Page 29 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
“Confirm,” Duke says, voice even. “Intel or leverage?”
“Pattern-of-life collection,” I answer. “Learning our routes, timing, fallback habits. Tagging the team.”
“Get me a plate,” he says.
“Already got it,” Gunner replies. “Registered to Valence Auto—bulk renter. Card: prepaid. Camera on the corner gave me a face three loops ago when he smoked in the shadow of the florist.”
My phone buzzes with a photo that looks like every face and nobody at once—average in the way guys try to be when they don’t want to stick. But the jawline’s familiar. Nose break that healed lazy. The eyes don’t blink when you expect them to.
“Run him,” Duke says.
“Working,” Gunner mutters, fingers clacking. “Hit on a skip trace forum. Alias pings: Mercer. Ed Mercer. Freelance collector. Sells to whoever pays—PI work on the surface, dirt-digging underneath. No charges that stick. Known associates: one broker in Miami, one fixer in Portland. Last known gig: leverage package for a hedge guy’s divorce.”
“Not here for the tree lighting,” I say.
“And not just following the convoy,” Gunner adds, voice flattening. “Geo pings from public cams put his face at Bean Flicker two afternoons this week. Baby Bungalow yesterday. Saint Pierce General ER side entrance last night. He’s ghosting our tail and finding our shadows.”
Bean Flicker. Baby Bungalow. ER. My spine goes cold.
“He pivoted from the job tous,” I say. What the fuck?
“Specificallyyou,” Duke says, tracking ahead of me like he always does. “Which means Melanie is on his map by association.”
I don’t answer right away. I’m already pulling up traffic cams in my head, mapping lines from the marina to her block. It’s been a few days since the appointment—quiet texts, heartbeat photo, a lemon muffin joke. Quiet isn’t safety. Quiet is a thing that breaks loud.
“Mission change,” Duke says. “Gunner and I button the client. Lucas?—”
“I’m gone,” I say, already shifting into drive.
“Leave me Mercer’s plate,” Gunner adds. “If he moves toward her apartment again, I’ll wake up half the city.”
I drop coordinates in the channel, then I’m rolling, wipers clicking, a line of cold air spooling in from the vent as I push heat and speed into a truce. The roads are damp and mean, and I drive like a man with a cargo more important than my ego.
Melanie’s building is quiet when I pull up. Not dead quiet—residential quiet. A TV blue in a third-floor window. Someone’s wind chime doing a ghost song. I loop once for a pattern check, record plates, clock a dented Civic that doesn’t belong. It’s clean aside from that.
I text:
Outside. Don’t open until you hear me. Two knocks, then one.
Three beats. The buzzer hums. I take stairs, not the elevator. Stairs tell you more about a building—the smells, the sounds, the neighbor who leaves shoes outside their door. Third floor smells like curry and pine cleaner. Good. Familiar.
I knock three times.
Her door opens four inches on the chain. One eye appears in the crack, red-rimmed and glossy. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say, gentling everything—tone, stance, the way my hands settle open at my sides. “Chain.”
She fumbles it. The lock clicks. The door swings wide and she’s there—oversized sweater, leggings, hair in a knot even sleep can’t defeat, cheeks blotchy from tears she hasn’t finished with.
“What happened?” I ask before I can swallow it.
She tries to smile and fumbles that, too. “Everything and nothing. It’s stupid. Hormones.”
“Nothing about it’s stupid,” I say. “May I?—?”
She steps back. I sweep fast—windows, lines of approach, kitchen window latch, balcony rail integrity, who’s looking out their peephole. No watchers. No angle on the courtyard that bothers me. I wedge a rubber doorstop from my pocket at the threshold—a habit that earns me exactly two seconds of her confused attention and a tiny snort.
“It’s ugly,” she says, staring at the wedge.
