, and tried to breathe through the knot in my throat. Bandit. Mason. The aquifer. The Oakleys. The raise that felt like blood money now. It was all toomuch, and I was drowning in the middle of a party that wasn’t mine.
The slider opened behind me a minute later. Soft footsteps. I didn’t look up.
Regan lowered herself onto the step beside me, her shoulder brushing mine. She smelled like tequila and vanilla body spray. “So… you know what’s going on?” she asked, voice softer than I’d ever heard it. “I’m a good listener. Promise.”
I laughed once, bitter. “I can’t talk about it, Regan. It could get people killed. Like, actually killed.”
She quirked a brow, the fairy lights from inside catching the edge of her smirk. “Did you not know we’re in a motorcycle club? Do you know I’ve been burying shit since I was born? Buryingbigthings. The kind that make the evening news look like a bedtime story.”
I lifted my head and looked at her then. Really looked. The desert wind tugged at her hair, and for the first time I saw the steel underneath all the chaos and the fairy-tale weddings and the texts that never stopped.
“You’re from here,” I said slowly. “Born here, right? Your family lives here?”
“My nieces and nephew are blood in this land,” she answered, voice low and steady. “The blood of our ancestors is in this land. Whatever it is, Sienna, it’s my problem too now.”
I swallowed hard. My hands were shaking. “I need to be able to trust you to keep your mouth shut on this. Like, vault-level shut. I’ve got a big problem I’m trying to solve. The kind that makes me want to pack Dolores the cactus, grab my shit, and split like the last scientist did. The reason that job was even open.”
She didn’t interrupt. Just waited, eyes locked on mine.
