GAVE PROOF THROUGH THE NIGHT

STARS, STRIPES, AND HOCKEY NIGHTS

BOOK 11

GIGI BLUME

Copyright © 2026 by Gigi Blume

All rights reserved.

Sodasac Press supports copyright. Copyright promotes creativity and free speech, and keeps the author well-stocked in coffee. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book. If this work was obtained from a pirate, please support the artist by purchasing a real copy. The only pirates we tolerate wear billowy shirts, thigh-high boots, and probably sing songs by Gilbert and Sullivan. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover design: Beck and Dot

For the federal agent monitoring my search history:

It's just for book research, I swear.

A NOTE FROM GIGI

Hey! Thanks for picking up Gave Proof Through the Night, book eleven in the Stars, Stripes, and Hockey Nights series.

I hope you’re ready for a wild ride, because I went down some genuinely unhinged rabbit holes writing this one. Between the historical research and the lore-building, my search history alone could get me a visit from the FBI.

Prepare to laugh and swoon with this National Treasure meets Ocean's 8 hockey romcom. I fell hard for Erica and Jeremiah (and Erica's chaotic crew of friends) while writing them, and I think you will, too. They're truly dear to my heart.

If you've read some of my other books, you might spot cameos from the Precio family cousins, as well as a nod to a certain hockey team in Toronto.

Happy reading!

XOXO

Gigi

ABOUT THE SERIES

Stars, Stripes, and Hockey Nights: A sweet hockey romantic comedy series where hockey isn’t just a game—it’s an American tradition. This summer, celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday with the swooniest hockey all-stars as they take the ice in a festive exhibition tournament.

When USA’s top NHL stars arrive in Washington, DC, they’re competing for more than a championship title. Between face-offs and slap shots, these all-American heroes find themselves taking their biggest risk yet—falling in love. Expect prank wars, locker room banter, fireworks—on and off the ice—and sparks that light up more than the scoreboard.

Each book in this closed door romcom series is a complete standalone, featuring a different hockey hero taking his shot at forever. Because love isn’t just won in the arena—it’s written in the stars and stripes of the heart.

Let the fireworks begin! 

GAVE PROOF THROUGH THE NIGHT SOUNDTRACK

For the best experience, tune into the Gave Proof Through the Night playlist on Spotify. Some of these songs are covers, which are the very versions I listened to while writing (and daydreaming about) this book.

You'll also find the song titles listed at the start of each chapter. Think of them as a mini soundtrack cue before you start reading.

You can save the playlist to your favorites here: SPOTIFY

Chapter One:

Wild Child — The Black Keys

Bad Reputation — Joan Jett & the Blackhearts

Chapter Two:

American Woman — Lenny Kravitz

Chapter Three:

Sloppy Soup Samba — Daniel Pemberton

Ain't No Rest for the Wicked — Cage The Elephant

Chapter Four:

Fire — Barns Courtney

Chapter Five:

This Is How I Roll — Money Mark

Chapter Six:

Real Wild Child (Wild One) — Iggy Pop

Chapter Seven:

Cold Comfort Lane — Holy Moly & The Crackers

Chapter Eight:

National Treasure — Barns Courtney

Chapter Nine:

We Are Going to Rob It — Daniel Pemberton

Girls Just Want to Have Fun — Cyndi Lauper

Chapter Ten:

Saturday in the Park — Chicago

4th of July — Shooter Jennings

Chapter Eleven:

The Star Spangled Banner  — Madison Rising

America — Neil Diamond

Chapter Twelve:

The Gala Plan — Daniel Pemberton

Hacking the Met — Daniel Pemberton

Chapter Thirteen:

La Bomba — Ricky Martin

Chapter Fourteen:

In Vogue — Daniel Pemberton

Sparkling Diamonds (From "Moulin Rouge") — Nicole Kidman

Chapter Fifteen:

American Girl — Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Chapter Sixteen:

What's Up? — 4 Non Blondes

Fast Car — Jem

Chapter Seventeen:

Diamonds — Rihanna

Chapter Eighteen:

America — Simon & Garfunkel

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon — Urge Overkill

Chapter Nineteen:

NYC Larceny — Daniel Pemberton

Chapter Twenty:

Confide in Me — Miss Sammy J

Golden — HUNTR/X, EJAE

Chapter Twenty-One:

Getaway Car — Taylor Swift

Material Girl — Madonna

Chapter Twenty-Two:

Bullet the Blue Sky — U2

Chapter Twenty-Three:

Snake Eyes — David Holmes

Game On! — Daniel Pemberton

Chapter Twenty-Four:

Arrival at National Archives — Trevor Rabin

She's Always a Woman — Billy Joel

Chapter Twenty-Five:

Don't Blame Me — Taylor Swift

$160 Million Chinese Man — David Holmes

Chapter Twenty-Six:

Wicked Game — Chris Isaak

Chapter Twenty-Seven:

I Did Something Bad — Taylor Swift

These Boots Are Made for Walking — Loni Lovato 

Chapter Twenty-Eight:

Money for Nothing — Sultans

America the Beautiful — Leslie Odom Jr.

Closing Credits:

Ruth's Action Theme, Pt. 2 — Brooke Blair, Will Blair

1

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

Wild Child — The Black Keys

Bad Reputation — Joan Jett & the Blackhearts

The wallet goes from the man’s back pocket to my fingers to Rue’s hand in under two seconds, and I still think I could’ve shaved another half.

Sloppy. But I’m the only one who knows that.

“Sir?” Rue calls out, already three steps behind him, her voice doing the breathless-concerned thing she does so well. “Excuse me… I think you dropped something?”

The man turns. He’s maybe forty, wearing a Georgetown Law pullover. He pats his back pocket. All the blood drains from his face.

“Oh! Oh wow.” He takes the wallet from her hands like she’s handing back a lost puppy. Opens it. Counts his cards. Closes it. “Thank you so much.”

Rue beams. She should win awards for that beam.

He walks away, wallet safely returned to the exact pocket I lifted it from, none the wiser. I fall into step beside her.

“A little slow on the approach,” I say.

She shoots me a look. “I was wearing wedges.”

“Exactly.”

“What? I hit a lumpy spot.”

“Okay, Rue.”

We’ve been at this for almost an hour in Georgetown Waterfront Park, trading off, switching who lifts and who receives, running the handoff until it’s as effortless as breathing.

I’ve been in DC for three days now, but Rue arrived today, at my request. I like a good practice every now and then, but that’s not really why we’re here. Still, skills go soft if you don’t use them, so why not? My dad used to say idle hands in a way that was deeply ironic given the profession. And, if I’m being completely honest, it’s just really fun. But I have a rule. Always… always give it back.

You are a deeply unusual person, I tell myself pleasantly.

Rue stretches her arm across her chest and looks out at the river like she’s just a woman enjoying the view.

“So… You’re in?” I ask.

She side-eyes me. “Did you think I wasn’t going to be in?”

“I think it’s polite to ask.”

“Erica.” She turns to face me fully. She has this quality where she looks like an old soul and a party girl at the same time. It is a gift.

“It’s Cinco de Mayo. I came to meet you in this boring city when I should be eating chips and salsa wearing a cheap sombrero in New York. I’m in.”

We circle back into the park. The game continues.

The thing about the waterfront is that everyone is just carelessly flaunting their “goodies” unnecessarily. We’re not actually shopping for a score, but seriously, people! Wallets in back pockets? Walking while distracted on the phone? They’re practically screaming, “Here, take my stuff!”

I lift a watch off a man in a Vineyard Vines quarter-zip so cleanly he doesn’t so much as twitch. Rue gets a phone off a woman who was actively looking at it, which she will be insufferable about for the rest of the afternoon.

“Class is in session,” Rue announces after returning the phone to the lady. She gave her a story about it falling from the woman’s bag and the woman believed her.

“Lucky,” I say.

“Skill.”

“Both,” I allow, because I’m generous when I’m right.

We’re winding down now. Rue has a plane to catch, and I’ve been awake since five and eating vending machine granola bars. Then Rue’s eyes snag on a man nearby, and she gives me the look.

One more.

I tip my chin. She drifts.

The lift is clean. Rue ghosts past him and the wallet is just gone. Easy peasy. She hands it off to me, then I’m on the move.

“Excuse me,” I say, touching the man’s arm lightly. He’s maybe sixty-five, white-haired, with a kind face. “I think this fell out of your pocket.”

He takes the wallet. Opens it. His whole face goes through the inventory, the relief, the almost-laugh because he can’t believe his luck.

“Oh, goodness.” He’s counting. Everything there. Every last bill. He looks up at me like I’m a small miracle. “Sweetheart, you have no idea.” He digs out two twenties. “Please. Take this. For your trouble.”

I stare at the money.

“I’m good,” I say.

“No, no, please.” He’s already pressing it toward me. “You’re such an honest young woman. Take it.”

Oh, this is the funniest thing that has happened to me in a while.

“I really can’t.”

“You just saved me a lot more than forty dollars.” He’s still holding the bills out. “Take it, honey.”

Honey. I love this man. I will not be taking his forty dollars.

“Keep it,” I say. “Have a wonderful Cinco de Mayo.”

He looks mildly devastated. I walk away.

Rue is waiting for me under a tree, biting her lip so hard she’s going to do damage.

The second I reach her, she loses it.

“An honest young woman,” she wheezes.

“Stop.”

“Have a great Cinco de Mayo.”

“I said stop.”

She doesn’t stop. We stand there another minute. I can tell Rue is hardly keeping it in. I’d say she doesn’t get out much, but that would be a lie. I let her amusement ride out because what else can I do? Besides. It was actually kind of funny.

And then I see… him.

A man standing near the waterfront, slightly apart from the tourist cluster by the dock, looking at his phone. Tall. Dark hair. Broad-shouldered. This man either has very good genetics or a very expensive gym membership (possibly both). He’s wearing a pretentious polo and tan chinos, and on his left wrist there’s a gold watch that’s calling my name.

“That mark’s mine,” I say.

Rue follows my eyeline. Pauses. “Because of the watch? Or because he’s kinda cute?”

“Obviously because of the watch.”

He is cute. Maybe. Marginally. But that is entirely beside the point.

“Mm-hm.”

“I’m going to do him a favor,” I tell her. “He’s clearly distracted. Someone less ethical than me could take advantage of that.”

“Someone exactly as ethical as you is about to take advantage of that.”

“Just get into position for the handoff.”

She steps left. I step right. And I go to work drifting back into the crowd toward the mark. Nothing to see here. I’m someone who just happens to be walking past.

He’s within arm’s reach now. I time the brush. Three seconds… I’ve got two fingers poised to liberate the clasp of his watch when his right hand closes around my wrist.

I freeze.

He’s looking down at me. Brown eyes, warm and thoroughly amused.

“Tsk, tsk.” His voice is low. “Sticky fingers.”

I look down at it. I look up at him.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi.” The corner of his mouth moves.

“Did you need something?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“I was just walking,” I say, the picture of serenity.

“You were just walking.”

“Through the park.” I gesture broadly at the park, as if he may not have noticed it. “It’s a nice day.”

He hums. He has not let go of my wrist. He does not appear to be planning to. “Yes, it is a nice day.”

“Cinco de Mayo.”

“Mm.”

“You’re still holding my wrist.”

“I am,” he agrees, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world, and he personally owns most of it.

I look at him. He looks at me. My heart does something embarrassing in my chest.

He is not going to look away first.

“You know,” he says. “Where I’m from, being faster than a pickpocket is a skill you learn… very, very young.” He tilts his head, easy as anything, eyes raking down to my shoes.

Every nerve ending I own relocates to the point where his fingers are still circled around my wrist. The skin-to-skin contact is hot and zingy and I am acutely aware that I am not usually this interested in being caught.

“And where might that be?”

“Mexico City.”

“You don’t have an accent.”

He smiles. Just barely. “Nope.”

I snort, making a show of scanning his outfit: The Ralph Lauren polo. The peg-leg chinos fitting almost too snugly. “And the New England frat boy situation you’ve got going on?”

“I went to college in Michigan, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Sure you did.” I tilt my head, trying to figure him out.

Hmmm, this is interesting.

I get it now: the speed of that catch. The easy stance. The fact that his hand was already moving before I made contact.

He saw me coming.

I study him with new eyes and realize I might have just tried to pick the pocket… of a pickpocket.

He’s still holding my wrist.

I’m still not pulling away.

He takes one small step closer, and without raising his voice at all, tilts his head so that his mouth is level with my ear and says, just above a whisper: “Crime doesn’t pay.”

The warmth of his breath skims the shell of my ear and travels straight down to my knees, which make a completely unilateral decision to stop cooperating with the rest of my body. I lock them in place through sheer stubbornness. My skin prickles everywhere he isn’t touching, which is most of me, and my brain offers exactly one unuseful thought:

Ay, caramba.

I swallow, and my voice comes out a little too shaky. “Maybe I just wanted your number,” I say.

He pulls back. Looks at me. Something in his expression shifts. Still amused, but a different frequency entirely.

He lets go of my wrist. “Maybe you should have led with that.”

And then he slides his hands into his pockets and turns back to the waterfront, and I’m standing there holding absolutely nothing, my wrist still warm where his fingers were, blinking at the back of his head.

The nerve of him.

I walk back toward Rue with my dignity just a tiny bit smooshed.

She has abandoned the tree entirely and materialized from behind a park bench about fifteen feet away, watching me with an expression I can only describe as forensic.

“Don’t,” I say.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinking very loudly.”

She falls into step beside me and we walk in silence for a full ten seconds, which for Rue is something close to a spiritual achievement.

I glance back, just once, because I’m a human being with eyeballs, thank you. Watchy El Hottie is by the waterfront again, phone in hand, utterly unbothered. Like the whole thing was a mildly pleasant way to pass three minutes and nothing more.

Unbothered. HA! The absolute nerve.

It’s fine. I’ll never see that man again in my life. I have a job to think about. A crew to assemble. Several weeks of logistics and reconnaissance and very important things that are not brown eyes and warm hands.

We find a bench near the fountain, and I lay out the basics.

“July first,” I say. “We meet back here. I’ll have the full team confirmed by then.”

Rue nods. “And until then?”

“I’ll go see Sal. He might have some names for me. Zoe and I will be back here late June. We’ll set up the workspace, run the first walkthrough, that sort of thing.”

I look out at the park. There are families, joggers… a woman whose golden retriever has very strong feelings about a squirrel. Such normal, pedestrian stuff. I wouldn’t mind that life.

We sit in silence, letting it all sink in. “You’re clear for the summer?”

“I’ll make it clear,” Rue says. In other words, she’s there for me no matter what.

“Good.” I sit back, letting the moment breathe. “This is the one that matters, Rue. My last one.”

Rue looks at me and raises a brow.

“I know, I know.” I wave a hand. “Don’t judge me.”

“Why would I judge? One last job. That’s what we all say.”

She gets up and checks her phone, already glowing in that Rue way. She does a little shimmy as she reads her notifications.

“Good news?” I ask.

“I’m going to a rooftop party in Tribeca.” She looks up, already delighted with herself. “Cinco de Mayo, baby. Margaritas all night.”

“Ooh Tribeca. Fancy.”

“Come with me.”

“I have things to do.”

“The things will wait.”

“The things will absolutely not wait.”

She deploys the eyes. Rue has very, very good eyes for this. Wide and hopeful and cleverly persuasive. “Margaritas, Erica. Good ones.”

“Go.” I wave her off. “Go drink margaritas on a rooftop. Send me a picture of the view.”

She grins, bright and quick, and pulls me into a hug.

“July first,” she says over her shoulder as she turns for the station.

“July first,” I confirm.

I watch her disappear down the path toward the Metro. A fifteen-minute walk in wedges, which honestly serves her right. I don’t know why she doesn’t just take an Uber to the airport.

Then I’m alone, the park breezy and humming around me and the afternoon tipping over into early evening.

Cinco de Mayo.

I stand near the fountain and let myself stop moving for just a second. The light off the river is doing something magical. Somewhere nearby someone has started playing music, probably getting the festivities started early. I close my eyes and just breathe it in.

Watch guy. Watchy… El Hottie.

I wonder how he’s celebrating tonight. Whether he’s still in the park or whether he’s on his way to a rooftop party right now with good margaritas and a skyline. I wonder if that same warm expression will be aimed at someone else.

“Excuse me?”

I open my eyes.

It’s the white-haired man. Still beaming. Holding a bunch of yellow tulips. They’re slightly lopsided, like he just bought them from someone on the corner. Both his hands are extended toward me like an offering.

“I felt bad you wouldn’t take the cash,” he says cheerfully, pressing them closer. “Please. For an honest young woman.”

I look at the tulips. I look at him. I look at the tulips again.

“Thank you,” I say, and take them.

He walks away entirely satisfied, and I stand in Georgetown Waterfront Park on Cinco de Mayo holding a bouquet of yellow tulips, thinking about a man from Mexico City with fast reflexes and very warm hands.

I tuck the flowers under my arm and head for the warehouse. I’ve got a crew to assemble.

2

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

American Woman — Lenny Kravitz

Idon’t look back as I leave the park.

My hand curls into a fist at my side, then opens again. Like that’ll get rid of the feel of her pulse against my palm.

It doesn’t.

She’d been cool. The kind of effortless punk rock cool without actually being a punk rocker.

She was also, clearly, a pickpocket.

Why is she in my head?

I genuinely don’t know.

“Tsk, tsk,” I’d said, as if her very proximity turned me into a smooth talker. “Sticky fingers.”

She’d looked down at her own hand like it belonged to someone else. Looked back up at me. She had freckles. A scatter of them across the bridge of her nose, like someone had flicked a paintbrush and walked away satisfied. I don’t know why I’m cataloguing that. Brown hair. Big brown eyes. And a slight scar across her eyebrow, so faint, I almost missed it.

I don’t banter with strangers on sidewalks. I definitely don’t banter with strangers who were, thirty seconds prior, actively robbing me. And yet there I was.

I’d leaned in close enough that my mouth was level with her ear. “Crime doesn’t pay,” I’d told her. Close enough to catch the coconut in her shampoo. My voice had dropped low. Slow, unhurried, because for reasons I still can’t explain, I wanted to watch her shiver. I’d never used my voice like that before. I definitely hadn’t planned on trying it out on a woman who’d just tried to rob me. Her breath had caught, and I’d felt it more than heard it.

“Maybe I just wanted your number,” she’d said, voice not quite steady, and mine hadn’t been much steadier when I answered.

I don’t know what happened, but I felt an odd sense of vertigo but in a good way. Like when you go over the crest of a roller coaster.

I’m not the kind of guy who gets taken in by a pretty face. Trust me, there are plenty of girls who come to all the games and get really friendly in the warm-up tunnel. But as the son of a TV producer, I’ve learned the art of extricating myself from those types of situations with ease. Furthermore, I don’t have time to date. Hockey is my life. I breathe it. Dream it. Become it.

So why did that little pickpocket make my heart stop for two seconds? I’ll chalk it up to lack of proper sleep. I didn’t get my nap today.

I had six hours of cameras today, and not one second of it was anything new. Big smile, Jeremiah. Hold it. Again.

But four minutes with a stranger who tried to steal my watch, and my pulse still hasn’t leveled out.

I used to be good at this. I’ve had more media training than the average person would know what to do with. But somewhere between the last photo this afternoon and my walk to the waterfront, I forgot how to just play it cool with a beautiful woman.

She had no idea who I was. Nothing about her was a performance. Not the watch, not the college, not whatever expression I make when I think I’m being smooth. She’d looked at me like she already had me pegged, and was mildly entertained anyway.

Funny thing is, the watch isn’t even worth much. Half the time, it doesn’t work at all. But it was a gift from my old teammates in the Jr. Kings program back in Mexico City. A few of my buddies picked it up at the fayuca when I got into University of Michigan. I didn’t have the heart to tell them it’s a knock-off.

By the time the water’s out of sight, Georgetown’s turned into cobblestones and brick storefronts. Tourists photograph rowhouses. A guy in a Nationals cap argues with a parking meter.

My legs are tired. A whole day of media will do that. One more take, big smile, fifty-three takes, thanks to a PA who couldn’t count to three. Tyson stood through all of it with his arms crossed, waiting on the rest of us like he had nowhere else to be.

I check my phone. The Corpus Christi team chat (AKA CC Boyz) has ten million messages and every single one of them is about Cinco de Mayo. I had put my phone on do not disturb earlier for some peace, and now that it’s on again, there’s a deluge of messages.

CC Boyz

Fletcher: cinco de mayo on a TACO TUESDAY

Mitchell: this is what we’ve been training for, boyz

Fletcher: the stars have aligned

Hartley: we are doing shots tonight in honor of your people, jeremiah

Me: cinco de mayo isn’t Mexico’s independence day

Fletcher: …what

Me: not really celebrated in Mexico. more of an American margarita holiday at this point

Fletcher: …wait. When IS Mexico’s independence day

Me: september 16

Mitchell: we’ve been doing this WRONG

Hartley: ok BUT the shots are still happening

Mitchell: the shots are ABSOLUTELY still happening

Fletcher: CC gonna miss you, traitor

Hartley: leaving us after three years man

Mitchell: THREE YEARS hockey stick emoji crying emoji

Me: I’m not dying, I’ll see you guys in a few days. Geeze

Fletcher: yeah mitchell’s getting hitched boi

Hartley: Are you amped for skydiving or what?

Our first-line defenseman is getting married. Hartley’s his best man. And apparently, before any of that, the four of us are throwing ourselves out of a perfectly good airplane, for reasons still unclear to me beyond the fact Hartley watches too many extreme sports clips.

I lift my eyes off my phone to see two guys peel off from a knot of tourists near a shop window, moving with that stiff, trying-not-to-run energy. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, and the forward-leaning walk you only get from years on skates.

“Are you… dude. Are you Jeremiah Precio?” The taller one already has his phone out.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

They saw the tournament info on some hockey account this morning, talking over each other to explain it. They play for their high school, left wing and center, and they have opinions about my slap shot that are, honestly, mostly correct.

“Do you release off your back foot? Because Coach says…”

“Front foot, mostly. Weight transfer does the work, not the arm.” I show him with an imaginary stick, right there on the sidewalk, because some things you can’t half-explain. He nods like I’ve handed him the keys to the hockey kingdom.

We do the selfie. I ask their names. Julian, and a kid who just says “Bear,” and tell them good luck this season. Julian says they’re coming to a game this summer if they can swing tickets. I tell him I’ll see what I can do, and I mean it, and for about ninety seconds nothing in my life is complicated at all.

My phone buzzes before they're even out of sight. It’s my agent:

Mike: Announcement’s locked in. Media week in Irvine starts the week before the DC tournament. I’ll send the full schedule once I have it.

Mike: Did you see the piece in The Athletic?

Mike: Jeremiah.

Mike: Call me.

I run the next few weeks in my head while I walk. Texas first just to hang with the guys, then I’ll pack up my house before putting it on the market. My cousin Nate’s already sending me listings for something on the coast, since he’s twenty minutes from Newport Beach and has apparently appointed himself my local liaison whether I asked or not. He owns an insurance agency in Laguna Beach, so he knows where not to buy a house unless I want to spend ten grand a month just for fire insurance.

Make an offer sometime in the next month. Then the wedding. Then California for the Irvine team press tour and the announcement. Then straight from the coast to DC with no gap in between. Which is fine. Breathing is overrated.

One more text lands.

Mike: One more thing. There’s a gala after the tournament you’re required to attend. Organizers want faces in the room. Bring a plus-one if you’ve got one. Or find one. Fans eat that up.

I imagine Sticky Fingers in a fancy dress… pocketing the silverware.

I don’t know where that came from.

Me: noted. calling you from the car.

I don’t have a plus-one. I don’t have time for a plus-one.

I order an Uber in the app. My flight’s not for a few hours yet, but the first-class lounge has sashimi and I’ve decided I’m starved. I’m running at approximately fourteen percent battery and my body is aware of this and my brain refuses to cooperate with the shutdown.

The photoshoot had been tedious but necessary. My jaw still hurts from smiling the whole time.

It’s fine.

The Irvine announcement is seven weeks out and it’s fine.

The pickpocket somehow short-circuited my higher functions for thirty-seven seconds, and that is, categorically… fine. I guess.

I’d expected her to wiggle out of my loose grip and run.

She hadn’t run.

She’d squared up at me with those freckles and that devil-may-care expression and told me it was a nice day. Something so pedestrian and mundane.

Such moxie.

Okay. I think I understand why she’s in my head.

She isn’t anything, I tell myself. She’s a stranger.

I will not think about her freckles. I will not think about those brown eyes. Or that cute little scar on her eyebrow. I will definitely not spend any more time thinking about a girl who tried to steal a watch that doesn’t even work. A girl I’ve, for some reason, named Sticky Fingers that I will never see again.

3

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

Sloppy Soup Samba — Daniel Pemberton

Ain't No Rest for the Wicked — Cage The Elephant

The bell above the door does its little ding as I walk in, and Donna’s pen is already moving. The little notepad appears from her apron pocket before I've cleared the entrance mat. She writes without looking up, tears the top sheet, and clips it to the order wheel.

“Blueberry stack, extra butter, strawberry shake. Extra whipped cream.”

Donna is basically a permanent feature of the place like the specials board that still lists pie for two-fifty.

She loves me.

She really does.

“Thank you, Donna.”

She gives me the look that means I know, honey, and then she’s gone.

I head straight to the back.

Vin’s Diner exists in a pocket of Bay Ridge that won’t let go of the 1970s. The booths are cracked red vinyl, and the menus are covered in plastic and a sticky residue that will never come off. The light comes through the front windows at an angle that makes everything look slightly golden, even on gray mornings. It smells like maple syrup and burnt coffee and fry oil that probably needs to be changed more often. Every time I walk in here it brings me back to my childhood, as unconventional as my childhood was.

Uncle Sal is keeping office hours as usual. Nine o’clock, corner booth, every morning, as reliable as the sun coming up. Anyone who’s anyone in this city knows Sal’s standing reservation at Vin’s Diner. I’m fairly certain the city of New York would relocate the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge before asking Sal Delray to move tables.

Technically, he’s not my uncle. But he was a father figure to my father, and in our world, that’s practically blood.

It’s complicated.

He’s reading his newspaper when I walk over. Old school. He doesn’t look up.

I kiss his cheek before sliding in across from him.

“Hey Uncle Sal.”

“Hey Kid.”

He’s in the cream blazer today. I have spent twenty years wondering whether it’s one blazer or twelve identical blazers. He looks exactly the same as always. Thick black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. The bolo tie with the turquoise stone he claims came off a senator (though which senator depends on the decade and his mood), and the enormous gold pinky ring.

He folds the newspaper, looks at me over the rim of his glasses.

“So,” he says.

That is his invitation for anyone to get to the point. One of the things I love about Sal.

“I need to put together a crew,” I say.

He lifts his coffee cup. Considers it. Sets it back down. The western omelette is half-finished. White toast beside it, one piece gone. He’s been here a while. He is always here a while.

“What kind of crew?”

“Small. Six, maybe seven.” I fold my hands on the table. “I think I can get most of my usual girls. I just need two more.”

“Such as?”

“A smithy. Old school.”

He nods once.

“And… someone with DC connections.” I keep my voice easy. “A face.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Then he makes a low sound in the back of his throat, and says, “DC.”

The word sits between us like he placed it there on purpose and is waiting to see what I do with it.

He already knows.

Of course he already knows. Sal Delray has spent sixty years knowing exactly who’s in every room worth being in, and he knows precisely what’s in Washington, DC.

The lines around his eyes don’t move. Takes a deliberate sip of his coffee. It’s probably getting cold by now, but Sal never makes a fuss over such things. The man’s built a lot of wealth over the years, but he doesn’t let it show. He’s not flashy, drives an old Buick, and never wastes food. Even if it means drinking cold coffee over getting a fresh cup.

At length he says, “The museum. People will be watching.” He turns his cup a quarter-turn on the saucer. “The question is what they’re watching for.”

There it is. The thing he’s not saying, taking up room between us.

I let that sit for one breath.

“The job isn’t at the museum,” I say.

He goes still. The small cup-turnings, the resting fingers, all of it stops at once. He looks at me.

“The piece is being moved,” I say. “One night only. First time in decades it’s leaving the premises, and it won’t leave again for a long time after.”

“Your father…”

“I know. This is different. I won’t make the same mistakes he did.”

“People have long memories,” he says. “There will be friction.”

“I know that, too. I saw Hobbs when I was in DC.”

Sal narrows his eyes.

“He didn’t see me, don’t worry. He was mid-conversation on the front steps of the museum. I was half a block away before I placed the face.” I keep my voice even. “I turned the corner before I was made.”

A beat.

“I’m almost certain he didn’t see me.”

Donna materializes. Blueberry pancakes, extra butter already working its way across the top of the stack in little golden rivers. Strawberry shake with the whipped cream a full inch over the rim of the glass, because Donna has strong convictions about whipped cream and I have never once disagreed with her. She sets everything down without ceremony, and refills Sal’s cup before he can reach for it.

She’s been doing that my whole life. On her way past, Donna’s hand lands on my shoulder for exactly one second. She doesn’t look at me. I don’t say anything. We’ve been doing that my whole life too.

I take a sip of the shake. Cold and sweet and strawberry, exactly the same as it has been since I was five years old.

“How long have you been planning this?” Sal says.

“A while.”

“How long is a while?”

I put the glass down, thinking about the day I first heard about that sports gala. That’s my opening. “Long enough to know it’s possible.”

He looks at me steadily.

“The letters,” he says. Slow. Precise. The way he says everything. “That’s what this is really about. If you were just after the piece, you’d have run the job already. You want the letters.”

The proof. The papers that say what actually happened.

“And you know where they are.”

I shrug. “I know where they should be.”

“That’s not the same thing, kid.”

“No,” I agree. “It’s not. But Zoe can hack into the original donation records. They should have been logged with all the accompanying documentation.”

He considers this. “Should have.”

“Should be,” I confirm.

He makes that sound again, low and noncommittal, and goes back to his coffee. It is not a reassuring sound. It is the sound of a man who has seen a great many should bes fail to become are. But he doesn’t tell me I’m wrong.

I’ve been living inside should be my whole life. The necklace should be ours. The letters should be on record. The name should mean something other than what it means now. Everything I’ve spent the last three years building is just the argument I’m having with that phrase.

“I don’t need a bankroll,” I say, before he can offer. “I know you’re going to offer, so I’m saying it first. I’ve been setting money aside for years. Every job, every cut, it’s gone into a fund. I’m ready.”

Something moves in his face. The softest possible version of softening, the kind you’d miss entirely if you hadn’t been watching Sal Delray since you were small. He was going to offer. It is completely written all over him. But he lets me have it.

“I wasn’t going to offer,” he says.

He absolutely was.

“It’s going to work,” I tell him. And I mean it. “This is the one. The window is there, the crew is right, the plan is solid. After this, I’m done. One last job, and then I figure out what I’m supposed to be when I’m not chasing after my family’s legacy.”

Sal looks at me for a long moment. He’s the closest thing to an uncle I have, which is both deeply comforting and slightly alarming. But there it is.

When he finally speaks, it’s slow and deliberate, each word set down like he’s placing cards on a table.

“The mark is never the safe,” he says. “The mark is always the story they already believe about themselves.”

I nod. I know this one.

Except I think about Georgetown. I think about standing three feet from a man in a polo shirt at the waterfront and reading him in approximately four seconds: tourist, distracted, decent watch, easy lift.

I’d misread the mark. Which is, in Sal’s language, the only real mistake.

I push the thought away. It’s been three days, and I genuinely cannot explain why a stranger I’ll never see again keeps showing up in the middle of completely unrelated situations.

“It always is,” I agree, and take a long pull of my strawberry shake.

Sal reaches for the little packet of orange marmalade and fights with the corner of the foil with shaky fingers.

“Here, let me.” I take it from him before he can protest and peel the foil back. He only grunts and proceeds to spread the marmalade over his toast.

“You been up to see your old man?”

I take a very large bite of pancake.

“How’s the block association?” I say, around it. “Any news on 86th?”

He looks at me for exactly one second. Then, as he always does when I redirect on this subject, he lets it go without ceremony. He sets down his butter knife.

“Frank DiPietro sold his boat,” he says.

“Frank DiPietro has a boat?”

“Had a boat. In his garage. Fifteen years.” He takes a bite of toast. “He saw something on television about the Jersey Shore and got ideas. He has never been on the water. He’s afraid of the water.”

“Then why did he buy a boat?”

“Kid.” He wipes his marmalade fingers on a napkin. “Why does anyone do anything?”

I lean forward. I cannot help it.

“He listed the boat on Saturday. Sunday morning, his brother-in-law Terrence sees the listing. Terrence has never been on a boat. Terrence does not know what a boat does. Terrence has no conceivable use for a boat. But Terrence sees Frank’s asking price and something happens to him.”

“What kind of something?”

“A competitive something. Terrence made an offer out of spite. Frank countered. Terrence went three hundred over asking. Frank went four hundred.”

“That’s the whole story?”

“Their mother calls from Boca because word reached her somehow. Neither of them can explain the boat to her. Neither of them can explain the boat to themselves.“ He pauses to drink. He does this without hurrying, in the manner of a man who knows he has the room and is not going to waste it. “Terrence wins. The boat is in Terrence’s garage now. It has not moved. Neither of them has been to the water. They are not currently speaking.“

I’m already losing it.

“Frank’s wife sent Terrence’s wife a baked ziti last Tuesday. As a gesture.”

“And?”

“Terrence’s wife has not returned the dish.”

It comes out of me completely. A real laugh, right there in Vin’s Diner on a Friday morning in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I haven’t laughed in longer than I’d like to admit. Undignified and full, blueberry pancake fork halfway to my mouth, my free hand coming up like that’s going to help anything.

Three days ago I’d come close when that stranger with absolutely no situational awareness about the gravity of his own humor had said “crime doesn’t pay” to a pickpocket like it was a public service announcement. Something in me had wanted to laugh out loud at that. But I didn’t let it out. You don’t let your guard down when you’re working.

I have no idea why he keeps doing that. Walking through my head uninvited.

Sal watches me with a very small smile.

I love him.

I love him so much it is almost a problem.

“The dish,” I say, when I can say anything.

“The dish,” he confirms, and finishes his toast.

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. Take a breath. The laugh settles into something warmer and sits there in my chest alongside everything else.

He lets me have the laugh.

“The DiPietros each believed they were winning something,” he says. “Neither of them could have told you what.”

Okay. He’s not just telling me about Frank DiPietro.

“The story Frank needed to believe,” Sal continues, “was that he had something Terrence didn’t. Terrence needed to believe the same thing about Frank.” He straightens the edge of his napkin on the table. One small, deliberate motion. “The boat was irrelevant from the beginning.” He picks up his coffee cup. “It always is.”

Sal signals for the check with one small raise of two fingers. “Monday,” he says. “I’ll have names.”

“Thank you, Uncle Sal.”

Outside, Bay Ridge carries on. A delivery truck honks twice. Guys are yelling back and forth at something insignificant, probably.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, waving his pinky ring. “But do me a favor, kid.”

I reach for my pancakes and cut into the stack and its blueberry goodness. “Anything for you, Sal.”

“Go up to Otisville. Pay a visit to your father.”

I’m not ready for that. Not until I can deliver the proof to him.

4

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Fire — Barns Courtney

The elevator doors open and Jake Twiles is standing there in a Nebraska T-shirt and a goofy grin on his face.

“Precio.” He gets a hand on my chest before I can step past him. “Two blocks from here. Coffee Loft. Best matcha in the District. I would not lie to you about this.”

Jake plays for Nebraska, but I met him when we were both selected for the U.S. Olympic team. Now we get the opportunity to play for the West Stars together for the Semiquincentennial Tournament. And even though our home teams will go against each other in the fall, something like winning Olympic Gold together will give you a friend for life.

“Matcha,” I repeat, because is this the same guy who spent half his time in the Olympic Village explaining, unprompted, why espresso was the only honest drink a man could order?

Something happened to him since Milan. I want to know what.

“Don’t judge me.” He’s already walking backward toward the lobby doors, pointing at me like one of those inspirational speakers. “Meet me there.”

My phone buzzes against my hip. MARISELA, the screen says, because in twenty-six years that’s the whole extent of what she’s been to me.

I should let it go to voicemail. But I’m too nice for my own good.

“Give me a few,” I call after Jake. “I’ll find you.”

He gives me a thumbs up and disappears toward the lobby, humming a tune which I don’t quite place. I step into the elevator and press my floor. The doors are still sliding shut when I answer.

“Mijo!” Her voice arrives at full volume, the way it always does when she’s decided the phone works better if she yells directly into it. “You landed, finally, I call you four times already, Jeremiah. Four times.”

“Hi.” The elevator lurches upward. “Just got in.”

“And you didn’t call your mama first? After everything?”

Here we go.

She knew I was in California all last week for the press tour. She also decided the drive from her place to Irvine wasn’t worth making. Apparently traffic on the 405 was my fault. But she wants to make it perfectly clear she would have been there, etcetera etcetera. By the time the doors open on my floor, I’ve got a headache and she’s still going.

I took the red-eye straight from the press tour in California to DC this morning. I don’t have the energy to tell her the other boys on the team don’t have their mommies tagging along for media stuff. Then again, the other boys don’t have Marisela Beltran for a mother. They have normal mothers who don’t want to take advantage of all the cameras and social media coverage to resuscitate a dying telenovela career.

She goes on about her latest botox. There is a strong possibility I will not get off this call before I die of natural causes.

I find my room, key card, door, the little green light, and step inside still holding the phone an inch from my ear to save my eardrums. That’s when I see the fish.

Not one fish. A colony. Orange and black plushies lined along the headboard like a tiny, furious parade. A gift basket the size of a kayak, wrapped in cellophane, stuffed with candy in the same two colors. A hoodie with PRECIO stitched over the heart. And a bouquet of marigolds so enormous I may need to request a bigger room just to reach the air conditioner without turning sideways.

“Mijo, are you listening?”

“I’m listening.” I am looking at a small orange civilization but I’m listening. Sort of.

“Because what I’m saying is, Newport Beach to the Hills, that’s nothing, that’s nada. Twenty minutes.”

“It’s over an hour. With traffic, more like two.”

“You’ll have a car, mijo, you’ll figure it out. The point iiiis…” She draws the word out ‘is’ like it’s a title card. “We’re basically going to be neighbors. Practically family, all over again, like when you were little.”

We were never neighbors when I was little. She was in Miami and I was a six-hour flight away. She sent a card on my birthday that one time, the year she remembered.

I don’t say any of that. I never say any of that. I set my bag on the luggage rack and start unpacking, and that’s when I step backward directly onto a stuffed fish.

It honks. A deep rubber-duck honk no fish has ever made in the recorded history of fish.

“What was that?” Marisela says.

“Nothing. A fish.”

“A fish?”

“It’s a long story.”

“With you it’s always a long story, mijo, I don’t know where you get this from.” A beat. “Probably your father.”

Probably.

I pick up the fish and look it dead in its enormous plastic eyes. It looks back at me with a blank expression. I set it down on the table very gently, and that’s when I notice the card propped against the gift basket.

Heavy stock. The Irvine team logo embossed across the top. Inside, handwriting that slants hard to the right, all caps:

Welcome to the aquarium. Orange power!—M. Laakso

Just a few days ago I was standing on a boat out of Newport Harbor watching a pod of dolphins surf the wake while a producer told me to look “more amazed, Jeremiah, like you’ve never seen the ocean before.”

I was born in Miami. I have seen the ocean.

The day after that, I spent six hours at Disneyland with some of the other newly announced players. We took photos in front of the castle, on the carousel, and rode in a parade float. Then I ate a turkey leg the size of my forearm per the recommendation of our plaid-wearing escort.

I have never had a stranger week in my professional life. It was awesome. Or, as I told my father later that day, “Muy padre.”

But here’s the part I haven’t said out loud to anyone, not even my agent…

When I was eight, my father took me to see a movie about an underdog hockey team coached by a guy who’d already given up on life. There was a kid on that team, smallest guy on the bench, wearing eleven because it was the only number left in his size. By the end of the movie, he’s the one who scored the winning goal. I rewound that scene so many times the tape wore thin in that exact spot. I told my father I wanted to be that kid.

My father, who does not have a sentimental bone anywhere in his body, said, “Then be better than him.” End of conversation.

When I played for Corpus Christi, I wore 29. A nod to the biblical book with my name. It’s a good chapter. It’s a good number.

But then a bunch of guys out of Toronto decide to create a team inspired by that classic movie… and recruited me to play for them. Me! So when they asked if I had a jersey number preference, I said I wanted eleven, and didn’t explain why. They didn’t ask why. Maybe they already knew. That underdog kid from the movie.

“Mijo. Mijo, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“I was saying, the studio thinks the new pilot could be very Dynasty. Very glamorous. They’re not sure yet if I’m a lead or a diversity hire, but I told them, I said, my son just won an Olympic gold medal and now he’s going to be five minutes from my door, can you imagine the story there, the press would eat it up…”

She rattles on about posing together for a big social media push, scripted reels, some kind of reality TV nightmare.

She has said more words to me in the last four minutes than in the previous twenty-six years combined.

I let her talk.

“I just think it’s a beautiful coincidence that it’s also an incredible photo opportunity, no?” She goes on. “Reunited with my baby boy. I already wrote the caption.”

“I can get you tickets,” I say finally. “If you want to come to a game.”

“Oh.” She pauses. “Well, of course, I would love that, it’s just my schedule right now is so, you know how it is, with the pilot. I’d have to check…”

There it is.

I knew exactly how she’d react to game tickets. I offered anyway.

She’d been baffled by hockey from the start. Not annoyed. Baffled, the way you’d be baffled if your kid came home and announced he wanted to wear nothing but togas to school. Hockey was a sport for “los güeros,” not Mexicans.

Yet she’d spent years trying to transform herself into whoever the casting directors decided “American” looked like that season. The hair a shade blonder every year. Blue contact lenses. Accent coaching that never seemed to help much.

My father, meanwhile, a man who considers a loss by the Mexican national team in the World Cup a personal tragedy requiring several days of mourning, never tried to talk me out of hockey. Not once.

“No problem,” I say, and I mean it. I don’t know what I’d do if my mother actually did show up for one of my games.

“You’re so understanding, mijo. You get that from me.”

I really, really don’t.

“Anyway, I should…”

“Ay. Mijo.” Wounded. Gentle. Theatrical and completely sincere at the same time, a trick I have never once figured out how she pulls off. “How many times do I tell you. Would it hurt you to say Mamá every now and then?”

I don’t answer that. I have never called her Mamá. Mamá is a word for someone who shows up, and showing up was never really her thing, not until I started winning things and the wins came with cameras attached. That’s when the calls started. That’s when I became mijo, every single time, like the word had been sitting in a drawer for years waiting for a reason to come back out.

I never called her by her first name, either. My father raised me not to call an adult by their first name out of respect. What I’ve landed on instead is nothing. I just don’t address her, not that I’ve had many conversations with her. I open with “so” or “anyway” or whatever filler buys me half a second.

“I’ve got a team thing,” I say, deflecting. “I have to go.”

It’s not exactly a lie. I need to sort out all these plushies.

“Of course, go, go.” Warmly. She’s rehearsed that warmth. She’s an actress, after all. “I’m so proud of you, mijo. Tell everyone hello from me.”

Everyone? I picture myself in the lobby, flagging down the bellhop. Hi. My mother says hi. It’s not like she knows anyone in my life.

“I will,” I say, because it costs nothing, and I hang up.

I stand there in the sudden quiet, surrounded by roughly forty stuffed fish and a bouquet that belongs in the Rose Parade, and breathe out slowly through my nose.

Then I pull out my phone and type a message to Mikael.

Me: Got your gifts. The fish situation is intense. In the best way.

Me: Thank you for all this. Means a lot.

The reply comes back fast enough that I wonder if Mikael ever sleeps, until I remember he mentioned flying to Finland to see his parents this week. Which means it’s the middle of the afternoon for him.

I picture Mikael checking his phone between whatever it is co-owners of brand new NHL franchises do on a trip home. Sauna breaks. Reindeer.

Mikael: lol the merch team got a little carried away, not gonna lie

Mikael: Hendrix Ellis wanted to send an actual fish tank. With actual fish. I had to be the voice of reason

Mikael: Welcome to the fish fam for real though man. Genuinely thrilled to have you. Go win a tournament, then come win us a Cup fish

I huff out something close to a laugh, alone in a hotel room full of plush animals, and send back a thumbs up.

Out of all the owners, Mikael’s the one who texts most. He’s the one who called me himself the night the deal closed, instead of having someone else do it. There’s a whole list of others, Owen Jablonski, Hendrix Ellis, Sawyer O’Malley, Griffin McGregor, and a handful of other names engraved on the Stanley Cup. Several of them are still playing for Toronto.

A few years back, a group of those Toronto players pooled their own money to buy the franchise outright after the previous owner turned out to be running a Ponzi scheme big enough to make the actual news, not just the sports section. I was a rookie in Corpus Christi when that story broke, and I remember thinking even then that you don’t see players do that. They did it anyway.

All of them somehow found time to build a franchise from nothing because, from what I can tell, they wanted it to feel like that movie. An underdog story with a happy ending.

I’m moving the gift basket when I see a creamsicle colored hat wedged under a scarf. Orange embroidery, block letters across the front.

GILL POWER

I hold it up. Turn it over once. I put it on. Check the mirror. Take it off. Put it back on.

Jake is never going to let me live this down.

Oh no, Jake! Coffee Loft. Matcha. I haven’t even changed out of the white dress shirt I flew in.

I grab the key card and head out, hat still on, mostly to hide the hair.

That matcha better live up to the hype, because I flew red-eye, I’ve been awake for twenty-four hours, and my body is running on a turkey leg high and hallucinations of that pickpocket every time I close my eyes.

I subconsciously run my right hand over my watch band.

I don’t do this. I have never once let a stranger take up space in my head, not in college, not my rookie year, not the Olympics, not ever. I built a career on the idea that focus is a finite resource and you don’t waste it on people you’ll never see again.

And yet. Here she is in my head. Her wrist under my hand. The look on her face when she realized I wasn’t letting go.

It’s the lack of sleep. Has to be. Nobody thinks straight after a red-eye, and my brain is filling the empty space with whatever it can find, the way static fills a channel with no signal.

I press the call button for the elevator and let it go.

There’s a tournament to win. A roster full of guys who already feel like a team. And back in my room, forty stuffed orange fish that need to go. The children’s hospital, maybe. I’ll ask the concierge. Okay, maybe I’ll keep one plushie.

The elevator arrives. I step in, already thinking about matcha and fish tanks and anything that isn’t freckles and brown eyes, and let the doors close behind me.

5

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

This Is How I Roll — Money Mark

The Coffee Loft’s A-frame specials board informs me, in cheerful pink chalk, that today’s feature is a “Patriotic Cold Brew” with red, white, and blue cold foam, and I have several follow-up questions.

Right now I’m just standing here, waiting for Zoe to return from the bathroom so we can order, squinting at the specials board like it owes me an explanation. Cold foam should not have a flag in it. That feels like it should be a rule somewhere.

Sal called me last night to inform me he’d acquired me a DC connection. Her name is Ivy, and she, according to Sal, is everything a ‘face’ should be. She knows anyone who’s anyone in this town, and has collected more favors than she’ll use in one lifetime. I was told she’ll meet us today at the Coffee Loft, so here I am, having arrived early as I always do for these kinds of things. You can’t be too careful, after all. Zoe rushed into the bathroom as soon as we got here, because apparently, she gets the urge to go before she drinks coffee.

The barista calls out, “Iced oat milk matcha for… Germany? Ger… mine? Her guy? …Hermione? Okay. For… Herman. Iced matcha for Herman!”

Behind me, a chair scrapes back, and someone steps up to the pickup counter and takes the cup without comment. Herman, I guess.

I squint at the specials board, slightly disillusioned. The actual menu, the big one with prices, is on the wall above the counter. I take a step back to get the whole thing in frame.

Then my back collides directly into something. Something solid.

There’s a soft, doomed little crunch of what is probably a plastic cup, then, “Oof.”

I freeze, then that same voice says, “Oh…no.”

I spin around ready with an apology, and the first thing I register is the stain. A very large, very green stain, currently colonizing what I can only describe as an extremely well-constructed chest.

“Oh my gosh. Okay, don’t move.” I’m already at the napkin dispenser, hauling out a fistful, and I’m pressing them directly to his chest before either of us has formally agreed this is happening. And that’s when I register the other thing.

Abs. Actual, defined, ridge-having abs. I can feel them. Through a shirt. I am standing in the middle of a coffee shop, blotting at a stranger’s abdominal region with a fistful of napkins, and those abs are (I would just like this on the record, for posterity) ripped.

“It’s fine,” he says, immediately, automatically.

“It is not fine, oh my gosh…” I keep going, dabbing in a futile little circle over the worst of the stain, because apparently my hands have decided we’re doing this and nobody consulted the rest of me. And I’m babbling, something about how I’m so sorry, I wasn’t even looking, I’ll buy him a new one, do they do refills, is matcha even refillable?

But then, smooth as chocolate, he says, “We gotta stop meeting like this.”

Something in the back of my brain sits up very straight. My hand, still on his chest… goes still.

And then I look up.

Brown eyes. Warm, amused, and here he is, dripping matcha, looking at me like I just walked out of a very bad dream.

Oh, says every cell in my body, in unison, with feeling. Oh, no.

It’s him.

Georgetown Waterfront. The watch. That wrist… attached to those forearms. Be still my heart.

“You,” I say.

“Me,” he agrees.

I keep dabbing, because if I stop dabbing I might say something unforgivable, like I’ve thought about you four times a week since May.

“What were you after this time?” he asks. “My wallet? My phone? I’ve got approximately eleven dollars in quarters from the hotel vending machine. Take your pick. I’ll even hold still.”

“I wasn’t after anything.”

He looks down (where I am now essentially feeling up his abs with a Coffee Loft napkin) then back up at me. The corner of his mouth does something complicated.

“You can stop now. I think it’s reached peak absorption.”

I straighten up. Toss the ruined napkins. Attempt, and largely fail, to look like a woman who did not just spend a full minute giving a stranger’s abdominal region a tender little massage in public.

“Right. Sorry. This really was a genuine accident.”

“Sure.” He says it the way you’d agree with someone who’s just told you the dog ate their homework, and the dog is, in fact, sitting right there, looking guilty. “Coincidence. Got it.”

And there’s that grin again, tugging at the corner of his mouth like it’s got somewhere better to be and isn’t in a hurry to get there.

“It’s not my fault the universe keeps doing this to you.”

“The universe isn’t the one doing the mustard trick.”

“The mustard trick?”

“It’s really a common pickpocketing scheme in big cities. Someone squirts mustard on you or some other substance. They then offer to help clean it off. While you’re distracted, an accomplice lifts your wallet, phone, or… watch.”

“That’s…” I’m about to say ridiculous, but he’s totally got a point. “Okay, fair. That one’s on me.” I cross my arms, mostly so my hands have somewhere to be that isn’t near him. “Although, for the record, I think you’re handling this remarkably well, considering I just gave myself a tour of your six pack.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He says it lightly, and something about the way he says it makes my stomach do a small, traitorous flip.

That’s when I notice the hat.

I genuinely don’t have words for it at first. It’s a baseball cap… but the color! The color is a pukey, milky orange. Not quite peach. Not quite sherbet. More like salmon that’s been left out on the counter too long.

Across the front, in letters big enough to be visible from a passing satellite, reads: GILL POWER

It is, objectively, kind of a girly hat. The lettering’s got a little wave to it, there’s a tiny cartoon bubble coming off one of the letters, the whole vibe is “I went to summer camp and all I got was this lousy hat.”

And here’s the genuinely upsetting thing. On literally anyone else, this hat would be a crime against fashion. Yet, on him it somehow works. The same way everything else about him apparently does. It’s truly unfair how hot he is. I kinda feel sorry for every other hat-wearer in this establishment.

I point at it. “Okay. I have so many questions.”

He blinks, reaches up, and seems to discover for the first time that he is wearing a hat. His hand goes still on the brim like he’s reading it through his fingers. Like braille. Like he’s hoping it’ll have changed since this morning.

“Huh,” he says.

“You forgot you were wearing that hat, didn’t you?” I am delighted. I am unreasonably, disproportionately delighted. “You walked all the way here, through public, past witnesses, wearing a hat that could have come out of a child’s birthday party goody bag… and you forgot it was on your head.”

“It was a gift.”

“From who? An aquarium? Did an aquarium adopt you?”

“It’s a work thing,” he says, with the dignity of a man standing on a sinking ship, insisting the orchestra keep playing.

“Wait.” I tilt my head, squinting at the letters again. “Is that supposed to say Girl Power? Because… okay, I’m seeing it now, and honestly? I’m into it. Very on-brand. Spice Girls were formative for me as a person. If you’re secretly a Girl Power guy, I will not judge you, I will in fact respect it.”

“It’s Gill. G-I-L-L. Like a fish.”

“Right. Obviously.” I give him an over-dramatic wink. “Gill Power. Very different message.”

“Completely different message,” he says defensively.

“Still kind of a vibe, though.” I smile, raking my eyes down his whole body, then back up to that monstrosity on his head. “What work requires Gill Power, specifically. Be honest. Are you a mascot?”

“I’m not a mascot.”

“A fish-themed children’s entertainer?”

He blinks at me for a beat… just a beat, but I feel it land somewhere under my ribs. “I genuinely cannot tell if you’re flirting with me or making fun of me.”

For one second, neither of us says anything. The espresso machine hisses behind the counter. Someone’s stroller squeaks past the window. I am suddenly, acutely aware of how little space there is between us, and how I have not yet taken a full step back.

“Both,” I say. “Obviously both.”

He laughs, that same short, surprised sound, like it keeps escaping before he can file the paperwork on it, and grabs a fistful of napkins of his own, mopping at the front of his shirt with brisk, no-nonsense efficiency. The stain’s not going anywhere, not really. It’s settled into the white cotton in a sort of abstract-art Rorschach situation, right over those delicious abs, and I try very hard not to think about the fact that I am now extremely familiar with the general topography of his chest.

Who does he think he is? Having a chest. In public. Where I can see it.

He glances at his watch (the one I tried to steal off him) and then around the cafe, scanning the room with a slightly furrowed look.

“You waiting on someone?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m⁠—”

A date, my brain supplies, instantly and with great confidence. Obviously a date. Look at him. Men who look like that do not sit in coffee shops alone by choice. Something in my chest dips. Small, sharp, and entirely unauthorized, given that I have known this man for approximately eight minutes total, and five of those was me trying to pull his watch.

“—meeting a guy.” He checks the door. Checks it again, like maybe the someone is hiding behind it. “He’s the one who told me this place has the best matcha in the District, which, frankly, feels like it’s on him now, given recent events.”

Oh. The dip reverses itself so fast I nearly get whiplash. Also not relevant. Also none of my business. Also, stop it, Erica.

He looks around one more time, frowning faintly. “He’s not here yet. Or he’s already gone. I… should probably check outside, though.”

Don’t go. Tell me your name. Ask my number this time, you absolute coward, I will let you, I will hand it over gift-wrapped.

“Probably for the best,” I say instead, because I have a crew to assemble, a family name to restore, a heist to plan, and retribution to exact. To quote Prince Humperdinck… I’m swamped. “I make a habit of leaving destruction in my wake. Ask the shirt.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He’s backing toward the door now. Hat, stained shirt, and dignity all slightly worse for wear. And there’s that look again, the half-second of something before he tucks it neatly away. “See you around. Try not to steal anything on your way out.”

“No promises.”

And then he’s gone. Out into the Friday morning, leaving me standing by the napkin dispenser like I’ve just watched the stars and moon go with him, sucking all the air out of the room.

Get it together, girl. You’re here on business.

I’m still staring at the door, several seconds past the point where staring at a door is a normal thing to do, when Zoe reappears from the bathroom. She glances at the door, then at me, then back at the door, and lets out a low whistle.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “Who was that?”

“Who was what?”

“Tall, dark, and covered in muscles who definitely turned back to smile at you. Erica, who was that?"

“Nobody.” I gather up the ruined napkins and stack them into a tidy, guilty little pile. “Just some poor guy I bumped into.”

Zoe doesn’t say anything for a second. Her eyes have gone narrow, fixed on the door, head tilting slowly.

“Why do I feel like I know that guy?”

“You don’t know that guy.”

“No, but…” She’s still staring at the door.

“Wait a minute.”

Her phone is already in her hand, thumb moving, and I watch her scroll slow, then fast, then very fast, with focused, slightly feral energy.

“HOLY MACKEREL.” She shouts it so loud that people turn around. “Erica. Erica. Do you have any idea who that was?”

“A man who is going to need a new shirt? Probably Herman or Germany or maybe Hermione.”

“That,” Zoe says. She’s whispering now like it’s a state secret. “Is Jeremiah Precio.”

I look at the phone. I look at her. “I’m going to need context, Zoe.”

“He’s a hockey player. I didn’t recognize him at first because he wasn’t all worked up and sweaty, but… okay, in fairness, every photo I have of him he’s either sweating or doing groin stretches, so the whole dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up threw me. But that’s him.”

There’s a photo on the screen, a guy mid-stride on some kind of ice rink, helmet on, jersey soaked through, completely unrecognizable as the guy who just walked out the door and my life.

“I didn’t know you were into sports.”

“I’m not.” Zoe doesn’t even look up from her phone. “I’m into hot fictional hockey players. And, apparently, thirst traps. There’s a whole… okay, hang on, I know I saved this.”

“Zoe.”

“I have a whole folder, Erica, it’s very organized, don’t look at me like that.”

“Zoe.”

“There’s a video of him lifting his shirt to wipe sweat off his face after a game, and I want you to understand that I have watched it more times than I am willing to admit out loud, in this coffee shop, to your face. The abs, Erica. The abs. Let me find it, I swear it’s in here somewhere.”

She scrolls through her saved posts, and almost all of them are either shirtless men, men with wings, or shirtless men with wings. And also hockey players.

“You need help.”

“Oh honey, don’t even get me started. There’s a whole genre. Women who read hockey romance books are suddenly reorganizing their entire personality around men who can skate. And the thing about him specifically… okay, here, look.“ She holds up the phone, and there’s a grainy photo, and a comment section I am absolutely not going to read out loud in public.

“Not one single red flag. No scandals, no messy breakups, no leaked anything. Some guy’s grandma met him at an airport and he carried her bags and it got, like, eleven million views. He is, and I cannot stress this enough, the single most eligible athlete currently on my for-you page.”

There’s a glint in her eye that I recognize, because I’ve seen it before. Right before Zoe says something that ruins my entire week. “And you,” she says, pointing the phone at me like a tiny, accusatory remote control. “Are going to get that hot hockey player to take you as his plus-one to the gala.”

“Excuse me?”

“Erica.”

“Absolutely not. Also, he probably already has a date. Men who look like that and carry bags for old ladies do not show up to galas alone, Zoe, that’s not how the universe works.”

“Wrong.” Zoe says it with flat, unshakeable confidence. Heaven help us all, she’s done research. “He is a certified, documented, internet-verified goody two-shoes who is not dating anyone. There’s an entire thread dedicated to speculating about it. The man’s official team account is so corporate it might as well be a press release with a face. Barely posts, definitely doesn’t have time to date anyone. The internet has spoken, Erica. He’s single. He’s available. And he just got matcha spilled on him by the most charming woman in Washington, DC.”

“The internet,” I say, with weary patience. “Lies constantly. That’s its whole thing. That’s its business model.”

“Not about this.”

“About everything.”

“Think about it.” Zoe pockets her phone, suddenly all business, which is somehow worse than the squealing. “We’ve been stuck on the gala for weeks. I’ve been working every angle I can think of and we still don’t have a clean way in that doesn’t involve one of us dressing up as catering staff. And I’m sorry, but I have seen you in a bow tie, Erica, and it is not a good look. It’s not a you look. You looked like a Build-A-Bear that lost a bet.”

“I was having a bad hair day.”

“It doesn’t matter, because we don’t need it. He’s our ticket.” She lets that sit there for a second, and I can feel the shape of where this is going approximately four seconds before she says it. “A guy like that walks in the front door, Erica. No kitchen, no milk crate, no name tag that says CATERING STAFF in Comic Sans. Front door. Step and repeat. Champagne on a tray that someone hands him.”

“No.”

“And he’s apparently single, and a Boy Scout, and smiled at you!”

“It wasn’t what you think…”

“Which means,” she continues, steamrolling over me with cheerful relentlessness. “You, my friend, are going to find that man again, work your considerable Erica Armitage magic on him, and get yourself invited to that gala as his date. For the mission. For me. For…” she gestures vaguely. “The letters, Erica. Think of the letters.”

“Don’t letters me. That’s emotional blackmail and you know it.”

“Is it working?”

I open my mouth to say no. To say absolutely not, to say I do not have time to romance a professional athlete for access to a building. To say any of the seventeen sensible things currently lined up in my brain, ready to go.

What comes out, against every ounce of my better judgment, every shred of professional instinct, and possibly several treaties I have personally signed with myself regarding men is:

“Fine. When we’re back from the recruitment trip. Full recon. Your hockey guy.”

“Oh my dear sweet child,” Zoe says. “He’s not my hockey guy. He’s your hockey guy.”

Somewhere behind the counter, a barista calls out “Hermione?” one more time, into the void.

6

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Real Wild Child (Wild One) — Iggy Pop

By my count, this hotel has four hundred rooms and not one bottle of hot sauce, and I’ve started taking it personally.

I’ve hit the buffet twice already. I check the little caddy by the bagels. Ketchup, three kinds of mustard, something called fig spread. I lift a domed silver tray, hoping. One lonely croissant looks back at me.

I head back to the omelette station waiting for my turn so I can make my plea for hot sauce. I’d give up my gold medal for some of my abuela’s roasted tomatillo salsa right now but beggars can’t be choosers. At this point, I’d settle for Cholula or Tapatio.

There’s a guy from the East team in front of me, already trying the cook’s patience with his specific request for “not too much cheese, but don’t be stingy either.”

I catch the chef’s eye when the guy finally steps off.

“You got hot sauce back there?”

“No, sir.” He doesn’t look up from the eggs.

Not even a “Maybe, let me check.” This is a man who runs a tight kitchen and none of it is going to bend for me.

“Cool. Cool.” I back off before I become somebody’s cautionary tale about persistence.

I abandon the omelet line, pile scrambled eggs onto a plate because a man has to eat something, and I’m still holding a small funeral for my hot sauce dreams when Micah Lemon appears at my elbow with a plate stacked high enough to rival the Tower of Babel.

“You good?” He eyes me over the waffles. “You’ve been standing here staring.”

“There’s no hot sauce in this entire building, Micah.”

“There’s Tabasco. I saw a little bottle by the scrambled eggs.”

“That’s not hot sauce. That’s hot sauce’s redneck cousin.”

Micah blinks at me, waffles listing dangerously to one side. “Okay, Yelp reviewer.”

Behind us, the ballroom is already a wall of noise. Two full rosters of hockey players who’ve never once used an indoor voice.

Somebody’s laughing so hard he’s wheezing. Somebody just took a dinner roll to the side of the head, and from the outrage in his voice, it had butter on it.

I find our table and sit with what’s left of my dignity and my eggs.

No distractions today. Big day. Media photos, press conference this afternoon, team bonding tonight. I need to be locked in. Present. A guy who has his life together.

A guy who is not, currently, thinking about freckles.

So much for that.

Okay. New plan. I need a win. And it’s clearly not going to be the girl. So it might as well be the hot sauce.

I catch sight of a laminated sign taped crooked to the wall by the ballroom doors. Magnolia Room, Continental Breakfast, 6:30 to 10:30.

Oh yeah, baby.

I push back from the table.

“Precio.” Levi Nyberg points his fork at me like he’s been talking a while and just noticed I checked out. “You good? You’ve got the thousand-yard stare going.”

“I’m good.” I sit back down for exactly long enough to look normal. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Nothing.”

I get up again before he can push it.

The Magnolia Room is a different planet. Quiet carpet, quiet light, quiet families eating quiet waffles. Nobody’s yelling about cheese ratios.

Through the swinging doors, I catch a glimpse of the kitchen. Behind the line, there’s a cook exclaiming dramatically about what country will take home the World Cup, while another guy argues back at him good-naturedly. Some other guy is singing off key while the prep guy yells, “No manches, vato, ya no.”

I pull my attention back to the buffet line and spot a guy behind the coffee urns, restocking a tray of pastries. He’s short, a little soft around the middle, and has cheerful rosy cheeks. This guy knows exactly where the good stuff is kept.

"Oye, primo," I say, easy, friendly, like we've known each other for years. "No tienes algo picante en la cocina?"

He looks at me for a second, probably wondering why some guy the size of a doorframe just wandered in asking for something spicy in Spanish, and then his face does this slow, apologetic wince.

"Oh, no, jefe." He shakes his head, genuinely pained on my behalf. "Tenemos nada picante."

"Nothing? Hijoles." I put a hand over my heart. "No me digas."

"Solo tenemos Tabasco."

"Tabasco." I say it the way you'd say parking ticket. "Ay, chavo. No tienes salsa o algo? Algo con más sabor?" More flavor. I lower my voice, glance back toward the ballroom, lower it further. "No me gusta la comida de los güeros, chico." Not my thing, this white-bread stuff.

That gets him. He barks out a laugh, head tipping back, and claps me on the shoulder.

"¿Tú eres de los del hockey?" You one of the hockey guys? He looks me over again, more curious now than impressed.

"Uno de esos, sí."

"Ah, órale. Pues…" He's grinning now, already glancing toward the back of the kitchen. "Deja me ver."

Awesome. He says he's going to look, but I'm pretty sure he's just going to check if they have enough to share. Fair enough. That's all I can ask for.

"Órale, primo," I reply, appreciative he'll at least go look.

He disappears toward the back, and I drift out before anyone notices I’ve wandered into a room I have no business being in, and head back to the ballroom with my hopes modestly raised.

Line 1’s deep into something by the time I sit back down, and I’ve clearly missed the beginning.

“All I’m saying,” Ted Powell says, gesturing with a piece of bacon. “Is that Micah’s plate is a structural hazard. That’s not breakfast, that’s a Jenga tower.”

“It’s called carb loading, Ted.” Micah doesn’t even look up from said tower. “Some of us don’t do things halfway.”

“You’re gonna do things sideways in about four minutes, when that whole thing tips into your lap.”

Jake’s a few seats down, quiet, doing a convincing impression of a guy who’s somewhere else entirely. His oatmeal hasn’t moved in ten minutes. I get it, man. Takes one to know one. Two days ago he stood me up at a coffee place, swore on his life it had the best matcha in DC, and never showed. Knowing what I know now about whatever’s going on with him and this PR thing, I’d bet money he’s caught up in the arrangements.

Fine by me, honestly. I ended up buying my own matcha and getting backed into by a stranger, who spilled the whole thing down my shirt, which, in hindsight, might be the best thing that’s happened to me all month.

I almost smile, just thinking about it. I catch myself and look down at my eggs instead, very seriously, like they need my full attention.

“And that’s the thing about fake dating,” Dash DiFranco is saying. “You gotta commit to the bit. Like, full method-actor stuff. My buddy did it once for a soda commercial. Ended up actually marrying the girl.”

“That tracks,” Erik Schultz says. “That’s basically how arranged marriages used to work, if you squint.”

Dash snorts. “Don’t squint at marriage, Erik, that’s how you end up alone.”

“All that hand-holding and stuff in public sounds exhausting,” Neal Sanderson says.

Bryce Chambers leans back, the scar at his mouth doing the thing that makes his smirk look extra smug. “You’ve clearly never held hands before.”

I don’t know what comes over me. Maybe it’s the hot sauce withdrawal.

“Your mom doesn’t count.”

Dead silence, the kind where you genuinely don’t know if you just landed a joke or laid a rotten egg. And then the whole table goes off. Neal makes a strangled noise. Ted nearly chokes. Micah points at me like I just invented yo mama jokes.

I am the last person on the planet to be telling yo mama jokes.

“Sounds like a cry for help,” Micah says, delighted, and now half the table’s repeating your mom doesn’t count back at each other, and Neal’s the color of the home fries, and I sit back, pleased with myself for the first time all morning.

See. I can be present. I can be locked in. I delivered a joke. Basically the picture of focus.

Ten more minutes of escalating chaos, a heated debate about hash browns versus home fries that Stone Reilly settles by eating both off two plates, and then the ballroom’s side door opens and my guy from the Magnolia Room slides in with a tray.

He’s carrying a small white ramekin on a tray tucked behind a stack of clean cups like contraband, and a bundle wrapped in a cloth napkin beside it. He catches my eye across the room. Sets it down fast, right by my arm, like he’s planting evidence.

“Salsa de la casa,” he murmurs with a wink. “Y unas tortillas. No le digas a nadie, eh?”

Our secret.

“Eres mi héroe,” I tell him, and he laughs all the way back through the door.

I unwrap the napkin. Tortillas, still warm, a little charred at the edges. The salsa’s deep red, flecked with seeds, just like Abuela’s.

I’m not about to dip a tortilla in like some rookie. I grab one, pile what’s left of my scrambled eggs onto it, fold it up like a taco, and pour the salsa over the top, generously, because I’m a grown man, a professional athlete, and I have never once in my life shown restraint around salsa. Then I eat it.

For one second, nothing happens.

Then it happens.

My eyes go first, full-on watering. Then my nose. Then a sound comes out of me that I’d call, charitably, a wheeze.

“Oh my goodness.” Micah’s already pointing, waffles forgotten. “Precio’s CRYING.”

“I’m not crying.” My voice comes out an octave too high. “It’s, there’s pepper. In my eye.”

“That’s not how peppers work, man.”

I grab my water and drink half of it, eyes streaming, and somehow I’m still smiling, because this is the best thing that’s happened to me all morning. This is, hands down, my win.

That doesn’t stop the guys from making fun of me for the rest of the day.

7

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

Cold Comfort Lane — Holy Moly & The Crackers

The first time I’d worked with Tanya, she’d been three minutes into a job when she spotted a sixty-pound pit bull locked in a slumlord’s car in the parking garage. She hadn’t hesitated. She got him out and she kept him. Named him Waffles.

The slumlord was our mark, and after Zoe had sent refund transfers to all his tenants, she slipped into his DoorDash account and rerouted his lunch order to the tune of nine hundred dollars on his own card. She sent the food to a local soup kitchen. The slumlord went downstairs after he was notified his order was completed and found no food, a parking ticket, and his dog gone.

We have lots of stories like that. In three years of working various jobs together, Tanya had built a cover identity so airtight that Zoe was still getting job offer notifications from one of the target companies. Senior Compliance Auditor, or something like that. They’d tried to recruit her on several occasions, each time the offer getting more and more lucrative. At one point, Zoe considered it until she remembered she does what she does because she’s a free spirit.

Tanya has sourced documentation for six jobs across four states. She had contacts for things I hadn’t thought to need contacts for yet. Customs officials, overnight freight, a very discreet notary in Baton Rouge who worked Sundays. She didn’t just solve the problem in front of her. She solved the next three while she was at it. There’s no one else I trust for this job more than her. I need her specifically, and that’s why Zoe and I made the trip to Lafayette, Louisiana, currently sitting in Tanya’s kitchen while she waxes poetic about her fiancé, Dale.

Waffles rounds the corner with a drool thread hanging from his chin and Dale’s dress shoe clamped in his mouth. He walks across the kitchen and disappears through the opposite door.

“He never asked for details,” Tanya says. “That’s the thing about Dale. He looked me in the eye, said he loves me, and said he needs me to stop doing whatever it is I do. He didn’t ask what. He just wanted me to stop so he could take care of me.”

We hear a thud in the next room followed by another thud. Waffles definitely made a toy out of Dale’s shoe.

“He cried when we announced our engagement,” Tanya continues, not missing a beat. “At his grandmother’s house. In front of everyone. His grandmother cried, his aunts pulled out their phones. Someone wrote ‘new chapter’ as a Facebook caption.” She picks up her mug.

“I saw it,” Zoe says. “It came up in my suggested posts.”

Tanya closes her eyes.

Waffles comes back. He no longer has the shoe. He has Zoe’s tote bag. Dragging it. It makes a sound across the tile and disappears into the hallway.

“No, no, Waffles,” Tanya says. Into the air, not at him specifically.

“That’s my… ” Zoe starts.

“He’s just a baby,” Tanya says.

Zoe looks at me. I shrug.

“He loves me,” Tanya says. Quieter now. “That’s the whole problem. He loves me and he made me promise in front of God and seventeen witnesses, and I don’t…” She stops. Sets her mug down. “I don’t want to break that.”

Waffles comes back. He no longer has the bag. He has a bathroom towel. He drops it at Tanya’s feet like a peace offering, sits on it, and looks up at her.

“Who brought Mama a present? Who did that? You did. Yes, you did.”

His little knob of a tail wiggles back and forth. He puts his chin on her knee.

She coos and scratches behind his ear.

I watch this happen and think, not for the first time, that I would like a dog.

Practically, it makes no sense. A dog needs a home base, a routine, someone who is where they said they’d be. I am none of those things. But if I were, if I had a house (a real one, with a yard, and maybe a husband), I think I’d get a husky. Or a black lab. Or a great dane. Something large and unserious. Something that would eat the couch and I wouldn’t even be mad about it.

I’d learn to make sourdough from scratch and actually understand what that meant, the feeding of the starter every day. Going to bed at ten o’clock. Joining the PTA.

That one actually makes me chuckle. Me! At a PTA meeting. Volunteering for the bake sale. Wearing a name tag that says Hello, my name is Erica.

Yeah right.

But then I think, maybe it actually would be nice. Genuinely. The bake sale and everything. It would be a refreshing way to live. And I’m so tired. Just this one last job. After this one I could figure out the rest.

And then, unbidden, I think of Jeremiah.

I don’t mean to. He just turns up in the margins. I find myself wondering, for no productive reason whatsoever, what kind of dog he’d have. Probably a golden retriever. Something sunny and emotionally available. Or one of those crusty white dogs. Or a chihuahua.

I try to imagine finding someone like him. Not him, of course. Someone in the same general vicinity of him. Easy in his own skin, shows up when he says he will, helps old ladies at airports. In some other version of my life, maybe. A version where I go to hockey family barbecues and stand around with a paper plate making conversation with people who have normal jobs and a 401K.

What would they think of me? Would I even fit in with the whole trad wife set? Someone would eventually point at me and say, “Who let in the riff-raff?”

“Erica.”

I blink.

Zoe is watching me with an expression I know very well.

“What?” I say.

“Your cheeks are pink.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“The air conditioner is on full blast.” Her eyes narrow. “You’re thinking about that guy, aren’t you?”

Tanya perks up. “What guy?”

“There is no guy,” I say.

“He’s a hockey player,” Zoe says, and unlocks her phone, undoubtedly to give Tanya the hockey thirst trap low-down.

“I’m listening.” Tanya leans in, resting her chin on her hands.

“He’s just a mark,” I say, before Zoe can take Tanya down the hot-guys-on-the-internet rabbit hole.

“Dale was a mark,” Tanya supplies, matter-of-factly.

“That’s completely different.”

“Well, he wasn’t exactly a mark,” she allows. “Mark-adjacent.

Meaning he was an innocent bystander and a means to an end. We’d done a job on a dirty conglomerate about two years back. Dale had been a mid-level accountant there. The kind of cubicle-sitting, pencil pusher who’d bring a PB&J for lunch and remembered everyone’s birthday. Tanya had needed his keycard and a copy of an internal audit paper file he had access to. That company was so shady, they had actual physical ledgers the IRS couldn’t trace. That’s why Zoe couldn’t get in the digital route. Tanya made a point to run into Dale in the elevator, manufactured a reason to talk, and after she’d had everything she needed and was about to disappear, he mustered up the nerve to ask her out.

He’d never had any idea what the company he worked for was actually doing. That was the thing about Dale. Just a man with a decent heart who’d taken a steady job, clocked in and out every day, and minded his own business. The Dales of the world are never the mark. Just like that hockey player isn’t the mark. That’s a line we don’t cross.

We only ever target corrupt organizations. Companies that prey on people, predatory operations, men with too much power and not enough consequences. And we’re efficient. Small sums that Zoe can manipulate with a simple alt/click/shift, or moving over a decimal point. She’s good at burying those kinds of things. When we did that job, we made sure none of it could be traced back to Dale. Then, at Tanya’s request, Zoe performed her techy magic on a Linkedin job listing and they made Dale an offer he couldn’t refuse. Now he works for a legit firm with a corner office.

“He’s not like Dale,” I say, even though Jeremiah is also mark-adjacent.

“Okay,” Tanya says, in a voice that means she’s willing to drop it.

Zoe, to her credit, lets it go.

“So, this DC thing. What would I need to do?” Tanya asks.

“The usual,” I say. “Props, gear, costumes. Logistics. Nothing out of your wheelhouse.”

She absorbs this. The math line appears between her brows. “This is about something, isn’t it?” she observes.

“It’s always about something.”

“No.” She looks at me. “I mean it’s a real something. Whatever this is, it’s big.”

I let the pause sit. Then I say, “Yeah. It’s a big whale of a real something.”

She’s quiet. Waffles, apparently bored of sitting, heaves himself up and walks to the counter. He puts both enormous paws on the edge of it, stretching his neck. He gets his whole face in the butter dish.

Tanya watches him. “Oh, you found the butter. You found it. Yes, you did, my smart boy.”

Waffles’ snout is covered in butter. His big, slobbery tongue licks it clean.

Tanya looks back at me. “I made a promise,” she says. “In front of Dale’s grandmother.”

“I know.”

“Dale would be…” She stops. “What if it goes south?”

“Has it ever gone south with me?”

She cocks her head and gives me a hard stare. “Two words. Bergen County.”

We do not discuss Bergen County. I choose to pretend Bergen County never happened.

I deflect, my eye catching the stack of bridal magazines on the sideboard. “You don’t have a wedding date.”

She goes very still.

“Engaged eight months,” Zoe says, from my left.

“Eight months,” I say. “But no date. Because a wedding costs money you don’t have yet.”

Tanya says nothing. This is itself a confirmation.

“Do this job,” I say. “And you can book a castle. An actual castle. With a drawbridge if Dale wants one. And a honeymoon that isn’t a long weekend within driving distance of Lafayette. Maybe even Scotland.”

I think I’ve got her there, because she’s obsessed with Outlander and Dale just happens to have Scottish ancestry.

“Oooh, a destination wedding!” Zoe turns her phone around without being asked. She’s already pulled up a venue page with stone archways, chandeliers, vaulted cellars, a rose garden, and a cobbled courtyard with fairy lights. It looks like a fairy tale.

“You could book that castle,” I say. “And still have enough left for a year-long honeymoon. Twice around the world if you want to be dramatic about it.”

Tanya looks at the screen. A long look. She’s practically drooling.

“Dale would ask where the money came from,” she says, half to herself.

“You’ll figure that out when you get back.”

“But what should I say when he asks me why I need to go to DC?”

“Girl’s trip,” Zoe says. “Someone turns twenty-five on the Fourth of July.” She glances at me pointedly. “Where better to celebrate an Independence Day birthday than in the nation’s capital?”

Tanya’s whole face lights up. “That’s right. It’s your birthday!”

“Yep. It’s my birthday,” I say. “You won’t even have to lie.”

“Dale would insist I go.”

“Because he’s a sweet, nice guy,” Zoe says. “He’ll probably tell you to buy her a cake.”

“He’d send a cookie bouquet,” Tanya confirms.

“I like peanut butter cookies,” I say.

Waffles chooses this moment to get up off the floor to stretch into a downward dog position. A long fart escapes his backside.

“Biiiig stretch,” Tanya praises. “Who’s the goodest boy? Who’s the goodest boy in Louisiana?”

Zoe looks ready to bolt because the smell is atrocious.

Waffles walks back to Tanya’s chair and leans his entire body weight against her leg. She looks down at him. Her face goes soft.

“He’s very gentle,” she says, as a point of record. Then her eyes spark like she just got a brilliant idea. “Hey… can Waffles come?”

“No,” Zoe and I say, at the same time.

Tanya nods once and shrugs sheepishly. “Had to ask.”

We spend the evening with Tanya and Dale once he gets home from work. It’s a nice, relaxing time, and so domestic which gives me a small ache in my chest. We play games and reminisce all night, and at dawn, we say our goodbyes, and Zoe and I are in Manhattan by mid-morning.

Zoe sleeps the entire way but I can’t sleep on planes, so by the time we’re walking the Upper East Side I have reworked the Four Seasons layout twice in my head and need coffee that isn’t from an airport terminal.

My phone buzzes. It’s Ivy. Something about Senator Halloway at last night’s fundraiser. She’s working something with that connection but doesn’t say what.

She’s been laying the groundwork and updating me since our Coffee Loft meeting three days ago. She was so into it before I even got about halfway through the pitch. She just held up one hand and said, “I’m in.”

Just like that.

And I knew right away we’d be fast friends. She’s the kind woman who’s sick and tired of being interrupted mid-sentence by men who then repeat what she’d just said and take all the credit for her brilliance. Who had smiled through a hundred dinners where some chief of staff mansplained the room she’d already worked three times. Who has decided, somewhere along the way, that if these men are going to underestimate her, she’s at least going to make it expensive for them.

That was enough for me.

The “face,” or inside connection, is a critical piece of a job like this. The person who knows which congressman is cheating on his wife, which trustee owes a favor to whom, and which donor will open any door you need if you just let him think it was his idea.

Six years ago, Dennis Hobbs, my dad’s inside guy, turned out to be a brown-nosing social climber. He was a nobody. Dad should have seen the signs. When the job went sideways, he handed investigators everything they needed to put my father in prison and walked away clean.

Ivy has ten times as much access as Hobbs ever did, and she has no reason to give us up to anyone. She has more to gain from exposing what’s been buried than she’d ever get from protecting the people who buried it.

I put the phone away.

“She texted again?” Zoe asks. “What did she say?”

“She’s working a room full of politicians. She’ll tell us more when she’s ready.”

Zoe chews on this for half a block, then says, “What’s Ivy’s angle?”

“She doesn’t have one.”

Zoe snorts. “Everybody has an angle.”

“I think she’s just ready to knock some guys down a peg or two.”

“Huh.” She walks. Thinks. “I got more of a most-popular-cheerleader-in-school vibe from her.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she was.”

What I do know about Ivy is that she walks into rooms full of very important people and leaves with things they didn’t realize they’d handed over. Favors, introductions, information. She collects these things like a kid collects Pokemon cards and does nothing until the moment that information comes in handy. That’s someone you want on your team.

“Do you think she’s got a lot of dirt on people?” Zoe wonders.

“Most definitely.”

A small dog in yellow rain boots and a matching slicker is being walked past us by a woman in a jogging suit. It’s not raining.

“I mean like, embarrassing things.” She goes on. “Like what if the most powerful men in DC play D&D in someone’s basement every Thursday? What if…”

Zoe stops, just now registering the dog. “Why is that dog in a raincoat and booties?” She watches it go. Turns back. “A whole secret D&D campaign. Imagine judges and congressmen in capes rolling dice and deciding whether their elf character trusts the wizard.”

“I’m pretty sure Ivy has worse dirt on these guys than that.”

She skips forward to pull a tag off a flier advertising guitar lessons, then shoves it in her tote bag. “I just hope she’s not some kind of DC sleeper agent and we all end up in federal prison.” A beat. “Do you think federal prison has good food?”

I catch up to her and give her the side-eye.

“I’m just saying.” She puts her hands in her pockets. “She’s in. I’m on board.”

I glance at the building numbers. “We’re almost there.”

Ginger’s gallery sits on a cross street off Fifth, three blocks from the Met. The building is narrow limestone with floor-to-ceiling windows and a single brass handle on a door with no buzzer, no posted hours. It’s very chic.

Zoe stops and looks up at the façade. She tips her head back and lets out a low whistle.

“After you,” I say, and pull the door open.

Ginger comes from the back when the door chimes and sighs heavily when she sees us.

“What do you two want?”

Classic Ginger. Straight to the point and unapologetic about it. We go way back, so I don’t take her greeting as an affront.

“Twenty minutes,” I say.

“It always starts with twenty minutes.” She waves a hand. “Come sit. I’ll put the kettle on.”

The gallery is totally and completely Ginger. That’s the only way I know how to put it. Clean white walls meet gold accents, natural light pouring through the high windows. Her back office is open and very beige, like a Pottery Barn showroom. She’s built something real here.

We sit in a comfortable corner of her office and give her the run-down. She listens without interrupting. Sets tea down in front of both of us. When I finish, she steeples her hands and looks at the table for a moment.

“I have a Peruvian textile artist coming in,” she says. “Her first New York show. I’ve been building toward it for six months. I have fourteen things happening at once right now. A sculptor in Red Hook who won’t return my calls, a painter from Berlin who returned all of them and sends voice memos at two in the morning, and a twenty-three-year-old from Bushwick who thinks he’s the next Andy Warhol.”

“See? You need a break,” I say. “We’ll be done before the end of July and then you can come back and deal with your temperamental artists.”

“There are relationships in this room I’ve spent years on,” she says. “Every time I step outside this gallery for a job there’s risk to all of that.” She looks at me. “I can’t.”

“What would it take?” I say.

“Erica,” she says pragmatically. “I love you. I’d vouch for you anywhere. But I can’t get involved right now.”

The room is quiet. I look at Zoe. Zoe looks at me.

“I understand,” I say, and I mean it. It came from a real place and it’s a real no and I’m not going to make her feel bad about a real no. “Good luck with the show. The textile artist. What’s her name?”

Ginger blinks, caught off guard. “Carmen Villanueva.”

“After the Sao Paulo collection. She’s going to be huge.”

“She is,” Ginger says. And something drops, just slightly, in her expression. “She’s extraordinary.”

“Then I hope the show is everything,” I say.

We stand. Zoe says her goodbyes too, genuinely, because Zoe genuinely likes Ginger. Everybody does. Ginger hugs us both and tells us to be careful, and we mean it when we say we will, and then we’re heading for the door.

I reach into my bag, pulling out a coffee receipt from this morning. I write a number with a lot of zeros on it and set it on the counter without breaking stride. Then I count in my head.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four…

“Wait.”

I stop, letting the tiniest smirk crack on the corner of my lips. Then I put it away and turn around.

Ginger stands by the counter, holding the receipt aloft between two fingers. She raises one brow and cocks her head and says, “You could have led with this.”

Zoe sleeps on the plane back to DC, then sleeps in the Uber, then nearly sleeps standing up on the sidewalk while I find my keys. We walk the last half block. Zoe’s hanging on my arm, dead weight, one stumble from faceplanting.

Then a cluster of men spill out of a restaurant ahead of us, loud and loose, and Zoe lifts her head from my shoulder like an animal that’s caught a scent.

She blinks. Sees them.

“Ooooooh,” she says, with genuine scientific interest. “Man candy.”

I keep walking.

“No, wait!” She grabs my arm. “Look at them. Just. Look.” Her tongue is practically hanging down to her knees. “That one in the gray hoodie. He can check me into the boards. That’s my Roman Empire right there.”

“Zoe.”

“And the jaw on that one. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Just existing there being built like that, completely unprovoked.”

“We need to go. My bed is calling.”

“I feel like I’m reading a hockey romance but it’s real life and I’m right here and I didn’t even have to open an app.”

“I have never, not once, seen you read a book.”

“I read.”

“Romance books?”

“I read the text overlay on reels. You know when it says, ‘POV she’s fake dating the hockey player and he loses his mind when he sees her wearing another man’s jersey.’ That sort of thing.”

“Why would she be wearing another man’s jersey?”

“Not another-man’s-jersey exactly, a jersey with another player’s name on the back. Like one you can buy in the gift shop.”

I blink at her. “So she’s fake dating a guy.”

She nods enthusiastically. “And he gets jealous.”

I stare at her for several seconds then burst out laughing. “That would never happen in real life.”

She waves me off like I’m some annoying housefly, and scans the rest of the group for more eye candy, I guess. Then she goes very still.

“Erica.”

Something in her voice makes me look.

“That’s him,” she says.

I don’t ask who. I already know who.

“Go,” she says. “Right now. Just walk past him. Drop something. Sustain eye contact. Use your body language.”

“No.”

“Erica. He is right there. Go do your thang. Strut by like you’re Jessica freaking Rabbit.”

I’m tired and covered in travel grime. I probably look like a raccoon.

“No.”

“The gala, Erica.”

“I’m aware of the gala.”

“We discussed this.”

“I know.”

“It’s not like it’ll be a hardship. Just look at the man.”

“I have eyes.”

“Okay so,” Zoe says, and I can hear her recalibrating. “First of all, the shoulders. Are you seeing the shoulders?”

I’m seeing the shoulders. I’ve been seeing the shoulders in my head since Cinco de Mayo.

“And the way he’s just there looking like that with his hair being all… hairy.”

He does have good hair. Dark, a little disheveled. I want to run my fingers through it and… no. No, I’m not going there.

“And he’s tall,” she goes on. “Like, genuinely tall. Not ‘tall for this room’ tall. Tall tall. You’d have to stand on your tippy toes to kiss him.”

Tippy toes. I look at him for one involuntary second. One. The man is absurdly, unfairly, almost offensively good-looking. Like someone put in a very specific request and the universe just said, “Request approved.”

I look away. Tippy toes. Fine. Whatever. It means nothing.

“Nobody said anything about kissing.”

“I’m just describing what’s in front of us.”

“If you like him so much,” I say. “You ask him out.”

She looks at me. Looks at him. Back at me.

“I would,” she says in all seriousness. “But I’ll be the girl in the van.”

I start walking. “Come on, I’m tired. And I still need to find a smithy.”

“I know.” She falls into step beside me. “But I need you to get us into that gala.”

“I’ll flirt with the jock,” I say.

Zoe opens her mouth.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll flirt with the jock tomorrow.”

She decides to take the win. We get to the loft but the first lock is already open.

I know with one hundred percent certainty that I engaged all the locks and alarms before our recruitment trip. I check the second lock. The third.

All disengaged.

I push the door open, slowly. Zoe steps in behind me already holding a mop she must have left by the front door because I certainly have never mopped in here.

The loft is exactly as we left it: folding table in the center, Zoe’s equipment against the left wall. The security panel blinks its steady green. Nothing moved. Nothing missing.

There is, however, a girl sitting on a crate eating a Cinnabon.

She is fully, comprehensively orange.

Deep, saturated face paint… orange, with white markings in careful lines across her forehead and the bridge of her nose. From a headpiece rise two long white-and-blue fleshy head-tails draped over her shoulders, where a dark blue hooded cloak rests. The rest of the costume is fitted to her body, clearly made by hand with a lot of love and care. There are two lightsabers on the crate beside her.

She looks up.

Zoe has the mop raised. I put my hand on it and gently push it down.

“Who are you?” I say. “And how did you get in here?”

“I’m Suri. Sal sent me,” she says. She looks at the mop. “Why are you holding a mop?”

“It was close by,” Zoe says.

“And…” I gesture at all of it. The face paint. The leather. The bicep cuffs. The fingerless gauntlets. “What’s with the costume?”

“I was at a convention,” she says.

“What kind of convention?”

“Science fiction.” She says this like the answer is obvious, because to her it is.

Zoe makes a noise. “She’s Ahsoka Tano,” she says.

I give her a hard side stare which she takes as meaning I need further explanation because she clarifies, “Star Wars. The Clone Wars.”

“Yes, I’ve seen Star Wars, thank you.” Then back to the cosplayer, “So… you came here straight from a science fiction convention.”

“A really good one,” she says. “I would have changed after but why cut the fun short?”

Zoe lowers the mop.

“Are you twelve?” she says.

“Nineteen.” Suri looks at the security panel. “That’s a Sentry 9200 you’ve got there,” she says. “Twelve-point algorithm, but there’s a calibration lag in the fingerprint reader between four and six seconds if you know the firmware version. Which I do.” She takes a bite of Cinnabon. “You should really update it.” She chews. “Can I get a napkin? They never give you enough napkins.”

Zoe and I look at each other.

I find a paper towel. Hand it to her.

“Thank you.” She wipes her fingers. Sets it down. “Your primary lock is a Medeco triple-cylinder M3. Good choice. Most people don’t bother with the triple.” She glances at the locks, still sitting open. “Now, what I’m sure you really want to know is what they use on the display cases at the B-Mah.” She looks at me to see if that lands, and it does. The Bellenden Museum of American History, or to shorten it, the BMAH, is the current home of an important piece my family is particularly interested in. But this girl doesn’t have the full picture. Yet.

“They run a Digilock-7. Biometric override,” she plows on as if my silence is encouragement enough. “There’s also a secondary electromagnetic seal on the cases themselves that trips if the case opens faster than point-six seconds. So you need the override codes and you need the timing right. And before you ask…” She licks her orange lips. “I have an idea for that but I’m no hacker.”

The room is very quiet.

She wipes her fingers on the napkin again. “I understand you need me for something more hands-on. Something in the vicinity of sapphires and diamonds. Edwardian, hand-wrought platinum settings. The simulant has to match the oxidation pattern in the prongs or any appraiser with UV catches it in thirty seconds.” Another bite. “Most forgers rush the aging. I don’t rush the aging.” She pauses to chew. “I built one three years ago for a jewelry insurance case. It passed appraisal for eleven months. They only caught it because the owner had a personal vendetta against the insurance company and hired a second appraiser out of spite.” She considers this. “The first one was fine.”

Zoe says, mostly to herself, “She’s not twelve.”

I look at Suri. She looks at me. She has Cinnabon icing at the corner of her mouth.

“One condition,” she says. “And this is non-negotiable.”

“Name it.”

"I need to be in San Diego by July 23." She meets my eyes. “The job has to be done before then.”

I blink at her.

“San Diego Comic Con?” She gives me a look like I should know these things.

Zoe smacks me with the broom handle. “Duh, Erica. San Diego Comic Con.”

Right. How could I forget? I look at the security panel she bypassed.

“Deal,” I say.

Zoe stares at Suri for a long moment, taking in the whole Ahsoka cosplay and says, “Do you have other clothes?”

8

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

National Treasure — Barns Courtney

Somebody has weaponized Taco Bell against me, and honestly? Respect.

Admittedly, my whole brain has been elsewhere all morning. Specifically, orbiting a woman I have mentally filed under Sticky Fingers. She continues to be such an enigma to me ever since she almost stole my watch. And instead of moving on with my life like a reasonable adult, I have apparently spent the ensuing weeks thinking about those bright, brown eyes. The faint constellation of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her left eyebrow with the scar through it, and how she probably has an excellent unrepeatable story for how she got it.

And this is how I fall victim to the latest locker room prank.

I’m distracted by thoughts of Sticky Fingers. I shove my foot into my skate too forcefully, my skate goes squelch, and I freeze.

I pull my foot back out. Slow. Diagnostic. My sock is a brown-red color, like a crime scene.

I peel the skate over and a little paper packet drops out, squashed flat, red letters still perfectly readable: Diablo Sauce. Then another. Then, when I actually tip the whole boot upside down over the bench, an honest-to-goodness avalanche. Packet after packet after packet, a full, glorious cascade of Taco Bell hot sauce packets thumping down like the world’s worst piñata, until there’s a pile of about forty packets on the bench.

I check. Every last one is Diablo. Every last one has the same exact quote under the logo in that cheerful sauce-packet font.

ZESTY AND DANGEROUS

Whoever did this didn’t grab a handful. They curated. Somebody, somewhere, gathered a truly heroic number of hot sauce packets for this, who visited several Taco Bell locations, and stood at a condiment rack sorting sauce packets by flavor like they were building a museum exhibit. The exhibit is absolutely called Jeremiah Precio’s Feet.

I check the other skate. Loaded. I check my gloves out of pure morbid curiosity and, yep. Stuffed to the fingertips. My stall smells like a burrito cart.

Someone had a plan. Someone had a hit list. Someone with way too much free time thought about me, specifically, and decided, this man needs to suffer.

Bryce Chambers, halfway across the room, taps a couple guys on the shoulder as he cuts toward his own stall and says, “Who brought tacos to practice?”

I am not equipped to answer him right now. I am peeling off my sock, which is soaked through.

This is fine. This is a completely normal Wednesday. I am a professional athlete.

A couple of guys tease that it’s his breath. My toes are too covered in hot sauce to say otherwise. He shrugs, drops into his stall, laces up, and eventually disappears down the tunnel.

I spend the next few minutes finding a new sock, wiping my hands with a towel, and cleaning up the inside of my skate of hot sauce residue.

Finally, I stand, holding a fistful of Diablo packets like it's evidence from a crime scene. "Okay, who did this?"

Nobody even pretends to look innocent. The room just laughs. Levi folds clean over his own knees, Neal’s wheezing into his gloves, and Jason is laughing so hard behind his half-on mask that it comes out as this strange tinny echo, like the cage itself is in on the joke. Whatever this is, everybody must have known it was coming. I’ll bet they’ve been holding it in all morning just to watch my face when it landed.

Dante Leinecker is laughing hardest of anyone in the room, which, in my professional opinion, makes him suspect number one.

“It was you.”

“Wasn’t me.” He says it instantly, still cackling, both hands up like he’s got nothing to hide, which is exactly the move of a man who has everything to hide. “I wish it was, honestly.”

“You don’t laugh like an innocent man.”

“I’m laughing like it’s a funny prank, Precio.” He wipes an actual tear from one eye, and plucks one sauce packet out of my hand. “Or should I call you Zesty?” he adds, with real ceremony.

“You may not.”

“Nobody agrees to a nickname,” Levi says, still laughing. “It just happens to you. Like zits. You’re Zesty now, my friend."

I don’t fully buy Dante’s denial, but I don’t fully doubt it either, because two practices into this roster, I’ve already learned this team doesn’t really do amateur pranks. They run campaigns. Two days before I even set foot on this ice, somebody sewed Tyson Lane’s jersey shut. Small, neat stitches at both armholes and the head hole, so that when Tyson went to put it on before our first practice together, he made it exactly as far as his own forehead before realizing he was now a prisoner inside his own sweater. He had to cut himself free with scissors, one stitch at a time. He blamed Taz Houlihan on the spot (East’s captain, sworn tournament rival) with no evidence whatsoever, purely on principle.

The next day it escalated. Somebody flipped his practice jersey inside out and covered every square inch of it in fifty rocket-shaped stickers, each one printed with an extreme close-up of Houlihan’s face. Tyson had to skate the entire session with them still stuck on.

Nobody has ever confessed to either one. So roughly a hundred Diablo packets and a ruined sock is, comparatively, a slow news day. I know I’m not getting an answer today. Nobody in this locker room has an honest bone left in their body. I find this weirdly beautiful. In a deeply annoying way.

I don’t have a comeback for Levi’s comment, mostly because there isn’t one, and shove the ruined sock wrapped in a towel to the bottom of my bag to deal with later.

Colt finally peels his eyes off the ceiling long enough to offer, “In their defense, it’s a genuinely impressive haul. Somebody really believed in this.”

“I suppose I should be impressed?”

He shrugs, being completely unhelpful.

Dash strolls by mid-lace, inhales deeply like he’s walking past an actual taqueria, and announces to no one, “Somebody should call Taco Bell and get you a brand deal.”

Colt guffaws. “Yo quiero Taco Bell.”

Now I’m weirdly craving nacho fries.

By the time I hit the ice, three separate guys have already called me Zesty. Once in passing, like it’s the funniest thing anyone’s ever said. Once by a guy I am fairly sure I have not been formally introduced to. I have officially lost control of the narrative, and it’s not even noon.

“Precio! Nyberg! Twiles! Line one!” Coach Badaszek doesn’t look up from his clipboard. “And somebody figure out why it smells like a food court in my rink.”

Honestly, I don’t know how the smell still lingers. It must have gotten on my jersey. I skate my drill. I take my reps. My body runs the breakout perfectly on autopilot. Up the boards, I find Twiles cutting through the middle, and hit him in stride. My body does all of it correctly, muscle memory running the whole operation, while my brain, unsupervised, wanders off entirely.

It wanders, predictably, to her.

And the part that’s starting to feel less like coincidence and more like the universe running some kind of bit at my expense… She keeps showing up.

Monday morning, I was on my jog along the river when there was a whole cluster of people in the park doing slow-motion tai chi in the grass. And there she was, dead center, moving through some pose with her eyes closed like she owned all the serenity in the world. I was running past sweating and gasping like an idiot, and she opened one eye at exactly the right moment and waved. Like running into me at six in the morning during meditation was just a regular occurrence for her.

I almost ran into a trash can.

Then Tuesday, while I was at the corner store for my pregame gum (I chew the same brand, every game, since college, a superstition I will defend to my grave), and I was standing at the display rack with a fistful of gum packs, and she was walking out the door, breezing past with a bag of something and a coffee, tossing me a nod, like we were old neighbors. Like this is just where she lives now. My whole orbit.

Today is Wednesday. I genuinely cannot wait to see where she turns up.

She has to live near the Four Seasons. There’s no other explanation. It’s the only thing that actually makes geographic sense. Except it doesn’t, not really, because the tai chi park is nowhere near the corner store, and the corner store is nowhere near the Coffee Loft, and if you drew a map of everywhere I’ve randomly run into this woman in the last few days it would look less like a neighborhood and more like a conspiracy board with too much red string.

“Precio!” Badaszek’s whistle cracks like a rifle. “This is a drill, not a Jet 2 Holiday. Focus.”

“Yes, Coach.”

Jake skates past, smirking. “Now who has the porcelain doll ghost face?”

“I do not!”

“Whatever you say, Zesty.”

Ugh!

We run special teams for the back half. I feed Stone a puck down low, he buries it top corner, throws his arms up like he just discovered hockey personally, and somewhere in the split second before the whistle blows again I’m thinking about an eyebrow with a scar through it and a laugh that haunts my daydreams. Maybe she’s the ghost.

Stone skates up beside me during the water break, entirely too observant for a man who claims he doesn’t gossip. “Whoever she is, she’s got you skating like you left the stove on.”

“There’s no she.”

“Sure.” He says, then adds, “Zesty.”

Oh que la chihuahua.

After practice, I shower and swing by my hotel room for a stack of postcards I need to mail before the day gets away from me. I’ve got cards for my dad in Mexico City, a handful of cousins, and a few more for family out in LA. It’s a genuinely embarrassing quantity of cardstock for one guy to be hauling through a city he’s been in for less than a week.

I’m one block from the post office, stack tucked under my arm, when Chase Sullivan falls into step beside me like he’s been waiting on the corner specifically for this. Sullivan plays for the East Stripes for this tournament, but we played together on Team USA in February, winning Olympic Gold together. But during this tournament, he’s the enemy. Not that any of that matters off the ice.

“The hotel does that, you know. Concierge mails stuff. Full service.”

“I know.”

“So why are you personally hauling what looks like forty pounds of postcards to an actual post office?”

“Because I want the good stamps.”

He blinks at me, entirely too delighted. “The good stamps.”

“They released a whole series for the two-fiftieth. There’s a Declaration of Independence sheet which has feather quills spelling out 1776, like the Founding Fathers used.” I hear how much enthusiasm is in my own voice and choose not to be embarrassed about it. “You don’t get that from a concierge. Concierge gives you a boring flag stamp.”

Sullivan studies me for a long beat and grins, probably judging me. Then he claps me on the back, hard, once, right there on the sidewalk outside the post office doors. He’s already backing away toward wherever he’s actually supposed to be, grinning ear to ear, "Go get your quills… Zesty."

“How did you…?” Then I call out as he struts away, “That nickname won’t stick.”

“Already has,” he says without looking back.

He’s simultaneously right and extremely annoying about it. Great. Now the East team got wind of my new nickname.

Inside the post office, the line is short and the air conditioning is blessedly aggressive. I get the Declaration sheet, plus a few from the Figures of the American Revolution pane, because there’s a Benjamin Franklin stamp that looks like he’s mid-eye-roll and I genuinely cannot not get it, and I’m licking the last stamp when Sticky Fingers steps up to the self-serve counter beside mine, apparently finishing up business of her own at the exact same moment.

“Small world,” I say.

“Smaller than you’d think.” She doesn’t even look up, sliding her envelope into the slot. “Or are you stalking me?”

“I’m not stalking you.” It comes out faster than I mean it to, and more defensive. “I had postcards to mail. I didn’t even know you’d be in here.”

“Relax.” She’s grinning now, fully, watching me flounder with real appreciation. “I’m kidding.”

“Oh.” Right. Obviously. “I knew that.”

“You did not. You went full courtroom on me for a second there.” She’s delighted about it.

I decide not to dignify that with a defense, mostly because I don’t have one.

We walk out at the same time, headed, as it turns out, in the exact same direction, and there’s a solid five seconds where neither of us says anything, just matching pace down the sidewalk like two people assigned to the same group project who haven’t figured out who’s supposed to talk first.

“So this is going to be awkward,” she says finally.

“A little.”

“I should warn you, I’m genuinely terrible at small talk. Weather. Traffic. How about that heat, huh. I’ve got nothing.”

“I detest small talk. On principle.”

“Good. We’re aligned.” She says it like we just closed a business deal, and something about the flat, official delivery makes me laugh before I mean to.

A guy jogs past us in a full Uncle Sam costume, sweating clean through the beard, handing out flyers for something.

“That’s either performance art,” she says, watching him go. "Or he lost a bet."

“I’m going with the bet.”

“Same. Nobody wakes up and chooses that costume voluntarily. Not in July. Not for free.”

“For money, though?”

“For enough money, sure. Everyone’s got a number.” She says it with total conviction, like she’s given this more thought than the average person should. “What’s yours?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Everyone has one. You just haven’t found it yet.” She glances sideways, assessing me like she’s actually running calculations. “You seem like a guy who’d cave for something dumb. A really good sandwich, maybe.”

“I would not cave for a sandwich.”

“You absolutely would. Somebody hands you a truly excellent sandwich, says ‘do a cartwheel,’ and you're already halfway into it before your brain catches up.”

“I… well I suppose it depends on the sandwich.”

She just grins and keeps walking, already onto the next thing. A guy power-walking past in a full suit, sweat-soaked, phone clenched. She has opinions about his tie. I have opinions about the fact that she has opinions about a stranger’s tie. Neither of us runs out of things to say, and somewhere in there, this stops feeling like two strangers making conversation and starts just feeling like we’ve known each other for years.

A block later she stops without announcing it. Just plants her feet in front of a narrow storefront with crates of vinyl stacked in the window, and a cat asleep on top of the crates like it owns the whole operation. I stop because she stopped. That’s apparently just how this works now.

“You a record person?” I ask.

“I’m a nosy person. Records happen to be involved.” She taps the glass near a sleeve with a lurid orange cover. A barbershop quartet that peaked a decade ago. “I dated a guy who owned four hundred records and zero furniture. Slept on a mattress on the floor surrounded by milk crates like some kind of vinyl monk.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s out there somewhere. Presumably still alphabetizing.” She says it completely deadpan, and starts walking again before I can ask anything else.

We argue for an entire block over whether owning a turntable in this decade is a personality or an affectation. She’s firmly in the personality camp. I point out it requires a certain aesthetic to make oneself appear sophisticated, which feels like a level of commitment most people aren’t built for. She says commitment’s overrated, and she just smiles like I’ve somehow proven her point for her.

There’s a guy up ahead playing electric guitar through an amp the size of a lunchbox, absolutely wailing on a solo. Eyes closed, one foot up on his own guitar case, sweat rolling down like he’s headlining a stadium instead of a strip of sidewalk between a bank and a Chipotle.

“He’s really going for it,” I say.

“He’s really loud is what he’s doing.” She stops to watch him hit a note that seems to cause him genuine physical pain. “There’s a difference between talent and volume. He’s picked a side.”

“He’s got confidence, though.”

“Confidence isn’t the same as good. Half the worst people I’ve ever met had incredible confidence.” She drops a twenty in his case anyway.

I have never in my life met anyone like this.

He winds into a big finish, misses the landing by a full half-step, and takes a bow like he nailed it.

“See?” she says. “Confidence.” She starts walking again, easy as anything, not even glancing over. “Keep up, Zesty.”

She tops it off with a wink, like the word’s just part of her vocabulary now.

I almost miss it. It takes a few steps before it lands, before I register the word she just used like it’s something we’ve always called each other.

Zesty.

That nickname is maybe two hours old. And somehow it’s already made it out of the rink, out of the hotel, clear across the city and into the mouth of a woman I’ve known for four days.

DC is not that small of a town. It really isn’t.

“How do you know that?”

She blinks, like she genuinely didn’t notice what she’d said. “Know what?”

“Zesty. You just called me Zesty.”

“Did I?” She actually looks surprised at herself. It’s maybe the first fully unguarded thing I’ve seen her do all week.

"You just said ‘Zesty.’ Right at the end there. Like punctuation."

“Huh. Weird.” She doesn’t even slow down, already onto something else like nothing happened.

“No, you called me Zesty on purpose. Just tacked it onto a sentence like a verbal tic.”

“Oh. That. I have a very specific superpower.” She says it completely straight-faced. “Mind reading. Extremely limited range. I mostly just pick up embarrassing team nicknames.”

“Now you’re just mocking me.”

“Telepathy. Very rare gift. I don’t like to talk about it.” She’s fighting a smile and losing badly, and it takes about four more seconds before she cracks entirely. “Fine. I heard your friend say it to you outside the post office. He called you that right before you walked in.”

“Oh brother!”

“I liked the sound of it. Great word. Very versatile.“

“It’s a nickname. As of about three hours ago.”

“Oh? For what?”

So I tell her. The whole thing. The skate, the squelch, the avalanche of Diablo packets. Every single one printed with the same quote like somebody hunted through an entire shipment for a matching set. I tell her the nickname stuck before I even got my sock off, and that I still don’t actually know half these guys beyond a jersey number and a locker assignment. This whole roster only got put together for the Stars and Stripes Tournament, and apparently the fastest way a hockey team builds trust is by ruining each other’s gear. I tell her about Tyson’s jersey and the chirping between players.

“So it’s not just you.”

“It is very much not just me. And now I’m stuck with this nickname.”

“Zesty and dangerous,” she repeats, once she’s got the whole picture, testing the weight of it. “So if you’re Zesty then who’s Dangerous?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you.” I just blurt it out like my mouth has absolutely no communication with my brain.

“Me?”

Why did I say that? I hardly know this girl. Maybe she is dangerous on several different levels. Namely, dangerous for me because I can’t stop thinking about her. Because she’s a distraction and I’m not even mad about it.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think you might be a little dangerous.”

She thinks about it for exactly one second, like she’s trying on a hat in a mirror. “I like it. Zesty and Dangerous. We can be a whole thing. Very Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks and died in a hail of bullets.”

“Every love story has its rough patches.” She says it so lightly, so completely without missing a beat. “Did you know that Bonnie was eating a fried bologna sandwich when they ambushed them? Have you ever tried fried bologna? It’s pretty good.”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

“You should try it sometime.”

It takes me a full block to register what she actually said.

Every love story has its rough patches.

And by the time I do, she’s already pointing at something else entirely, a dog in sunglasses, a gang of preteens on ebikes doing wheelies in the middle of the street. We walk two more blocks before she peels off toward her building, waving without turning fully around, already halfway into the crowd.

“See you around, Zesty.”

“Count on it, Dangerous.”

She laughs, low and easy, almost musical, then disappears around the corner. I stand there on the sidewalk grinning like an absolute fool and I realize I never once thought to ask her name.

I’ll get it next time, I tell myself, watching her go, and somehow I already believe there will be one.

9

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

We Are Going to Rob It — Daniel Pemberton

Girls Just Want to Have Fun — Cyndi Lauper

The city is settling down for the night completely unaware that in a converted loft, seven women in pajama pants are about to plan the boldest job of their lives over a few bottles of Chardonnay and a Costco haul of junk food.

The loft isn’t really a loft so much as an old auto shop somebody hosed out and stuck a few folding tables in. It’s all exposed brick and concrete floor and one very confused ceiling fan, but it’s got four walls nobody’s watching and enough square footage that seven women can spread out and pretend that this is just a normal girl’s night in.

I’ve got a week’s worth of nerves wound so tight in my chest that I’ve been circling the same twenty feet of concrete floor for twenty minutes. Everyone else is getting comfortable, like they’re moving in for the weekend, which, I guess some are.

Suri’s folded herself onto the windowsill ledge, tablet propped on her knee, scrolling through auction photographs like she’s a blogger curating a Pinterest board. She has already made herself at home here, having changed the locks and covered the only sturdy wooden table with the supplies of her trade. Faceting machines, loupes, refractometers, to name a few.

Ivy’s draped across a dumpy couch someone dragged in that someone left on the side of the street somewhere. She’s wearing an under-eye patch on each cheekbone. As the Face in this crew, I suppose the eye patches are doing their job. I barely remember to take off my makeup before bed and then wake up with black smudges down my cheeks. She arrived an hour ago, sweeping in with two pastry boxes balanced on one arm and a very confused delivery driver trailing behind her like she’d hired him for the evening, which, knowing Ivy, she basically had.

“Nick, you’re a lifesaver,” she said to him, and he practically glowed. “Erica, tip him well. He drove across the District for croissants.”

She dropped onto the couch and hasn’t moved since.

Zoe sits cross-legged on the floor with three laptops fanned out around her. She’s been at it all day, finding the blind spots in the Four Seasons security cameras and creating more. She has her fingers in the systems of the entire hotel, the museum, and all the surrounding areas. If someone so much as scratches their chin within a five mile radius, she has it on video and can edit it to realistically look like they’re moonwalking at the same time. She’s scary good at her job.

The buzzer goes off like it’s about to give up the ghost, and it’s Ginger, dragging a rolling suitcase with one hand and a garment bag slung over the other shoulder, sunglasses on despite the hour.

“Do not,” she says, before I’ve even said hello, “get me started on that Uber.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“He took the bridge. In July. With traffic.” She drops the suitcase like it personally betrayed her, drapes the garment bag over a folding chair with infinitely more care than she showed the suitcase, and surveys the room. “This is the crew?”

“This is the crew.”

“Good.” She claims a spot against the exposed brick and pulls out her lip balm, mumbling about the crappy flight.

I clear my throat. “Shall we begin?”

Rue’s perched on the kitchenette counter with a family-size bag of Takis Fuego, feet swinging, crunching loudly. Her fingers are covered in red dust, which is kind of ironic for a pickpocket.

“Okay.” I clap once. “We’re doing this.”

Six sets of eyes land on me, and my nerves do a slow lap around my ribcage. Six women I hand-picked, one at a time, currently occupying every flat surface in a warehouse that will be cleared out by the end of the month.

“Before I show you anything,” I say, and my voice wobbles slightly on the word anything, “I want to say something. Each of you is here because you’re the best at what you do, and I am so unbelievably grateful all six of you said yes to me.

"Some of us go back a while, and I wouldn’t be here without you. Every single small job, every late night…” I look directly at Ginger. “Every weird con like that time we had to sort through trash bags on the carpet of that seedy hotel… has led us here. Now.”

Ginger raises up her hand. “I’m pretty sure those were old blood stains on that carpet.”

“That’s why we call it the Murder Hotel,” Tanya chimes in, a half-finished glass of Cabernet sweating a ring onto the plastic folding table in front of her.

“That’s a story for another day,” I say as we all chuckle about it. My point is, I’ve worked with four of the six women in this room and I would trust them with my life. Ivy and Suri, on the other hand, are new to me. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sal vetted them and I trust Sal implicitly. He’s the one who pointed out Dennis Hobbs’ red flags, but Dad wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t until the “incident” that Dad started suspecting Hobbs. It was my fault for playing it down. I should have… well, never mind that. I’ll make it all right with this last job.

“Suri, Ivy, welcome to the madness. Even though we haven’t worked together, I can already tell you’ll fit right in.”

From what I understand, as an expert gemologist, Suri remade a hundred-year-old setting so convincingly that one of hers is still hanging in a very famous museum. She’s also really good at getting past any lock. Including safes and display cases.

Ivy’s the Face, and she doesn’t pick locks or crack systems, she pretty much just bats her eyes and people hand things over and thank her for the opportunity, which is terrifying in its own right.

“So,” I say, pointing to each of them. “In this room, are six reasons this thing is going to work.”

“Seven, including you, Armitage,” Zoe says, not unkindly, still typing. “And you really don't have to do the whole speech.”

“I like the speech,” Rue says around a mouthful of Takis. “Keep going.”

“There’s no more speech. Just, thank you. I need you all fully in tonight.”

I walk to the smart board mounted on the brick, the only piece of equipment in this entire warehouse that didn’t come secondhand, and I don’t touch it yet.

“Sixteen point five million dollars. Wired to each of you, quietly, individually, by the end of summer.” I let the sentence sit in the room like a dropped plate.

For one full second nobody breathes.

Then Rue chokes on a Taki, and has to be thumped on the back.

“Each?” Ivy says. “As in, per person?”

“Each,” I confirm.

“I need you to say that number again,” Suri says. “Slower, and maybe with your hands.”

“Sixteen. Point five. Million.” I do, in fact, use my hands.

Rue whistles low, long, the sound a person makes at a fireworks show. “Okay. Okay okay okay. I’m listening. Continue.”

Tanya’s eyes are bulging. “How real is that number?”

“Extremely,” Zoe says, not glancing up from her laptop. “Assuming nobody in this room does anything catastrophically stupid between now and August.”

“So, somewhat real,” Ginger says.

“Very real,” I say, and nod at Zoe.

I pull the drop cloth off the thing that’s been sitting on the folding table behind me all night. Underneath it is a scale model of a hotel ballroom, foam board and hot glue and, unless I’m wrong, part of a shoebox, tiny paper guests frozen mid-conversation around a miniature dance floor.

“This is the Corcoran Ballroom," I say. "At the Four Seasons Hotel. In three weeks, it hosts the Stars and Stripes Celebration Gala.”

“What’s that?” Rue asks, now recovered from her Taki incident.

“It’s the closing festivities for that hockey tournament going on at the National Arena,” Ivy supplies. "But it’s not just a sports thing. There will be politicians, VIPs, and important figures of note.”

Ginger’s wine glass stops halfway to her mouth. “So that’s the target? All those VIPs?”

“Not exactly.”

Ginger knows my convictions. I never go after private citizens or personal wealth. Just greedy corporations with shady (probably illegal) dealings. She also knows how every job leading up to this has been small-time. Low profile enough to keep us out of anyone’s radar. So this one is different. Very different. But I’m not about to betray my principles, and that’s why this next part of my presentation is important.

Zoe rubs her hands together. “Story time, ladies.”

Suri comes closer. “I love stories.”

“This one has a queen, a dead president, and a necklace that’s about to ruin all our summer plans,” I say, and tap the smart board.

A sepia portrait blooms across the screen. A woman in black mourning silk, tired eyes, spine like a fence post.

“Mary Todd Lincoln,” I say. “In 1865, a month after her husband was shot beside her at Ford’s Theatre, she got a letter from Queen Victoria. Victoria had lost Prince Albert a few years earlier and knew exactly what that grief felt like. Mary wrote back, and it became a whole correspondence. One widow to another. History calls it the Friendship Letters.”

I swipe. “Along with one of those letters,” I say. “Victoria sent this.”

The necklace fills the screen, sapphires hanging like a widow’s teardrops surrounded by halos of tiny diamonds. That heavy, generous pendant at the center with more sapphires and diamonds getting gradually smaller as they run along the chain. I’ve studied this piece my whole life. I could describe it in my sleep.

Suri audibly gasps. “The Friendship Jewel.“

“You are correct,” I say, and I love her a little more for it. “Some of you might already know the next part. In 1875, Mary’s son had her committed in an insanity trial. She wasn’t even told about it until the day it happened and couldn’t even defend herself.”

“Wait.” Rue holds up a Taki. “Her own son had her committed?”

“For what?” Ginger asks, and there’s an edge in her voice now.

“Spending her own money. Buying jewelry. Walking outside. Grieving too visibly, honestly.”

“Okay, but that’s not insanity,” Ivy says. “That’s once a month like clockwork for me.”

“Me too,” Tanya agrees.

“Have you guys seen those lists?” Zoe says. “Reasons women got committed to asylums in the old days.“ She pulls up an image on her phone that looks like it’s from a vintage booklet and starts to read some of them. "‘Feebleness of intellect.’"

“Relatable,” Rue says, immediately.

“‘Female disease.’”

I raise my hand “Guilty.”

Zoe goes on. “‘Reading novels.’”

Ginger snorts. “That’s one point against me.”

“‘Imaginary female trouble.’”

“Imaginary?” Tanya repeats.

"‘Laziness,’” Zoe finishes, and drops the phone into her lap like a mic.

Rue, flat on her back on the counter now, stares at the ceiling. “Well. I’m cooked. Commit me now.”

“Half the people in this room would’ve been committed by Wednesday,” Tanya says.

“Honestly,” Ivy says. “Most of history can probably be explained by the fact that all the big decisions got made by nineteen-year-old men who had wine for breakfast.”

“That tracks,” Suri says, and digs into a bag of marshmallows Rue was previously hiding with her body.

“This is the best tangent,” I say, feeling the room lean fully into a conversation that could, left unsupervised, eat the rest of the night. “And we are absolutely finishing it later, but I need to land the plane.”

I swipe to the next image. A slightly younger woman, sharp-jawed, severe traveling clothes that look like a hundred degrees underneath.

“After Mary was released, she spent four years in France. Her traveling companion was a woman named Eleanor Armitage, from a prominent Lexington, Kentucky family.”

I let it sit half a beat.

“My five-times great grandmother.”

“Shut up,” Rue says.

“While they were in France, Mary gave Eleanor the necklace outright. Partly out of defiance, if you ask me. Her own son had just locked her up thinking his mother couldn’t be trusted with her own jewelry box, and Mary was not about to let that necklace anywhere near his well-lawyered hands. But mostly it was love for the one person who’d spent four years treating her like a friend. There are letters that prove it. Mary’s, and Eleanor’s own diary. Together they show it wasn’t stolen or smuggled. It was given, on purpose, to spite Mary’s son.”

“So… it’s your birthright,” Ginger says slowly. “The necklace actually belongs to you.”

“It should,” I say. “In the 1950s, a lending company seized the entire Armitage estate to settle a debt that never actually existed. Land, furniture, jewelry, all of it. The necklace wasn’t even named in their paperwork. It wasn’t accounted for. It just went out the back door with the rest of the estate and stopped existing on paper entirely.”

I swipe again, and a newspaper clipping appears with the headline, “History’s Lost Jewels.” “It doesn’t resurface until it turns up at the Bellenden Museum of American History in the early seventies. It was donated anonymously. Nobody’s ever explained where it was, or who had it, in between.”

The room goes quiet.

“So why donate it?” Tanya asks. “When whoever took it could have sold it?”

“Because they couldn’t find a buyer,” Ginger supplies.

“Exactly,” Zoe chirps. “And somewhere in those twenty blank years, somebody decided the cleanest story was that Eleanor stole it herself.”

Ivy lets out a long breath. “Well, I’ll be.”

“My family’s name got dragged through a century of mud for a crime that was never proven,” I say, feeling a bit of emotion wobble out of my shaky voice.

The provenance letters have been missing since the 1950s, but what these ladies don’t know yet is that I’ve spent the past six years searching, and I’m close to uncovering the truth.

Nobody says anything for a second. Rue sets down the Takis bag entirely, which might be the most sincere gesture of solidarity she’s capable of. Ginger’s jaw ticks. Even Ivy just looks at me like she’s recalculating something.

“Okay,” Tanya says quietly. “Now I actually want to hurt somebody, and I don’t even know their name yet.”

“You will,” I say. “Give it a few days.”

I tap the board one last time. A formal announcement for the Stars and Stripes Gala. All red, white, and blue with gold leaf accents.

“On July eighteenth, the necklace leaves the museum for the first time since it’s been at the B-Mah. In celebration for the nation’s two hundred fiftieth anniversary, the Friendship Jewel will be on display under armed guards."

I let the silence hold a moment.

“That night, we’re taking it back.”

For one full second, nobody moves.

Then every hand in the room shoots up at once, and the questions come so quick and so loud and so completely on top of each other that I genuinely cannot tell whose voice is whose anymore. Zoe and I try to address all the questions one by one, but we also have a lot more details to cover.

At one point, I announce, “Those of you staying in the loft, roll out your sleeping bags, because tomorrow, we start pulling off one of the biggest jewelry heists ever.”

Rue slides off the counter, Takis bag held aloft like a torch. “Okay, I just need to say. This is going to be legendary. To the Armitage Seven, woop!”

“To the Armitage Seven,” the other women echo, and my heart is completely full for the first time in a lot of years.

We spend the rest of the night going over logistics and what roles everyone will play, and somewhere in there another wine bottle empties and a fourth or fifth one opens, and somebody produces a box of chocolate-covered pretzels from a cabinet nobody remembers stocking. Tanya grimaces at the crude shoebox model of the ballroom and offers to make a true scale model of the entire hotel.

Zoe pulls up the gala’s preliminary guest list just to see how bad the security is.

“They’re running last year’s credentialing software,” she reports, delighted, like she found twenty dollars in an old coat pocket. “This is going to be embarrassingly easy.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Ginger says, now laying on the floor, belly full of wine and junk food.

By two in the morning the warehouse has fully surrendered to sleepover conditions. I’m rinsing wine glasses in the world’s smallest sink when Zoe corners me, voice low enough it doesn’t carry past the fridge.

“So,” she says. “Did you land the invite to the gala yet?”

“Not yet. These things take finesse. I’ve got it handled.”

She gives me the look.

“Erica. We are running out of time, girl.”

“I know how a calendar works, Zoe.”

“Do you, though? Gala’s in eighteen days. Last I heard, you had zero invite, zero hockey hunks asking you to be his plus-one, and a whole lot of I got this.”

She’s not wrong. She’s never wrong. It’s honestly her worst quality.

“I suppose,” she says, drawing it out the way she does right before I’m not going to like whatever comes next. “We need to bring out the big guns.”

I stop rinsing. “The big guns.”

“The big guns.” There’s a glint in her eye I absolutely do not trust.

“I have a plan,” Zoe says.

“Not interested.”

“You’re going to love it. Or hate it. Honestly, coin flip.” She’s already backing toward the sleeping bags, grinning the exact grin that guarantees I am, one hundred percent, not going to love it. “Get some sleep, Armitage. We’ve got lots of work to do.”

Big guns. A plan. I already hate it.

Out in the common area, somebody shrieks “PILLOW FIGHT!”

Zoe and I look at each other for a half second.

Then we’re running to join in.

10

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Saturday in the Park — Chicago

4th of July — Shooter Jennings

Somewhere between the post office and the Air and Space Museum, I stopped believing in coincidence. That’s six times now. Six times I have run into the same woman in a city of seven hundred thousand people, and if I pulled off those odds on the ice, they’d bench me for cheating.

I don’t believe in signs, in fate, in the universe rearranging itself around my jogging route. I believe in odds. And these odds are impossible.

“You look terrible, by the way,” Colt says, cheerful as ever. “Like you didn’t sleep.”

“I slept.”

“You should really carb up, dude.”

“I’m eating a croissant.” I hold it up as evidence.

We’re crammed at a folding table under a staging tent that smells like coffee and cut grass. Those of us Olympians have our medals already looped around our necks, and jerseys still on hangers because it’s too dang hot already and I will wait until the last possible second to put mine on.

Across the tent, Jake is doing his best disciplined Olympian face for a reporter, nodding at something like it’s the most fascinating question he’s heard all week. I catch his eye over her shoulder. He gives me a look that says rescue me with the subtlety of a house fire.

I don’t rescue him. That’s what friends are for.

“Here, have another croissant.” Colt lifts a croissant from his plate and throws it on mine.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Is it a girl? It’s always a girl.”

I take another bite to keep from answering, chew it into submission, and look out past the tent flap at the staging lot, where a hundred kids in matching red or blue band uniforms are being herded into position by women with clipboards.

Jake slides into the seat across from me, eyeing all five of my special edition, engraved hockey sticks leaning against the table. “Gave mine out already. All but one, anyway. I’m saving that for an emergency, you know what I mean?”

“I guess.”

“Cool little superfan dude in a wheelchair got my first one. Cried. It was great.“

“Ummm, congratulations?”

“There’s no medal for that,” Colt says.

“There should be.”

For some reason, the guys have some kind of competition between the East and West teams to see which team can give away all our commemorative sticks first. We each were allotted five to give away. I felt a little awkward going up to perfect strangers on the street and offering them a hockey stick they may or may not want, so I figured they’d be best received if I gave them all away on the parade route. Apparently, they’re highly valuable, especially when signed, so I took a sharpie to them this morning.

Bryce Chambers drops into the last open chair with a plate stacked so high it should require its own zip code, sets a stray sausage link rolling across the table, and doesn’t chase it. “Anybody seen the lineup? They put us directly behind the Olympic equestrians, which nobody in the history of parade logistics should ever do to a group of professional athletes with the attention span of golden retrievers.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jake jokes.

“You’ll find me closer to the back, thanks,” Colt says. “I’d rather not be downwind of horses.”

Bryce swallows a big bite, nodding. “Me too.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Coach Badaszek calls out. “Hydrate. Sunscreen. Smile like you mean it, we’ve got cameras on the whole route.”

Somewhere behind me, Hilary Drummond, the tournament event organizer, is actively avoiding a guy asking about whether the Liberty Bear mascot costume smells like “summer camp” or “an actual bear died in this.”

By the time we’re lined up, the staging area looks like America threw up glitter and bunting and then decided it looked great. I wonder for more than a fleeting moment, whether Sticky Fingers/Dangerous is somewhere in that crowd. I have to admit, if it were up to me, I’d spend the day inside the air conditioned arena. The heat’s already climbing, that thick July heat that makes the air look wavy above the asphalt, and we haven’t even started walking yet. DC in summer doesn’t do subtle, it just commits fully to being a swamp with monuments in it.

The parade route unrolls down Constitution Avenue in a wall of heat and noise, flags snapping, the marching band behind us doing something patriotic and slightly out of tune. I can feel the tuba in my molars. The second we round onto the avenue proper the crowd noise hits like a wave. People ten deep on either side, kids on shoulders, somebody’s dog wearing a bandana with stars on it. A guy holding a sign that says HONK IF YOU LOVE HOCKEY, which, sir, this is a parade, not a highway.

Jason Dexter has positioned himself behind the equestrian unit like a bodyguard, arms crossed, glaring at Dante Leinecker, who is holding both hands up in the universal gesture of I didn’t do anything while clearly having done something.

“Not my monkeys, not my circus,” I mutter, and continue forward.

My jersey feels like a wool blanket sewn directly onto my skin, even with my undershirt underneath. My gold medal sits heavy and warm against my chest, and every time I turn my head it swings and somebody in the crowd completely loses it. Which, fine. I get it. I’d probably lose my mind too if I saw an Olympic medal at a Fourth of July parade. It’s a good bit.

“Precio! Precio, over here!”

I turn. A kid, maybe eight, is doing his absolute best to climb his father’s shoulders to get closer to the rope line, waving both arms like he’s flagging down a rescue helicopter.

I grab a stick, kneel down to his level, hand it over. “Happy Fourth of July.”

His face does the thing kids’ faces do when something enormous and unexpected happens to them, this full-body joy that adults have mostly forgotten how to feel. His dad takes a photo and mouths thank you at me over his head, and I nod, and my whole chest is full.

One stick down. Four to go.

A girl in a leg cast and glitter face paint waves. Red, white, and blue everywhere, including her hair. Stick number two, gone. She tells me very seriously that hockey is her third favorite sport after gymnastics and “competitive baking,” and I tell her, equally seriously, that competitive baking sounds terrifying and I respect it. Her mother laughs so hard she has to lean on the rope line.

Twins, maybe six years old in identical outfits. They get one stick between them that immediately becomes a tug-of-war. I give them a second one before things escalate into an international incident. Stick three and four, gone in one transaction.

One stick left. About four hundred more kids between here and the reviewing stand.

Then a kid in a tiny Team USA shirt is jumping up and down at the barricade, screaming my name like I invented fire, and I hand him my last stick without even thinking about it. His whole face rearranges itself into pure joy. Worth it.

I wipe sweat off my forehead with the back of my wrist and keep walking, waving, shaking the occasional extended hand, doing the thing where you make brief, genuine eye contact with as many people as physically possible because that’s the job today, that’s the whole job, be a person these people can point at and say I met him, he seemed nice.

The heat climbs with the sun. By the time we pass 10th Street, my jersey’s gone from damp to genuinely wet, sweat running down my spine in a way that makes the gold medal stick uncomfortably to my chest. Somebody hands me a bottle of water from the sideline and I down half of it in one go, and for one blessed block I stop thinking about Sticky Fingers and just exist inside the parade, smiling, waving, shaking hands, and being exactly the poster boy for a sport I’d play for free.

Then the crowd thins for a second near a shade tree.

That’s when I see her.

She’s maybe thirty feet off the parade route, tucked into the crowd behind the barricade tape, and my brain short circuits so fast I nearly walk into a fire hydrant.

Cutoff denim shorts. A crop top that says KISS ME, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY in sparkly red letters. She’s got a Bomb Pop, the red white and blue kind, melting fast in the heat, which she is currently licking with an expression of total unbothered joy like she doesn’t know she’s standing in the middle of the single most distracting outfit ever created.

My whole nervous system just quits its job.

“Hey Zesty,” Kingston says beside me. “You just stopped walking.”

I have, in fact, stopped walking. The rest of the team drifts forward without me, waving at the crowd, doing the job I’m supposed to be doing, while I stand there like a man who just saw a ghost. A ghost in denim shorts. A very good ghost.

“Go ahead,” I tell him. “I’ll catch up.”

He looks where I’m looking. He grins in a way I don’t love. “Uh huh. Sure you will.”

I don’t wait to hear the rest. I’m already moving, cutting sideways through the crowd, apologizing to approximately nine people whose feet I step on, because there is a woman thirty feet away wearing an invitation on her chest and I have questions.

By the time I get close enough to actually see her face, she’s already turned half away, laughing at something her friend said, Bomb Pop halfway to her mouth again.

“It’s your birthday?” I call out, because apparently that’s the sentence my brain landed on.

She hears me. I know she hears me because she gives me one look. One. Just a glance over one shoulder, quick and wicked. And then, because apparently she enjoys watching me suffer, she licks the Bomb Pop again, slow, deliberate, eyes locked on mine the entire time, and disappears into the crowd like she was never there.

“Wait.” I say it to no one, because she’s gone, folded into a family of six and a stroller the size of a golf cart.

I look down at my hands. I have no gift. Granted, I didn’t know it was her birthday, but if only I hadn’t given away all my special edition sticks. Then again, who’s to say she’d want a hockey stick? Maybe she’d rather have a watch. I chuckle thinking about it, and go back to join my teammates.

The second the parade officially ends, I’m out of formation before Coach Badaszek finishes the closing remarks, jersey untucked, moving through the crowd like a man with somewhere urgent to be. Because I do. I have somewhere urgent to be. I just don’t know where that is yet.

“Hey, Zesty. Zesty! Where’s the fire?”

Kingston jogs to catch up, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, grinning like he’s already got the whole story and just wants to hear me say it out loud.

“I’ll see you guys later,” I say, and I’m already moving, already cutting sideways through a crowd that’s thickening by the minute as everyone drains off Constitution Avenue toward the National Mall, where the festival’s cranking up. The Mall in the noon heat is chaos… a Ferris wheel turning slow against a vivid blue sky, a country band tuning up somewhere near the Ellipse, the smell of funnel cake and fry oil in the air. And closer, a kid is screaming with either delight or genuine terror at a ring toss booth, hard to say which.

I move through it fast, scanning the festival grounds, past the smell of jerk chicken and duck fat fries. I push through the crowd past a ring toss booth, past a guy dramatically failing to win his girlfriend a stuffed bear at the strength test hammer game, past a line of people waiting for the dunking game and a water gun setup where kids blast streams at bobbing rubber ducks, half-missing, spraying strangers, nobody caring because it’s ninety-eight degrees and everyone’s already sweating through their shirt anyway.

But she’s nowhere to be found. No cutoff shorts, no birthday shirt, no Bomb Pop.

I’m starting to think I imagined the whole thing, some kind of heatstroke hallucination brought on by… well, let’s face it. That horse smell is still lingering in my nostrils.

Then, there. A flash of denim. That ponytail. Gone again around the side of a striped tent before I can even be sure it’s her.

“No,” I say out loud, to nobody, startling a woman holding two churros. “Not again.”

I move faster. Sweat runs down my spine. My jersey is sticking to my back now. My eyes lock on the spot where she disappeared. I round the tent and there’s nothing, just a family arguing about whether to get the fried Oreos or the chocolate covered bananas, and I have to physically restrain myself from asking them if they’ve seen a woman in a birthday shirt run past, because that is, objectively, an insane question to ask strangers.

I scan the crowd like I’m reading ice, looking for the gap nobody else sees, picking up my pace. I pass a milk bottle throw where the carny tries to wave me over, tells me I’ve got the arm for it, and I don’t stop long enough to find out if that’s true.

Then I see her again, thirty feet ahead, and this time she’s looking right at me. She smiles, slow and knowing, backs up two steps, and slips sideways into a boxy plywood trailer with a crooked sign that reads HALL OF MIRRORS in chipped red carnival lettering over a doorway shaped like a clown’s mouth, which is deeply unsettling in a way I don’t have time to unpack.

She looks over her shoulder one more time before she vanishes inside. It is, without question, the single most dangerous look a human being has ever given me.

I go in after her.

A teenage attendant waves me through without even asking for a ticket, possibly because I’m still wearing an Olympic medal and a national team jersey, possibly because he simply doesn’t care. Either way, I duck through the flap and the outside noise cuts off like someone hit mute, replaced by the low hum of a box fan somewhere and my own breathing.

It’s dark in here, and hot in a different way than outside, a trapped, airless heat that makes the jersey feel even worse.

And there’s mirrors. Everywhere. Floor to ceiling, angled every direction, so that I turn my head and there are forty versions of me turning my head back, each one looking slightly more unhinged than the last.

“Hello?”

My voice comes back at me from six directions. No answer.

I take a step forward, and my reflection splits into three, then five, walls of glass leading off at angles that don’t seem to obey any layout logic. Somewhere to my left, fabric moves. I turn. Nothing but my own face, distorted long and thin in a warped panel, looking like I’ve been stretched on a rack.

“This is ridiculous,” I say, to nobody, to forty of myself.

I catch a shape, ahead and to the right, the outline of a woman, dark hair, and I move toward it fast enough that I nearly walk face-first into a mirror, my own reflection rushing up at me at full speed before I throw a hand out and catch the glass instead of my nose.

Somewhere further in, I hear that laugh, the quick surprised bark, echoing in a way that makes it impossible to tell which direction it came from.

It is stiflingly hot in here. The heat genuinely unbearable now, the kind that makes your shirt stick and your brain go slightly stupid. Body heat trapped in glass and no airflow whatsoever, and within a minute sweat is a waterfall down the back of my neck. I pull the jersey over my head in one motion, momentarily blind inside the fabric, and when I emerge I catch a flash of her, real this time, I’d bet everything on it, disappearing around a mirrored corner with one look thrown back over her shoulder that is pure, deliberate invitation.

I tuck the jersey into the waistband of my pants without thinking about it and go after her.

The corridor narrows. My reflections multiply and warp, tall, short, sideways.

I hear her laugh again, closer now, and I follow it around a bend where the mirrors angle inward like a funnel. Another turn. Another wrong mirror, this one making me look about four feet tall, which, no thank you.

And then she’s just there.

I don’t slow down enough to think about it, I just close the last few feet, and she’s got nowhere left to go. I catch her before she can slip away again, her back meeting the warm surface of a mirror with a small, surprised exhale and she’s laughing, breathless, chest rising fast, and I’m breathing just as hard, and I genuinely cannot tell anymore how much of that is the chase and how much of it is her, close enough now that I can see the last blue tint of Bomb Pop still on her bottom lip.

And the part I'm not going to examine too closely is just how little space is left between us, her chest rising against the KISS ME shirt, my hand braced on the mirror frame beside her head, trapping her against the glass with my arm, both of us lit up gold and red and blue by whatever cheap carnival lighting somebody rigged into this plywood box.

“Hey, Dangerous,” I say.

"Hey, Zesty.” And the way she says it, the way the word falls from her lips, stirs something inside me.

“Why the chase?” I ask, and it comes out quieter than I mean it to, my hand still braced against the mirror behind her, neither of us moving to close the last eight inches, both of us clearly aware of exactly how little space is left. “You could’ve just said hi.”

She shrugs, and it’s not quite as careless as she wants it to look. “I’m used to running.” She says it light, easy, like it’s nothing, but something moves behind her eyes when she says it.

“You’ve been giving me a run for my money all morning.”

“I’m just very hard to catch.” She tilts her head. Her eyes flick down to my undershirt clinging to my chest for exactly one second before coming back up, and if I wasn’t already sweltering, I would be now. She inclines her chin at my gold medal. “You seem out of breath, though. For an Olympian.”

“It’s hot in here.”

She licks her lips. I can’t tell if it’s deliberate or not. But her voice comes out breathy when she says, “It certainly is.”

There’s a current running between us that I don’t have a hockey term for. It’s not new. It’s been building since Cinco de Mayo, since the watch, since every accidental run-in, and I’m acutely aware of every single point where we’re almost touching and the few points where we already are.

A beat passes where neither of us says anything. The box fan hums somewhere. My pulse is doing something loud and unhelpful. Forty reflections of us stand frozen in the glass around us, and I’ve never in my life felt anything like this, ridiculous and electric, short-circuiting every rational thought I own. I’ve dated. I’ve had feelings before. I have never once had a woman make my knees forget how knees work.

“Is it working?” I ask.

She blinks. “Is what working?”

I nod at her shirt. She looks down at herself, like she forgot what she put on this morning, block letters stretched across her chest. KISS ME, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY. When she looks back up there’s a flush climbing her neck that has nothing to do with the heat in this trailer.

“The shirt,” I say. “Get any kisses today?”

Something flickers across her face, quick, gone almost before I catch it, and I have one ugly, involuntary thought about every man on that parade route who might have read those words on her chest and gotten ideas. I picture, for one entirely unreasonable half second, every guy at this festival reading that shirt as an invitation, some guy in cargo shorts leaning in too close, thinking he’s got a free pass, and something primitive roars through my blood so fast and so completely unearned that my jaw goes tight and I have to actively unclench my hand from the mirror frame.

Cálmate. I have no claim on this woman. None. That does not seem to be slowing down the jealousy currently setting up permanent residence in my chest.

A beat. Long enough that I can hear the tinny carnival music leaking through the plywood walls, long enough that neither of us moves, long enough that some other version of me in some other mirror is probably already leaning in.

“Oh.” She says it soft, almost surprised at herself. “Not yet.”

Her eyes come up to mine, dark and steady, daring me, and something about the way she says it, not yet, like the day isn’t over, like there’s still time, undoes something in my chest that’s been wound tight since she brushed her fingertips along my wrist weeks ago.

“You tell me. Are you volunteering?” she asks, and my whole world tilts sideways.

Her lips part, that blue stain from the Bomb Pop inviting, and it’s all I can do to control my instincts. Yes, I’m volunteering. I want to be the only one volunteering. I stand in tribute.

I lean in slow, giving her every chance in the world to step back, to laugh it off, to make some crack about my nickname or my sweaty undershirt, or any of the eleven thousand things she could say to put distance between us, and she doesn’t. She goes still, watching me the whole way, and I press my mouth to her cheek instead of where I really want to, soft and unhurried, and I feel her breath catch against my lips.

“Happy birthday,” I murmur against her skin, barely more than a whisper.

She doesn’t say anything for a second. In the mirrors around us, forty versions of the same moment hold perfectly still, and somewhere behind the wall the festival goes on without us, the fiddle music, the screaming kids, the whole loud, sweaty, glorious mess of a country turning two hundred and fifty, completely unaware that in a plywood hall of mirrors, I have just come completely, hopelessly undone by a woman who is stealing more than my watch.

“You’re going to have to do better than a cheek, Zesty,” she says finally, and there’s that smile again, the one that got me into this in the first place.

“Give me time,” I tell her. “I’m a gentleman, after all.”

11

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

The Star Spangled Banner  — Madison Rising

America — Neil Diamond

Zoe’s plan to land me a gala invitation via cleavage and glitter has proven to be somewhat effective. No gala invite yet, but at least I got the hockey player’s attention. That part of the plan is working so well it’s borderline unfair to the man. And honestly, at this point, I’ll take the win where I can get it.

It started at midnight, technically. Six girls ambushed me the second the clock ticked over into July fourth, all of them piling onto my bed at the loft like it was a group tackle. Rue came in swinging a hand-lettered banner that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA’S SWEETHEART, clipped me across the forehead with the corner of it, and did not apologize, because apparently that’s a workplace hazard I signed up for by existing.

Suri had a candle stuck in a Pop-Tart because we didn’t have cake, and lit it with a blowtorch she keeps in her makeup bag for reasons nobody has ever fully investigated. Ivy sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed with a glass of prosecco already poured for me, unbothered, because Ivy’s whole superpower is looking effortless regardless of the hour or the chaos surrounding her. Ginger sang happy birthday in a key that does not exist in Western music. Tanya cried a little, which she’ll deny under oath, and then blamed it on allergies, in a room containing zero plants.

Then Zoe and Tanya handed me a shirt.

Not a shirt. A crime.

Barely there, white, with KISS ME IT’S MY BIRTHDAY ironed on in red glitter letters. Blue and red puffy-paint stars scattered across the shoulder like they’d had a party of their own. Tanya found cut-off denim shorts at a thrift store, and somebody (I have my suspicions who), sourced American flag knee socks, probably from a roller skater’s paradise.

This morning, I walked out into the common room wearing the whole ensemble, and all six women whistled at me like a crew of construction workers annoying a pretty woman crossing the street.

I do a slow turn, arms out, like I’m Wonder Woman or something. “So? How do I look? Fourth of July enough for you?”

Zoe sucks on a lollipop and drops into a Jennifer Coolidge impression so accurate it should require a permit. “Oh yeah. Makes me want a hot dog real bad.”

“Cute.” I glance down at the red and white gingham ribbon Tanya wove into two braids. “But are these ribbons giving… I don’t know. Maryanne from Gilligan’s Island?”

“Trust me.” Zoe points the lollipop at me. “Guys are way more into Maryanne than Ginger.” She glances over at our Fence. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Ginger says, not looking up from her phone.

“These shorts are giving me a wedgie,” I say, tugging at the hem, which is doing structural work it was never engineered for.

“Did Megan Fox complain when her Daisy Dukes rocketed her to international fame?” Zoe waves her lollipop at me.

“No.”

“Then get out there and snag yourself a hockey player.”

Get out there and snag yourself a hockey player. Like it’s a scavenger hunt item. Like he’s a Pokémon and all I need is the right bait.

I lost the outfit battle but somehow convinced all I needed was a high ponytail with the ribbon in a simple bow. The girls accompanied me to the parade and coached me in the art of playing hard-to-get. The Bomb Pop, the coquettish glance over the shoulder. I honestly felt like a fool.

Turns out the bit worked. It worked so well I am currently pinned against a mirrored wall in the world’s stickiest, most disorienting funhouse, Jeremiah’s forearms braced against the glass on either side of my head, his mouth having just, very deliberately, very slowly, pressed itself to my cheek.

My cheek! After all that?

I feel like I just won a small carnival prize and immediately lost it in the parking lot.

I wanted his mouth on mine. I wanted it with an intensity that should probably concern my crew, my conscience, and possibly a licensed professional. Instead I got a cheek kiss like I’m his weird aunt at Thanksgiving, and now he’s pulling back just far enough to look extremely pleased with himself, like restraint is a personality trait he’s proud of.

Am I a bad person to want more? Probably.

“Give me time,” he says, low, way too satisfied with himself for a man who just settled for a cheek. “I’m a gentleman, after all.”

I make a sound.

I want to be very clear that I did not plan this sound. It escapes on its own, a short, disgusted little huff through my nose, the universal noise for are you kidding me right now, except it comes out sounding a lot more like a wounded groan, and his whole face changes.

Something dawns on him. Slow, then all at once, like a man realizing he left the stove on.

“Oh no,” he says.

Oh no? Is he already regretting kissing me? Is a cheek kiss grounds for regret? Because if so we need to establish new house rules immediately, starting with more mouth, less cheek.

“Oh no?” I repeat, and I hear the wobble in it, because the thought ‘is he already regretting kissing me?’ is doing laps in my skull.

“I’m so gullible.” He drags a hand down his face, and it is deeply unfair how good he looks doing something as mundane as expressing regret. “Is your birthday actually today? Or did I just fall for a genius marketing campaign?”

Oh.

Oh.

He thinks the shirt worked him like a con. Which, to be fair, is extremely close to the actual plan, minus the part where the con was supposed to be about a gala guest list and not a man’s whole heart, but I’m not about to clarify that distinction right now.

“It’s really my birthday,” I say.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously.” I cross my heart, right over the glittery letters currently shedding onto his shirt. “I was born on the same day as this great country.”

He snorts, and it’s such an unguarded, un-cheek-kissing-gentlemanly sound that something in my chest does something embarrassing. “Funny. You don’t look two hundred fifty years old.”

“Drop the zero and you’ve got bingo.”

“Twenty-five?”

I nod. “I can now unironically sing that 4 Non Blondes song.”

“So what do you want to do for your birthday?” One eyebrow goes up. “Take a big breath and scream ‘what's going on’ at the top of your lungs?”

The way he’s looking at me right now, the proximity, the ghost of his mouth still warm against my cheek, is doing things to my internal monologue that a licensed therapist would have a field day with. I am already internally screaming. I do not, in fact, care what’s going on. I would like more of what’s going on, please, preferably targeted slightly to the left of where his mouth landed the first time.

Admitting that out loud would be, at minimum, a felony against my own dignity.

Instead, I settle on, “You can buy me a corn dog for starters.”

“A corn dog.”

I drag my gaze across his broad chest and let him watch me do it. “I suddenly have a craving.”

His jaw ticks. “For a corn dog.”

“Sure.” I smile, all teeth. “Let’s call it that.”

We leave the Hall of Mirrors, and the heat outside hits like a steamy towel, but it’s somehow refreshing compared to the Hall of Mirrors. The Mall stretches out in front of us, packed with families and flags and several thousand strangers who’ve clearly all had too much lemonade. Somewhere a brass band is murdering “Yankee Doodle.” Somewhere else a toddler is screaming about a balloon animal. The humidity here is thick and clingy, and within the hour, turns Jeremiah’s white shirt distractingly transparent in places I choose not to comment on.

Abs, okay?

Jeremiah buys me a corn dog from a cart manned by a guy in an apron that says GRILL SERGEANT, and hands it over like he’s presenting a trophy.

“For the birthday girl.”

The way he says it makes my stomach do a slow, embarrassing flip.

I take a bite of the corn dog. It is, objectively, terrible. Deep-fried, slightly burnt, tasting mostly of oil. It might be the best thing I’ve eaten all year.

“So,” he says, watching me chew like it’s the most riveting thing he’s seen all day. “Where’s your friend? The one from the parade.”

“Which one? I had six.”

“I only saw one. The one who looked like she stepped straight out of a K-drama.”

“Don’t tell her that.” I wince. “She’ll be insufferable.”

“Noted.”

“Her name is Zoe.” I lick mustard off my thumb, which he watches with an intensity that should be illegal in a public park. “My best friend, chief architect of this whole outfit, and constant source of terrible advice that somehow always works out.”

“Terrible advice like what?”

“Like these shorts.” I tug at the hem, which feels like it has ridden up where the sun don’t shine. There’s no delicate way to fix a wedgie.

His eyes drop. Snap back up like he’s been caught somewhere he wasn’t invited. “Here.” He’s already peeling his jersey out of his waistband.

“What are you doing?”

“Fixing terrible advice that…” He glances down once more and swallows hard. “Somehow worked out.”

He holds the jersey out, his name PRECIO stitched across the back. “Tuck it around your waist. Like a kilt.”

I take it. It’s warm, and it smells like something unfairly, specifically him. I knot it around my hips, let the length hang over my backside like a makeshift skirt.

“Better?”

“Better.” I glance around to my backside. PRECIO draped over my hips like I belong to him. I don’t belong to anyone. This is just fabric.

“So these friends. Would you rather be with them right now?” He asks it lightly, but there’s a real question underneath. “Instead of wandering around a carnival with a stranger?”

Stranger. Cute. As if the last month hasn’t been a slow-motion collision course of run-ins that were absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent accidental. Not.

“We’ve been celebrating my birthday for a week straight,” I say. “We’ll probably still be celebrating it next week. I love them. I do. But I cannot day-drink with those women. Give me two mimosas and I get a headache, then I get sleepy, then I fall asleep somewhere undignified, like a park bench, or once, memorably, a stranger’s inflatable pool.”

“That sounds like a story.”

“It is not a story I’m telling on my birthday.”

He laughs, and it’s a full laugh, not the polished press-conference version I’d bet money he uses on cameras. This one has an edge to it, surprised, like it snuck out before he approved it.

“Besides,” I go on, because apparently I’ve decided honesty is the theme of the day. “They’d rather be at a bar doing tequila shots off each other’s forearms. I want games. I want carnival food that I’ll regret eating. I want…”

I stop myself half a second too late.

“You want?” He’s not letting that go. Of course he’s not.

I want you. Obviously I want you. I have wanted you since you caught my wrist in May like it was nothing, like lightning speed reflexes is just a skill you keep in your back pocket, and I have been doing an outstanding job of not saying that out loud, so let’s keep that streak alive.

“I want to ride the Zipper until I throw up,” I say instead. “Is that so wrong?”

“Devastatingly specific answer.”

"I can be overly graphic sometimes."

We do the Zipper. We do the ring toss, which he wins on his second try and hands the stuffed eagle to a kid nearby like it’s second-nature, and that does something unfair to my heart rate.

At the strongman game, a carnival worker with forearms like ham hocks makes the mistake of egging Jeremiah on, and within four swings a small crowd has gathered to watch a professional hockey player demolish a rigged high striker. The bell doesn’t just ring. It detaches. It sails off into the dusk in a slow, tragic arc, and the carnival worker stares after it the way you’d stare at a piece of your own soul leaving. Jeremiah wins a second stuffed eagle, roughly the size of a golden retriever, and gives it to me.

“Had I known it was your birthday, I’d have something better for you.”

But I squeeze the plushie, pushing down tears, because nobody has ever done something like that for me before. Not even my dad (who is a good dad despite being a criminal), because my childhood was spent at poker games and small grifts, and the only time we’d ever go to a carnival was for the easy pickings.

“I love it,” I say, and I mean it.

At one point in the day, he does not seem to register that four separate beautiful young women have already recognized him and are filming from behind a funnel cake stand. I notice it like I’m on recon and can’t help it. Old habits don’t take a holiday just because it’s my birthday.

“You’re famous,” I say, nodding at our small, unofficial paparazzi corps.

“Occupational hazard.” He presses his hand at the small of my back and guides me somewhere away from his adoring fans. “You’re surprisingly unbothered by it.”

“I have a good poker face,” I reply, which is the truth, but he laughs like he thinks I’m the cutest thing in the world. I could get used to this.

We keep walking when a kid barrels out of the crowd like he’s been shot from a cannon. Maybe ten years old, and he skids to a stop about six feet from Jeremiah like he’s hit an invisible wall.

His mother is a few steps behind, hovering at a respectful distance.

“You’re… you’re Jeremiah Precio,” the kid says, like he’s confirming it for the record.

“Last time I checked.” Jeremiah crouches, drops to one knee on the pavement, funnel cake grease and all, so they’re eye to eye. “What’s your name?”

“Mason.” The word comes out barely above a whisper, and then Mason just stalls. He stares at Jeremiah like he’s forgotten every other word he owns.

His mother closes the distance and rests a hand on Mason’s shoulder. “Sorry, he’s normally not this quiet.” She laughs, a little breathless. “He’s a huge fan. Watched every second of the Olympics, I mean religiously. He’d love it if you signed his jersey.”

She already has it in hand, a West Stars jersey pulled from her bag, a Sharpie tucked against it. “He’s not wearing it. Too hot today.”

“I’d be honored.” Jeremiah takes the jersey, still kneeling, and smooths it flat against his leg. He signs it slow and deliberate, like it deserves better than a scrawl.

Then he holds it out to Mason, and that’s when the kid’s whole face crumples and tears flood down his cheeks.

Jeremiah doesn’t stand. He just opens his arms from where he’s kneeling, and Mason shuffles straight into them, tears running down his cheeks, jersey clutched between them.

“Hey.” Jeremiah’s voice goes low. “Thank you for coming to say hi to me. That took guts.”

When they finally pull back for the photo, Mason is still fully starstruck, cheeks wet, and he poses anyway with the biggest, toothiest grin I’ve ever seen on a human being, his whole face gone red. It’s the cutest thing I have ever witnessed in my adult life.

Mason’s mother mouths thank you at him over her son’s head. Jeremiah just nods and smiles.

He stands and ruffles Mason’s hair before we keep walking.

“That was really sweet,” I finally manage.

“I love kids.” Jeremiah says it like that settles the matter, like he hasn’t just wrecked me a little.

Boy Scout doesn’t begin to cover it.

A while later, we eat kettle corn out of the same bag, which feels more intimate than it has any right to. We talk about nothing, and everything, for what might be two hours and might be four, because time has apparently stopped being a real thing that applies to me today.

“Tell me something about yourself,” I say at one point. “Something… quirky.”

He scrunches his nose. “Quirky?”

“Yeah, you know. Something that doesn’t make its way into the sports page. Maybe something embarrassing. I’ll go first if it helps. I have to sing the alphabet song in my head every time I brush my teeth. Once through for each quadrant of my mouth. It’s a ritual now. Even as an adult.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” he says. “Like you’re timing yourself.”

“Exactly. Now your turn.”

He thinks for a bit then says, “Well, speaking of songs, when I was a kid, I thought the first line from the national anthem was ‘Jose can you see?’ and I always wondered what Jose was supposed to be looking at.”

I find that endearingly amusing, and that opens the conversation to all sorts of memories.

He tells me about growing up in Mexico City, about a Jr. Kings program and an abuela who runs the family like a small, terrifying government. He talks about her like you’d talk about a benevolent dictator, equal parts reverence and fear, and I get the strong impression he’s been swatted with her wooden spoon more than once and lived to tell the tale. He talks about her amazing cooking. Sunday dinners that run four hours minimum. A cousin who once smuggled actual fireworks into a piñata at a christening and set off somebody’s sprinkler system.

“Does your mom cook too?” I ask, already craving his grandmother’s tamales.

He snorts. “My mother has never cooked a meal in her life. She barely eats solid food during pilot season.” A small laugh escapes him, something almost fond sneaking in under the sarcasm.

“She’s a pilot?”

“She’s an actress.”

“Ohhh,” I say suddenly feeling stupid for not understanding what pilot season means.

“She was a telenovela star, mostly, back when the parts still came in. The idea of her standing at a stove is…“ He shakes his head, laughing again. ”Genuinely the funniest thing you’ve said all day.“

“But that must have been the coolest thing, your mom being a TV star.”

“Not really.” He says it easy, no weight to it, like he’s reporting weather somewhere he doesn’t live anymore. “She didn’t want anything to do with me. I once overheard her say having a kid cramps her style.”

“Oh no she didn’t!”

“It’s actually not the worst thing she’s ever said, to be honest. She was all about moving up in her career. She gave me up as a baby and my dad had full custody. I lived in Mexico City with him. But he’d send me to Miami to spend time with my mother every summer. The whole summer, and I’d only see her in passing once or twice.”

Now I really feel bad for bringing it up. “I’m so sorry.”

“Ah it’s no big deal. My dad has very serious opinions about work ethic, and honestly? I got the better deal.” He shrugs, nothing performative about it. “I don’t carry it around like some sad violin thing. It just is what it is. Worked out fine.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think your mom made the best decision for you, even though it was for selfish reasons.”

“I think so, too.”

“Even though you didn’t get to rub elbows with movie stars growing up. But I guess you’re a celebrity now so…”

“Oh there were plenty of celebrities at my dad’s house. He’s a producer for TeleMundial. It wasn’t uncommon to see directors, actors, sportscasters, you name it, in my living room on a random Tuesday.”

“Hmmm. I think you had a weirder childhood than me.”

He laughs and insists I give him my complete history and I tell him what I can without sounding like a complete hobo. I tell him about how we lived like gypsies in a trailer for a while until we finally settled in Bay Ridge (if you can call it settling). I tell him about Vin’s Diner with the best pancakes on the East Coast, carefully avoiding every detail that would send him running for the hills. He asks what I actually do for a living and I say “logistics,” which is not, strictly speaking, a lie.

“Logistics for what industry?”

“Boutique. Very niche. Mostly inconveniencing big bad corporations.”

He studies me a second too long, like he’s working up to something. “So pickpocketing,” he says finally. “It’s just a hobby of yours?”

Okay here it is.

“Oh, I’m totally not a pickpocket.” I say it easy, like a woman with nothing to hide, which, to be honest, I hire Rue for that job so there.

“Just watches off the wrists of unsuspecting hockey players,” he deadpans.

I suppose this was an inevitable conversation. Addressing the elephant in the room, so to speak. Can we go back to talking about absent mothers, please?

“You caught me on an off-day.”

“Because usually you’d get away with it.”

“I was going to give it back!”

He gives me the side eye while we continue to walk around the festival. There’s a knowing grin on that ridiculously handsome face of his, and I get the feeling he’s more curious than judgmental, so that’s a relief at least. Still, I want to justify myself somehow. Like trying to prove something to him.

I’m not a bad person, Mister Goody Two-Shoes, I swear!

“Okay, you want the story? Here it is. My dad thought it was a useful skill to teach a kid.” I shrug, realizing how ludicrous that sounds. “I was like Gavroche in Les Mis. You know…” I launch into a poor rendition of that song “What Little People Can Do.” “That kind of thing.”

“So you were essentially a tiny French revolutionary.”

“Exactly. I mean, once I realized it wasn’t exactly kosher, I told him I wasn’t going to do it any more and he was fine with it.”

We continue past the stage where a tribute band is playing “Coming to America” by Neil Diamond just as a formation of military planes streak over the Washington Monument. We pause, watching the spectacle with a healthy measure of awe. I’ve always liked air shows, how the Blue Angels do those spins and tricks in the sky.

After they finish their pass, Jeremiah gets in line for cotton candy, saying it’s not a proper festival without it. As we wait, he admits he doesn’t really care for it that much. Too much sugar. But it’s kind of a childhood pastime, so he makes a point to get one to share to keep with tradition or whatever.

I wholeheartedly agree and tell him so, but I feel like I still need to continue where I left off, if only to explain how my own childhood pastime doesn’t exactly define who I am as an adult. (Or maybe it does. I’m still figuring that out.)

“For the record,” I whisper so the other people in line don’t get any weird ideas. “I don’t actually steal from innocent people on the street. I think of it as more of a public service. A little awareness training. Somebody drops their wallet, and I find it for them.”

“Drops their wallet, huh? Like right into your sticky fingers, you mean.”

“Look, I know you don’t believe me but it’s not something I do for kicks when I’m bored. It was just that one time you happened to be there.”

“Hmmm.”

“People walk around clueless with all their stuff hanging out of unzipped bags or their phone in their back pockets all the time.” I gesture around me to prove my point. Sure enough, there are at least three women with their purses wide open, just sitting on top of strollers while their attention is anywhere but that purse. He nods in acknowledgement. “What I was offering was a free lesson in situational awareness.”

“So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”

I wince and give him my best “whatta ya gonna do” smile with all my teeth.

He tips his head, something warm and amused settling into it. “I didn’t need the lesson, though, did I?”

“No,” I admit. “You really didn’t.”

I did.

He lets it go, and I feel the tiniest flicker of guilt that I mostly manage to smother with the cotton candy.

By the time the sun starts sinking into that gold, syrupy hour before dusk, the lawn in front of the Washington Monument has filled in with blankets and coolers and lawn chairs. There is no grass space left. There is barely air space left.

“This is insane,” Jeremiah says, surveying the crowd.

“I know a place.”

He looks at me. “Why do I feel like that sentence should worry me?”

“Because it should, a little.” I grin. “Come on.”

I lead him two blocks off the Mall to a building I scouted before I found the loft. There’s a fire escape around back, half-hidden by a dumpster and a truly heroic amount of ivy. It might be illegal. It is, generously, a gray area.

“Up,” I say.

“Up,” he repeats, like the word personally offends him. “You’re serious?”

“You’re a professional athlete. Athlete up.”

He goes first, because apparently chivalry survives even fire escapes, muttering something in Spanish about what I think translates to this being the craziest thing he’s ever done, and I choose to interpret that as a compliment. I follow, one flag sock catching on a rusted rung and tearing clean through at the ankle, which I decide is a small, patriotic sacrifice for a good view.

Five flights later we’re standing on a flat gravel roof with a view straight down the Mall, monuments lit gold from the setting sun, the crowd below a shifting sea of red and white and blue, small enough now to look almost peaceful, like a flag someone forgot to fold up.

He unties his jersey from around my waist and lays it flat on the gravel. We sit shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, waiting for the sky to do something for a long, peaceful silence, bellies full of corn dogs and cotton candy.

“It seems unfair,” he says, after a minute. “You know my name and I don’t know yours.”

“I rather like that dynamic.”

I stand, stretch, walk a few steps toward the ledge to look at the crowd, mostly because sitting that close to him for one more second was going to require me to say something regrettable. I don’t get far. His hand closes around my wrist, gentle, sure, exactly the way it did the very first time, and he spins me so my back meets his chest, my whole body suddenly and thoroughly in his gravitational field.

“Tell me your name,” he says, low into the shell of my ear, and there is nothing gentlemanly about that voice.

“Where’s the mystery in that?” I deflect, hiding the absolute riot happening in my whole body.

His breath is warm and sweet against my neck. “I can’t very well keep calling you Sticky Fingers.”

I laugh, loud, undignified, the kind of laugh that would get me kicked out of fancy restaurants. “Is that what you’ve been calling me? In those lurid dreams of yours?”

He doesn’t deny it.

He doesn’t deny it. My mind takes that fact and runs several unauthorized laps with it. Does he lie there at night thinking about me the way I lie there thinking about him, replaying all our encounters like it’s the highlight reel of this whole year?

“Not Dangerous?” I ask, because I genuinely like that nickname for me.

“That too.”

“So you have been thinking about me.”

He turns us so we’re facing each other and just smiles. Doesn’t confirm it, doesn’t deny it, just lets the smile do the talking, and honestly, that’s more confirmation than words would’ve been.

“Okay then,” he says. “What do you suggest I call you?”

Here’s the thing about my name. It’s the one honest thing I’ve got left to give him in a summer built almost entirely out of half-truths and strategic omissions. He doesn’t know what I do. He doesn’t know about the Friendship Jewel, or the provenance letters, or the fact that this whole gorgeous, corn-dog-scented day started as reconnaissance for a heist. But my name. My name I can hand over free and clear. So I do.

“America,” I say.

He scoffs. Actually scoffs, a full-body, disbelieving sound. “America.”

I shrug, like it’s just another odd fact about myself, filed somewhere between allergic to bees and cannot parallel park to save my life. “Born on the Fourth of July. Remember?”

He gives me a deadpan stare. “Okay. I get it. I’ll play along.”

“What? That’s my name.”

“Riiiight.”

“It is.”

“Okay.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Oh, honey.” His mouth twitches. “Lying wouldn’t be the worst of your crimes.”

Crimes. If only he knew how right he is.

“I’m not a common thief, you know,” I say, mostly to buy myself a second to recover.

“I know.” His eyes hold mine, warm, a little too knowing. “There’s absolutely nothing common about you. America the beautiful.”

“Clever. That’s literally what it says on my birth certificate, so joke’s on you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. The-Beautiful is my middle name.” (It’s not) I tip my chin up. “What’s yours?”

“Adrián.”

I go quiet for a second, caught off guard in a way I don’t fully understand until the word settles. “Oh. That’s… actually beautiful.”

A beat.

“And?” he says.

“And what?”

“I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“I don’t have one.” I mean it, which surprises me almost as much as it seems to surprise him. “It’s a beautiful name. Jeremiah Adrián Precio. It just rolls off the tongue.”

He looks at me like nobody’s ever said that to him before and meant it, and something in my chest does a full, undignified cartwheel, right as the first firework goes up.

He doesn’t let go of my hand. Just tugs, gentle, until we’re both dropping back down onto the flattened jersey, both of us tipping our heads up to the sky.

The fireworks completely bombard the entire city with gold and white. A huge chrysanthemum blooms into a thousand trailing sparks and the whole Mall below us gasps in unison. Three rockets shoot off in three different directions at once, bursting into something that looks like a red, white, and blue smiley face, lopsided and delighted with itself, and I laugh out loud before I can stop it. Fireworks are launching from ten different sites from the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to barges in the Potomac. The whole sky is lit up, blinking gold and red like somebody hung Christmas lights and they just exploded everywhere. The air smells like sulfur and summer and brings back the best memories of my childhood, when I used to watch the show from the roof of my dad’s trailer.

“My dad used to tell me they were just for me,” I say, before I can stop myself. “The fireworks. For my birthday. This whole insane production, orchestrated in my honor.”

“That’s sweet, actually.” He says it softly. “That he wanted to make them special for you.”

I watch a gold one unfurl overhead and chuckle at the memory. “It’s embarrassing how long I chose to believe it. Like, deep into double-digit birthdays long. I was doing long division and still thought Congress had personally signed off on a pyrotechnics budget for one specific eleven-year-old.”

He just watches me for a second, something quiet and warm settling into his face, like he’s been handed something small and is deciding how carefully to hold it.

“That’s a good dad move,” he says finally.

I just watch the sky do its thing and let myself, for one indulgent second, believe it a little bit again.

“Yeah,” I say after a minute. “It really was.”

The show goes on for what feels like forty minutes. They really pulled out all the stops for America 250. There isn’t a vacant spot in the DC skyline and it’s simply breathtaking. I watch, transfixed, mouth probably hanging open in a way that is not remotely cool, and it takes me embarrassingly long to notice Jeremiah isn’t watching the sky at all.

He’s watching me.

“What?” I ask, suddenly, stupidly self-conscious, like I’ve got mustard on my chin.

“You,” he says, simple as that. “I’m mesmerized. Watching you watch this like it really is all for your birthday.” His voice drops, rougher now. “Your face. The way it lights up. That smile you get, wide and completely artless.”

Artless. If only he knew how much art goes into every single thing I do. Not this, though. This is just me, on a rooftop, with a hockey player looking at me like I hung the moon and possibly also invented the color gold.

“I like you,” he says. Plain. Unarmored. No jokes hiding behind it.

Well. There it is. Three words, delivered matter-of-factly, and my brain short-circuits so thoroughly I lose access to every clever thing I’ve ever said in my entire life.

“I like you too,” I say, which is, objectively, the least impressive sentence I have ever produced under pressure. It’s also the most honest one.

The finale goes off, huge and thunderous, above us flares gold, then white, then breaks into my favorite kind, a slow deliberate bloom that ignites all at once into a thousand sparkling diamonds, like the sky reached into a jewelry case and shook it out.

His mouth is a whisper away, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his skin, and for one full second everything, the noise, the crowd, the whole spinning world, narrows down to the two inches between his mouth and mine.

My pulse is already outrunning the fireworks, thudding somewhere in my throat, and I can’t tell anymore if it’s the noise or him doing that to me. Probably both. Almost certainly him.

I angle my body toward him without deciding to. He turns toward me at the exact same second, like we planned it, like some part of both of us has been counting down to this moment.

His hand finds my jaw. Barely there at first, just his knuckles, grazing my cheekbone like he’s not sure he’s allowed, and then his palm settles fully against my skin, warm, steady, and every nerve ending I own reports for duty at once. The gravel digs into my palms. I don’t care. Somewhere below us, an entire city is watching the sky, and up here it’s just the two of us and this one small, electric distance closing itself inch by inch.

I can feel his breath before I feel anything else, warm against my mouth. His thumb moves along my jaw, slow, like he’s memorizing the shape of it, and my brain, usually so reliable, so full of exit strategies and contingency plans, goes completely, gloriously blank.

This is the best birthday I have ever had, I think, distantly, dizzily. This is the best birthday of my entire life and he hasn’t even kissed me yet.

Then… boom.

A firework shrieks up from the street directly below us, way too close.

Definitely illegal. Probably teenagers.

It detonates practically level with the rooftop in a deafening crack of red, blue, and gold, and so loud it rattles straight through my chest and startles us both back a full foot. A dog somewhere loses its entire mind. Two car alarms go off in overlapping intervals. Somewhere below, people are hooting and applauding, and drinking too much Jack Daniels.

Jeremiah’s hand is still on my jaw, but the spell is broken, shattered clean through, and when I catch my breath, catch his eyes, catch my senses… some small, cowardly part of me is almost relieved.

Good, I think, and I hate how much I mean it. It’s better this way. I have no business kissing a man like him. He has no business kissing a girl like me.

I laugh instead, shaky, and duck my face into his shoulder so he can’t see what that thought costs me.

“That one was definitely not signed off by Congress.” I say, breathless.

“But it’s still just for you,” he says, voice rough. “For your birthday.”

And neither of us mentions how close we just came, or how loud my heart is still going, long after the fireworks stopped.

12

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

The Gala Plan — Daniel Pemberton

Hacking the Met — Daniel Pemberton

Suri and Tanya are currently inside the Bellenden Museum of American History right now, actually doing their job while all I want to do is daydream about the perfect day I had yesterday. Okay, almost perfect. Perfect would have been topped off by an uninterrupted kiss, but that just wasn’t in the cards. It will never be in the cards, unfortunately, and I don’t know how to feel about the rock that forms in my throat whenever I think about it. Which is always.

“Guard’s doing a loop,” Zoe murmurs in my earpiece. “He’s looked at you twice now.”

I mumble back, trying not to move my mouth. “I’m reading a book on a public bench. This is the least suspicious thing I’ve done all year.”

“You’ve been reading the same paragraph for six minutes, Erica. Turn the page occasionally. Sell it.”

I turn the page. I have no idea what happened on it. Something about mist, and marshlands and possibly a criminal in a cemetery. If I were more gothic, I could lurk in cemeteries instead of a museum on a hot day in July. Anyway…

“Keep your eyes on scan,” I say behind the cover of the open book. “How are we on indoor cameras?”

“Looped and gorgeous.”

Zoe is three blocks away, parked in a van that says DC METRO WATER SERVICES on the side. Inside the van, she’s surrounded by more monitors than a NASA control room. She’s plugged into the security camera feed both inside the museum and the grounds outside and can see my every move. A crunch in my ear tells me she’s eating her fourth bag of pretzel M&Ms today. I can’t see her, but I know a pretzel M&M crunch when I hear it.

“Do you mind?” I say. “We can all hear you eating.”

“Ah the joys of being the girl in the van,” she says, taking another mouthful.

“It is a little distracting,” Tanya says.

Suri agrees. “It’s making me hungry.”

The BMAH doesn’t let visitors near the Friendship Jewel with anything sharper than a museum-issued golf pencil. No phones out. No bags past the second checkpoint. Which means we can’t waltz in with a laser scanner.

Rude.

That’s why Suri and Tanya are posing as regular, run-of-the-mill museum visitors. Suri went in dressed like a Manga college student complete with pleated skirt, knee socks, and a cardigan buttoned to the second-to-top button. I thought it was a bit much for a sweltering July morning, but she’s totally into the bit.

Tanya’s playing a chatty tourist with a guidebook and an alarming amount of enthusiasm for the gift shop. She’s wearing a plastic hair clip that Zoe spent an embarrassing amount of hours getting it to look just right. Inside the hair clip is a lens smaller than a poppy seed and an infrared burst emitter that pulses in patterns no human eye would notice and no metal detector would flag. Every time Tanya tilts her head, she’s taking another slice of the necklace, and every slice beams straight to Zoe’s laptop, three blocks away, assembling itself into a 3D file good enough for Suri to forge from without ever laying a finger on the real thing.

The only design flaw is the signal.

The hair clip broadcasts short-range, on a frequency built to look, to any security system scanning for anomalies, exactly like a hearing aid pairing with a phone, the least suspicious signal in the world, because nobody flags an old man’s Bluetooth as a threat to a national treasure. The trade-off is range. A hundred feet, maybe one-fifty on a good day. Plus, the museum’s walls are thick enough to eat most short-range signals whole. Something has to sit between Tanya and the van, close enough to the museum’s stone exterior to catch the signal and pass it along.

That is why I’m sitting here holding a paperback copy of Great Expectations with a signal booster sewn into its spine that Zoe MacGyvered into existence. (I wouldn’t be surprised if she made it out of floral wire and a foil gum wrapper.)

It’s very Ocean’s Eight of us. Tanya has said as much twice already and Zoe has agreed both times with the enthusiasm of a girl who has been waiting her whole life to be Cate Blanchett.

“Tanya, baby, a little to the left,” Zoe says now, and I hear it live in my earpiece.

“Your other left,” Zoe adds.

“There isn’t an other left, Zoe, there’s only one left, that’s the whole point of left.”

“There is when you’re a disaster who mixes it up under pressure. Tilt. Tilt. There. Hold it, hold it, gorgeous, hold it right there.”

I picture Tanya standing very still in front of a glass case, the top of her head pointed at the Friendship Jewel like she’s threading a needle with her skull. It should not be as funny as it is. I bite down on a laugh and keep my face in the book.

“I would like it noted for the record,” Tanya says, strained and cheerful at once. “That one of you ladies is going to buy me a spa massage session by the end of this.”

“You can have sixteen point five million massages if we all pull this off, so stay focused, ladies.”

I glance around to make sure that the security guard from earlier isn’t around to hear me.

“A massage costs more than a dollar,” I hear Ivy say.

“How did Ivy get in on this channel?” Suri says.

“I’m in the van.”

“Me too,” says another voice.

“Rue? Is that you?”

“The one and only. Who do you think keeps supplying Zoe with candy?”

Great. The whole gang’s here.

“Please tell me you bought it with cash money,” I say.

Radio silence.

“Rue?”

Still nothing. She’s going to make me use her full name like I’m her mother.

“PRUDENCE ELIZABETH FRASSATI.”

“Yes, yes, I paid for it and everything. Proud of me?”

“Nominally.”

Suri’s voice cuts in, quieter. “Whoever set these sapphires in the eighteen hundreds had better tools than my dentist. Look at this bezel. I want to cry a little.”

“Please don’t cry on the display case.”

“The clarity on this stone.” A pause, wistful. “It’s giving Edwardian dream girl.”

“Zoe, are you getting all of this?” Tanya hisses. “I feel a sneeze coming on.”

“Almost there. I’ve got thirty scans and exactly zero photographs of anyone’s actual face because I am extremely good at my job. Security camera loop’s holding steady too. Anyone reviews today’s footage, they’ll see nothing happening because I am extremely good at my job. You’re welcome.”

“How much longer?”

“Ten more passes. Take two steps to your right but keep your head in the same position.”

“UGH!” Tanya groans.

Suri’s voice cuts back in, low. “Museum staff doing a walkthrough. Going quiet.”

Then silence from all our comms, like we’re all holding our breath. I count in my head. One Mississippi. Ten Mississippi. At thirty, Tanya’s voice, easy and bright.

“Oh, I didn’t know. Sorry. No thank you! Have a nice day.”

A man’s voice, muffled, pleasant. Footsteps.

“He’s gone,” Tanya reports. “There are lines painted on the floor we’re not supposed to cross.”

“Okay we need to wrap this up.” I say. “Zoe, status.”

“Four minutes.”

“Not fast enough.”

“You can’t rush perfection.”

I adjust my spine and keep my eyes on the page, which I am absolutely not reading. We need to get out of here before we’re made.

Zoe starts singing, something she does to help her focus and calm her nerves. Maybe I should adopt that practice. What song would I sing? Maybe that 4 Non Blondes song I was joking with Jeremiah about. Unfortunately, I would turn more than a few heads if I started screaming, “What’s going on?” at the top of my lungs.

A shadow falls over the paperback.

“Well,” says a voice above me, low and pleased with itself in a way that makes every hair on my arms stand up before I’ve even looked up. “If it isn’t the jailbird’s daughter.”

I don’t look up. I turn the page, deliberately, like I haven’t heard a word, like the single most interesting paragraph in nineteenth-century literature is happening directly in front of me. I even lift the book an inch higher, which, in hindsight, fools exactly nobody.

A hand closes over the top of the book and plucks it clean out of my grip.

“Great Expectations?” He turns it over, reading the cover and lets out a dry huff that’s supposed to pass for a laugh. “Fitting.”

“Do you mind,” I say, finally looking up, aiming for bored instead of murderous. “I was at a good part.”

It’s been six years, and Dennis Hobbs still hasn’t figured out that a comb-over fools exactly nobody.

“Oh were you?” He flips it shut with theatrical flair.

“Hey. You lost my place.” I lunge for it but he just holds it higher out of my reach, like a bully on the playground.

“Hello, America,” he simply says.

“You’re not allowed to call me that,” I say, standing up slow, buying myself a second to think. “Only people I trust get to call me that.”

Like a hockey player I barely know, apparently. One very dashing hockey player who almost kissed me last night.

“You didn’t seem to mind it when you were eighteen,” he says, with a creepy grin sliding along his face. Then tosses my book onto the sidewalk, where it lands spine-up and splayed like roadkill. So Gaston-coded but without the muscles.

There goes my booster. Excellent. Wonderful. Love this for me.

“Erica? Erica, what’s happening?” Zoe’s voice, sharper now, right in my ear. “I’m losing pass twenty. Signal’s weak. What’s going on out there? Who’s that guy?”

I don’t answer her. I can’t, not with Dennis Hobbs standing eight inches away, tracking every twitch on my face like it’s evidence.

“I minded a lot of things when I was eighteen,” I say. “You couldn’t read the room.”

The way I can fake vibrato astounds me. Inside, I’m still that eighteen year old studying for midterms on my bed when a man ten years my senior walked in and shut the door.

“Oh, please.” He steps closer, and I make myself hold my ground instead of backing up, because backing up is what he wants. “All those times you asked me for help with Art History.”

“That was not an invitation. I was a teenager.”

“You were legal.”

“And you were already showing signs of male pattern baldness.” I give his hairline a slow, unbothered once-over. I don’t let the shudder show.

“Your dad ruined it. You know that. And it was all your fault. It didn’t have to be that way.”

Something in my chest goes very still and very cold. “I wasn’t interested when I was eighteen. I’m not interested now.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” His mouth curls. “The only thing I’m interested in is seeing you behind bars.”

“Too bad for you.” I lift my chin. “We just celebrated this being a free country yesterday, and I’m minding my own business, reading a book. In this free country.”

“You’re up to something. I’ll find out soon enough.”

“Hope you like waiting.”

He’s in my face now. “That necklace is guarded twenty-four seven. Even more now than when your father tried for it.” His eyes flick over me, cataloguing. “You think you’re going to get close?”

“You know what I want, Dennis.” I keep my voice level. “And it’s not the necklace.”

Something flickers behind his eyes, quick, involuntary, gone almost before I catch it. He doesn’t know what I know.

“I suppose you’re referring to some imaginary letters.” He laughs, an ugly little bark. “They don’t exist, sweetheart.”

“I’m not your sweetheart.” I snap, moving left, toward the book on the sidewalk.

He steps into my path before I get there, and the space between us shrinks fast, and I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him instead of his collar.

“You’re just one little slip-up away from landing ten to twenty in the federal pen,” he says, low, right up in my face, close enough that I get a full, unfiltered hit of his breath. Coffee and something sour. Ew. Ew, ew, ew. “And I will be right there. Enjoying the show.”

He backs me up until my spine hits the railing. Cold iron against my shoulder blades, nowhere left to go, his hand braced on the rail beside my hip like a cage.

“I’m not scared of you.”

“You should be.” He says it lightly, and that’s almost worse than if he’d shouted it. “I saw you in May, you know. Standing half a block down, watching the front steps of the museum like you thought I wouldn’t recognize a face I’ve spent six years waiting to see again.”

Something cold drops straight through the floor of my stomach.

I told Sal he didn’t see me. I turned the corner before I was made. I was almost certain.

He completely invades my space now, close enough that I have to bend backward over the railing just to keep any distance at all, one finger pointed an inch from my nose.

“I can’t prove a thing yet. But I will. So you don’t waste your time being clever with me.”

I turn my head and squint, preparing for… I’m not sure what. Then a blur of blue and white and tan skin and Dennis is off me with a decisive thud as strong, confident hands push him sideways.

“Get your hands off her.”

I look up and it’s Jeremiah. Sweat-damp T-shirt, headphones looped around his neck, breathing like a man who’s run six miles and could run six more. It’s a genuinely unfair amount of attractive to bring to a life-threatening museum confrontation. He steps into the space between me and Dennis Hobbs, and something in his voice drops half an octave into a deep register.

“Everything okay here?” He scans my face, looking for any signs of distress.

“Just having a conversation,” Hobbs says, hands up, all charm again, the museum-curator smile sliding back into place like he never took it off. “No trouble here.”

“I didn’t ask you.” Jeremiah doesn’t even look at him when he says it. He’s looking at me. “I asked her.”

Hobbs’s eyes travel up, and up, taking in the shoulders, the height, the general structural integrity of the man, and decides to take a small step back.

“Guys… hello? Can anyone hear me? Is that…” Zoe’s voice crashes back through the static, breathless. “Wait. Is that El Señor Hottie?”

I don’t answer her. I can’t. I’m too busy watching. My show’s on.

“Are you okay?” Jeremiah asks me softly.

“Fine,” I manage.

“Who is this?” Hobbs says, straightening his jacket, trying to recover some composure and mostly failing. “Boyfriend?”

“Doesn’t matter who I am.” Jeremiah’s voice is all hard steel as he turns menacingly toward Dennis. “You put your hands anywhere near her again and we’re going to have a very different conversation.”

For one long second nobody moves, and I cannot tell if I’m about to watch a professional hockey player start an actual fight on federal museum property, which would be, historically speaking, an excellent distraction and also a catastrophe.

Something calculating crosses Hobbs’ face before the bravado slams back down over it.

“Go back to Mexico,” he says.

The words land ugly and loud. My whole body goes rigid with fury.

Jeremiah doesn’t even blink.

“Charming. Truly. For the record, I’d love to go to Mexico. The weather’s great this time of year. Beaches are unreal. Maybe when I go, I’ll bring my very American gold medal with me.”

“Ohh.” Hobbs’s smile turns sour and knowing. “You’re one of those.”

“Stop it, Dennis,” I say.

Jeremiah takes one step forward, chest inches from Hobbs’s face, and Hobbs, to his credit, doesn’t run, which is either brave or stupid, and given everything I know about this man, I’m betting stupid.

“One of those, what?” Jeremiah asks, letting the word ‘what’ slap like I’m sure he wants to do to Hobbs.

"One of those hockey players," Hobbs says, triumphant, like he’s just solved a crossword. “Here for that tournament.” He looks back at me, delighted with himself. “Ohhh. It’s all starting to make sense now.”

Jeremiah squares his shoulders, appearing even taller somehow. “I suggest you leave before I have to call someone to physically remove you.”

“Ha! See this?” Hobbs jabs two fingers at a badge clipped to his belt, puffing his chest out like it’s a medal of its own. “This gets me into anywhere I want in DC. Try that with your gold medal, brainless jock.”

“Whoa,” Jeremiah says, low, and I can hear the leash on his temper fraying by the syllable.

“Hobbs. Stop.” My voice comes out squeakier than I mean it to.

“Oh, it’s last names now, is it?” Hobbs’s gaze slides back to me, slow and deliberate. “Armitage.”

He lifts two fingers to his own eyes and then points them at me, an ugly little I’m watching you gesture, and even though every instinct in my body wants to bolt, I make myself stand there and take it, chin up, because flinching is a gift I’m not giving him twice in one lifetime.

He backs up, straightens his jacket one more unnecessary time, and disappears down the sidewalk without looking back. I watch him go until he turns the corner, until my shoulders finally unlock from somewhere up near my ears.

Jeremiah bends down, retrieves Great Expectations off the concrete, and brushes the cover off before he straightens up.

Then he hugs me, and suddenly I’m folded against a chest, solid and warm. His heartbeat is going hard and fast right under my ear as his arms come around me slow and careful like I might startle if he moves too quickly. And I realize, somewhere in the part of my brain that isn’t currently short-circuiting, that I cannot remember the last time someone hugged me like this.

This is a whole-body cocoon, and I sink into it before I decide to, and the protective shell in my chest, the shell I built a long time ago out of spite and self-preservation and plain loneliness starts to give way at the seams. Just a little.

I have been running my whole life. Restless, three steps ahead of whoever might be behind me, because stopping has never once felt safe. And for one long, unguarded minute I let myself have this.

Here, held against a man who I’ve only truly known for the better part of a week, I feel safe.

I pull back before I do something humiliating, like cry on a national landmark’s front steps.

“Are you okay?” he asks again, ducking his head to look at me properly.

“Fine,” I say, steadier this time. Mostly. The word comes out clipped and unconvincing even to me, and I’m the one saying it. My hands are still shaking. I curl them into fists so he won’t see.

“Who was that guy?”

Say something. Anything. Not the truth.

“Nobody. Just someone I used to know.”

Jeremiah’s jaw tightens, and something dark passes behind his eyes. “If he bothers you again, you tell me. I mean it. I will find him.”

“Jeremiah, it’s fine.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

It does not land convincingly.

“Because,” he says slowly, and there’s something rough at the edges of his voice now. “And I want to be very clear about this. Contrary to what hockey players’ reputations might suggest, I am not a fighter. I don’t start things. I barely finish the things other people start.”

“Okay.”

“But.” He takes a dramatic pause. “I do have cousins. A lot of cousins. And I can make a phone call right now, this second, and by tomorrow morning that man will have a very loud and very persistent Spanish-speaking presence in his life that he did not ask for and will not enjoy.”

I laugh. I don’t mean to. It just happens, a full, undignified laugh that surprises both of us, and something in my chest that’s been wound tight all morning finally lets go.

“I’m fine, Jeremiah. Really. But since you’re here, and you clearly have nothing better to do than threaten strangers on my behalf…” I nod toward the street, toward the little cart two blocks down that’s been doing brisk business all week. “You could buy me an ice cream.”

He blinks. Then grins, slow, like the sun coming up. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I can do that.”

He falls into step beside me, presses the recovered book back into my hands, and glances back once toward the museum doors like he’s cataloguing the building itself as a threat. Something about that, the fact that he’s still half-braced for a fight he already won, does something unhelpful to my pulse.

“Well,” Zoe says in my ear, apparently fully recovered from her signal-loss crisis and back to her regularly scheduled programming. “That was hot. Go get that gala invite. And a little somethin’ somethin’, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m turning you off now,” I mutter, and click the earpiece dead.

Jeremiah glances over. “What?”

“Uh. Seeing me like this. It must be such a turn-off.”

“Why would you say that?” He looks entirely too pleased with himself. “Damsel in distress? That’s basically catnip.”

He full-on smiles, and something about the shift, breezy and jovial after everything that just happened, does something complicated to my chest.

“I’ve got the women’s team’s Game One tonight, actually,” he says as we approach the ice cream cart. “I’m supposed to be there. You should come. As my guest.”

For one unguarded second I actually consider it, actually picture myself in the stands next to him, cheering for a team I have no personal stake in whatsoever, and it’s such a lovely picture that I have to shut it down fast before I get attached to it.

“Can’t tonight,” I say. “Girls’ trip stuff. You know how it is.”

Which is, again, technically true, in the sense that my girls and I do in fact have stuff planned for tonight.

“Ice cream, though,” I add. “I’m not turning down ice cream.”

“Ice cream it is.”

13

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

La Bomba — Ricky Martin

The anthem’s last note hasn’t even finished dying before fifteen thousand people at National Arena try to out-scream each other, and my brain, running on a completely different schedule than the rest of me, picks that exact second to drift into thoughts of… her. To wonder if she’s okay.

I haven’t seen her in three days. Not since that guy and his badge and his comb-over planted himself in her personal space and said something to her that turned her face a color I never want to see on her again. Not since I felt her shaking against my ribs while she told me, straight-faced, that he was nobody.

Nobody doesn’t make a grown woman go that quiet.

Colt leans over during the anthem’s last bars, doesn’t even bother whispering. "You've had a faraway look all warmups. Is it a girl?"

I scoff. “It’s always a girl with you.”

“Because it’s always a girl, period.” He taps his stick against my skate and lines up. “Go win the thing. Therapy’s after.”

Houlihan wins the draw clean over Levi, and my night officially starts, because unlike Colt, the game does not care what I’m thinking about.

We came in confident. We should. Monday’s blowout over these guys had the whole team walking taller in the hallway all week, rookies doing a strut they think nobody’s noticed. I noticed. I did it too, a little. Apparently I’m still capable of a strut.

Jake takes the puck up the wing early, all elbows and purpose, and gets stuffed by their goalie, Davis, who I happen to know is playing tonight in a pair of lucky lime green socks under his gear because Bryce spent all of warmups trying to get a look.

We cycle back to the bench for a change, and Bryce is still going on about it two seats down.

“He’s not going to let anything in with those socks,” Bryce says, dead serious, like this is science.

“They’re socks, Bryce.”

“They’re lucky socks.”

I don’t have time to argue superstition with a grown man, because we hop back over the boards for our next shift. Jake breaks in alone, snaps one top shelf, and the whole building comes up out of its seats like we just won the whole thing instead of one goal in a whole five-game tournament.

I got the secondary assist on that one, a saucer pass that found Stone’s stick before Stone found Jake, and Stone skates the length of the ice just to slap my helmet before we settle back on the bench.

“That’s a filthy little pass,” he says, dropping in next to me, breathing hard, grinning wider.

“You made it look good.”

“I make everything look good.” He says it without a shred of irony, which is exactly why it’s funny.

For about ninety seconds I let myself feel something uncomplicated.

It lasts exactly until Houlihan ties it off a cross-ice feed, snapping it past Josh before he can square up.

“Rocket” is what they call him, and he skates the celly like he invented hockey. I skate back to the bench next to Levi, who lost that draw and has been chewing on it since.

“You good?” I ask him.

“I will be.” He isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at Houlihan. “That guy’s insufferable.”

Get in line. There’s already somebody ahead of him tonight.

Second period, they take the lead. Sullivan one-times a feed from the left circle before anybody can get a stick on it, and just like that we’re down 2-1, and I’m standing at the blue line replaying a museum sidewalk instead of watching a scoring chance develop. A guy could get benched for less.

We get two power plays off their penalties, back to back, holding and tripping, and on the second one Bryce gets a clean look from the slot and fires it wide, wide enough that he immediately turns to the bench and mouths I know before anyone can say it.

“Lucky socks,” I tell him when he sits down.

“Don’t.”

Late in the period, it gets chippy. Dante takes a slashing minor, Houlihan answers with a roughing call thirty seconds later and we head to the room down one, 4-on-4 waiting for us at the top of the third.

Badaszek doesn’t raise his voice between periods. He just stands at the whiteboard with a marker he doesn’t uncap and looks at us until the room goes quiet on its own.

“We won Monday. Today, we’re playing like we just learned to walk.” He caps and uncaps the marker once. Twice. “Nobody in this room gets to be tired tonight. Precio.” He looks straight at me. “You’re half a step slow on the forecheck. Whatever it is, leave it in the room.”

“Yes, Coach.”

“Good.” He almost smiles, which for Badaszek is the equivalent of a standing ovation. “Go get it back.”

Two minutes and twenty-one seconds into the third, Dash slides me a pass off the half wall. I one-time it, slap shot, top corner, and the net moves before Davis does. We’re tied, and I have hope we can turn this game around.

And then my goal song hits.

“La Bomba” comes through the speakers, Ricky Martin at full volume, and somewhere in the upper deck a cluster of Mexican flags unfurl like they’d been waiting all night to do it, and I stand there getting mobbed by my own teammates. And even though I was born in Miami, I’m laughing, thinking one clear, stupid, proud thought.

Mexicans. We’re everywhere.

Dash tackles me into the boards, screaming something I can’t make out over the song, and half my teammates are pointing up at the flags like I personally arranged for them to be there. Somewhere in Arizona, Abuelo is watching this on a delay and standing up out of his recliner right about now, and somewhere closer, in a building I can’t see from the ice, I hope a certain brown-eyed girl is watching too, even though I have no reason to think she would be.

For four seconds, I forget about everything else entirely.

The lead doesn’t last. Marchand puts them back ahead with a snap shot off a feed from Houlihan, who has now scored, assisted, and taken a penalty in the same game. A Gordie Howe hat trick, like that’s supposed to make it hurt less.

Later in the game, it gets desperate in both directions. Nobody on either bench is sitting anymore. Tyson drives the net hard enough to earn Davis’s full attention and gets robbed point blank, glove side. At the other end, Brady fires a wrist shot that should go in, and Josh drops flat and kicks it out of the air. Yes!

Dante picks up a ten-minute misconduct with under three to play, which brings his night to fourteen penalty minutes and a look on Coach Badaszek’s face that I would not want directed at me.

We pull Josh in a desperate attempt to win with an extra attacker, but with the empty net, Reeves puts it away from center ice with sixteen seconds left. The horn goes off, and that's the game. 4-2. We lost, but the series is tied. We have to prove ourselves next match.

Downtrodden, we just skate off, and don’t stick around for the three stars, but I hear my own name over the tunnel speakers on my way to the locker room instead of on the ice.

Second star. One goal, one assist, and I still can’t stop thinking about her.

The locker room is quiet. That loss didn’t have to happen. Dante sits by his stall peeling tape off his stick, fourteen penalty minutes’ worth of regret on his face.

“Fourteen minutes, man,” Stone says, shaking his head and dropping onto the bench beside him. “You trying to set a record?”

“He hit me first.”

“Only because you chirped.” Stone claps him on the shoulder pad. “Ice it. We’ll get ’em Friday.”

Badaszek doesn’t say much on his way through, just a hand on a few shoulders, mine included, and a low “Two points tonight. Good game” that I’ll take, because I know for a fact he doesn’t say it when he doesn’t mean it.

Levi drops down across from me, still half in his gear, unwinding tape off his wrist in one long strip. “Houlihan again,” he mutters, mostly to himself.

“You’ll get him Friday.”

“I better.” He balls the tape up and throws it, missing the bin by a foot. Somebody two stalls down floats a whole game plan for Friday that boils down to “let Josh block everything again,” and nobody in the room has a better idea.

My phone lights up in my stall, the CC Boyz group chat lighting up with it.

Fletcher: 2-2 slapper?? traitor’s still got hands I guess

Hartley: told you leaving us would make you soft. clearly did not

Mitchell: proud of you man. Still on my honeymoon, in case anyone forgot

I type out a reply about the absolute bedlam that was Mitchell’s wedding, delete it, type out something about the goal instead, delete that too, and put the phone away without sending anything, because there’s exactly one person I actually want to talk to tonight and she isn’t in this chat.

I sign autographs outside in a hoodie and sneakers, hair still wet. A line of nine-year-olds who want signatures on programs is waiting for me and the other players. The line snakes halfway down the block, parents holding phones up like torches, somebody’s little brother asking if I know Josh personally like Josh is the famous one tonight. I like this part. I like it even tonight after a brutal loss.

A guy in a flag-print polo waits until I’ve signed his kid’s jersey to lean in like we’re sharing a secret.

“Heck of a season for America’s birthday, huh?” he says. “Funny, though. During the celebration. Flags going up in the stands that weren’t exactly, you know. American.”

I keep my expression exactly where it’s been all night. “I saw those. Nice to have fans from all over the world.”

“I’m curious about your goal song.” He says it like it’s the mystery of the century. “Didn’t catch the words. What language was that?”

“Spanish.” I hand his kid the pen back. “It’s a Ricky Martin song. You should look up the lyrics, they’re actually about dancing.”

I decide not to open the can of Ricky-Martin-is-technically-American worms. That flying to Puerto Rico is considered domestic travel. That it doesn’t matter anyway because I was born in Miami to Mexican parents and I love both countries.

“Just seems like a strange choice,” he says, not letting it drop. “During the two hundred fiftieth."

I just smile. That media smile I’ve seen my mother do a thousand times during TV interviews. “Have a good night, man.”

He doesn’t take the hint. “I’m just saying, some of us take the anniversary pretty seriously.”

I move on down the line and sign the next kid’s program, and the one after that, and by the time the line thins out, flag-polo guy is gone, and I offer up a little prayer for that poor kid of his.

When I arrive at the Four Seasons, the bar is still rockin' full of hockey players and league people. I take a table in the corner, order a seltzer because I don’t want anything blurring tonight, and down it in one go. I’m contemplating ordering another when Jayce Brady stops by with a beer in hand.

“Mind if I join you?” He tips his chin at the empty chair.

I gesture at it instead of answering, a quiet nod to the unspoken code back in Milan. Other Olympians are always welcome to the table. Even though we’re on opposing teams now, the code still stands.

Brady drops into the chair and lifts his glass. "Congrats on second star." Then he snorts a barely-concealed snicker. “Even though your team lost tonight.”

“Felt that one, did ya?”

The corner of his mouth kicks up. “That save Josh pulled didn’t hurt either.”

“Good guy. Doesn’t get enough ice time.”

Quiet settles for a second too long, which is usually when Brady starts fishing.

“Heard you’re headed to Irvine,” he says. “Brand new squad. Met anybody yet?”

“Not till camp starts. Right now it’s a bunch of press releases and an ungodly amount of merch left in my room.”

“Been there. Nonstop since the Olympics, for me too.” He turns his glass on the table without drinking from it. “My agent’s already texted twice about a date for the gala.”

There it is.

“Mine too, actually.” I stop, wondering why we can’t just go stag.

Then he asks if I have someone in mind, and the first face that pops into my head is her. Dangerous. Sticky Fingers. America. Or whatever her name really is.

“There’s this girl,” I say, almost to myself. Like my subconscious brain is control of my mouth now, and I have not been consulted.

He takes a sip of his beer, urging me to go on and I just word vomit. How she keeps turning up everywhere I go. How at this point I don’t know if the universe’s setting me up or messing with me.

“I asked her name once. Pretty sure what she gave me was made up on the spot.”

Brady laughs, short and rough. “Man, that’s not exactly a strong foundation.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I get it, though.” Whatever’s loose and performing about him drops for a second. “There’s somebody I might’ve already blown it with. Long story. I’m working on it.”

“That’s the worst kind of tough.”

“Yeah.” He studies me for a second like he’s about to ask something he shouldn’t, and I brace for a question about my mother I’m not going to answer tonight.

Instead, my eyes catch the lobby past his shoulder, and every other thought in my head clears out at once.

I’m on my feet before I’ve decided to stand, pulling bills out of my wallet and dropping them on the table.

“You good?” Brady asks.

“It’s her.” I’m already backing toward the lobby. “If I don’t go now, I won’t get another shot before we leave DC. Catch you later?”

“Sure thing.” He lifts his glass, more amused than offended. “Try not to lose to us again.”

I don’t have a comeback for that. I don’t have anything, honestly, except the sight of her standing at the edge of the lobby like she just belongs everywhere.

Her choice of clothing is… interesting. A black pantsuit, a tie knotted sharp at her throat, hair twisted back into a fierce bun. For a second I don’t even recognize her.

Then she shifts her weight and it’s unmistakably her, and none of it makes a single lick of sense. Her eyes move fast around the lobby, door to elevator to the concierge desk and back again, but she hasn’t seen me.

And I go to her, drawn to her flame.

For three days I’ve been rehearsing exactly what I’d say to her the next time I saw her face. Something calm. Something that would let her know I hadn’t stopped thinking about her for one single hour.

I stand there, and every rehearsed word goes straight out of my head.

“Hey,” I say, which is apparently the best I’ve got.

She turns, and for a second before she remembers to arrange her face into something breezier, I catch the real one underneath it.

There she is.

14

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

In Vogue — Daniel Pemberton

Sparkling Diamonds (From "Moulin Rouge") — Nicole Kidman

The district manager of the Four Seasons hotel has personally driven in from Bethesda past his bedtime to grovel, and I am so here for it.

Ivy made one phone call yesterday, which resulted in arranging the VIP treatment for one Miss Capucine de Montfleury, sole heiress to Maison Montfleury, a very French, very luxurious, and very iconic perfume house.

She owns three chateaux, a nose insured for billions, and absolutely zero patience for anyone who wastes her time. She also has a half brother named Laurent, an ongoing inheritance dispute, and a well-documented allergy to synthetic musk.

She is also not a real person.

The identity Tanya built for Ginger comes with a complete backstory, a rift with a fictional sibling, and a briefcase so valuable that Capucine de Montfleury insists it can only be safe inside the hotel’s private vault.

Cue her very tiny but capable bodyguard… Suri… and her personal handler and concierge… Me. We are also very French, by the way, and wearing matching itchy suits.

Zoe snickered when I put mine on, and I told her to zip it before I did something like cover her mouth in duct tape. She countered with, “What are besties for if not to make fun of one another?”

I just rolled my eyes and got into the rented limo that brought us exactly one block to the Four Seasons front entrance.

Ginger sweeps through the revolving door of the hotel in a cream trench coat she does not need in July, sunglasses she does not need at eleven at night, and an attitude that should win her an Oscar. It didn’t take much to convince her to play this part. Also, she’s the only one of us who speaks a passable amount of French. Suri and I follow directly behind her like minions.

Twenty-four hours ago, this hotel didn't have a spare broom closet. Every floor is blocked off for the tournament, reserved for players, league officials, and anyone with a lanyard that says Association on it. The penthouse suite was occupied by the hockey commissioner himself.

But Ivy pulled a few strings, made a few phone calls, and now the commissioner is halfway to Geneva thinking he's up for a spot on the international federation's board. He'll be gone through the gala.

That leaves the penthouse empty, and the hotel with a problem. The suite is contractually off-limits to anyone outside the tournament unless the VP of hockey operations signs off, in writing.

Which is where Miss Capucine de Montfleury comes in.

Ivy called in a favor to get the suite reclassified as a VIP comp instead of a booking, which is apparently a different contract entirely. That's also, I'm guessing, why the district manager drove all this way to run this himself instead of some nineteen-year-old at the front desk. Corporate doesn't leave a celebrity check-in to chance.

“Miss Furry,” the district manager says, striding out from behind the concierge desk so fast his loafers squeak against the marble. “Miss Furry, welcome, welcome, we are honored. My name is Clive Halloran. Whatever you need during your stay is yours.”

Ginger, resplendent in a black dress that’s giving Audrey Hepburn, does not acknowledge Clive Halloran, or that he mangled her fake name. She looks past him. Past the lobby.

He produces a gold-embossed key fob, holds it out to Ginger with both hands.

She looks at it the way most people look at gum on their seat.

“We’ve held the Penthouse Suite for you,” Clive continues. “Champagne on ice, the Steinway’s been tuned twice just in case you’d like to⁠—”

“I do not touch key cards,” she says, and ticks her head in my direction.

Girlfriend! Not even a bonjour. She’s really committing.

There’s a beat where Halloran’s brain visibly recalibrates, and then he says, “Oh.” He pivots to hand it to me instead.

“You must be with Miss Furry’s people.”

“Montfleury,” I say, hitting each syllable. Mont. Fleur. Ee. I even brought my own fake French vowels for the occasion.

He nods so fast his neck might fall off. “Right. Of course. Miss Flurry.”

That’s somehow worse. Like a McFlurry. From McDonald’s. I want to laugh so bad my ribs ache holding it in. I settle for pretend French disdain for “stupid Americans” and make sure it shows on my face. Poor Clive.

His smile flickers. “I will personally escort you to your room, Miss Flurry.”

“La chambre forte,” she says. “I do not fly for hours to sit in a room.”

“La chambre forte,” I supply. “It means the vault.” I subtly shift my eyes to the case handcuffed to my wrist. As far as Clive is concerned, I’m carrying a locked formulary case containing Maison Montfleury’s founder’s original handwritten formula pages, a vial claimed to be real ambergris, a grand cru rose absolute in a stopper bottle so old the glass has gone faintly purple. And a discontinued tuberose extrait, with an aged typed card claiming it to be irreplaceable and priceless. Tanya spent hours on every one of those props, even distressing the leather case with a heat gun and a bag of gravel to make it look vintage.

Tanya, you beautiful maniac, I think. I owe you a fruit basket the size of a Buick.

Clive blinks, recovers fast. “Right, of course, of course. The vault, of course. Right this way.”

We follow him as he power walks down the marble hallway ahead of us, through double doors the public is not allowed through. Ginger sets a pace that suggests the rest of us are furniture she’s graciously allowing in her presence. Suri trails a half step behind her, a tiny, silent bodyguard. (Silent because she really couldn’t do a convincing French accent.)

The corridor gets progressively less marble and more concrete, and we pass a wall of black-and-white photographs of the hotel’s opening gala in 1979, down a service elevator, and finally arrive at a door with a brass plate that reads PRIVATE VAULT ACCESS. I catalog the keypad underneath and the biometric palm scan and notice Suri is doing the same.

Clive stops in front of it, bless his heart, with a hand pressed flat to his chest like he’s about to deliver a eulogy.

“Miss Flurry, I have to apologize in advance. Hotel policy limits vault access to two guests per visit, for security purposes. I know that’s terribly inconvenient given the hour, but I’m afraid all three of you can’t…”

“Fine,” Ginger says, before he finishes the sentence. “She waits.” She points a single manicured finger, aimed at me.

It’s fine. We allowed for this contingency. We agreed beforehand that if it came down to me or Suri, it had to be Suri inside that vault.

Suri makes a show of elegantly producing a key from her inside breast pocket, and unlocks the handcuffs. I pass the case over to her, and she nods, indicating the case is securely in her small, capable hands.

Clive opens the vault, and sweeps his arm out in front of him. “After you, ladies.”

Suri and Ginger step through together, and the door swings most of the way shut behind them, leaving a gap of maybe eight inches, enough that I can hear muffled voices and can see slices of movement if I stand exactly where the district manager isn’t currently hovering.

I stand there and catch maybe two full seconds of Suri’s face through the gap, angled toward a specific metal case. She gives me a sideways glance and winks.

A few minutes later the door swings open, and Ginger emerges first, Suri a step behind her. Clive brings up the rear, sweating through his collar, visibly relieved to be alive, and seals the vault behind them.

“I can personally guarantee, Miss Flurry, your priceless possessions will be kept with the greatest of care. We at the Four Seasons pride ourse⁠—”

“We are finished with you,” she interrupts, and flicks her fingers at him in a gesture that somehow manages to be both French and extremely rude.

Then, without missing a beat, to me and Suri she announces, “I am hungry. Find me a restaurant. Somewhere that does not serve bread that has been touched by American hands.”

There it is, I think, and step forward on cue.

Except Halloran, God bless his overachieving little heart, steps forward first.

“I’d be delighted to handle that personally, Miss Flurry. I can have something arranged within the hour.”

No. No, no, absolutely not, because this was supposed to be our exit strategy. The plan was to leave quietly, before anyone downstairs got a good look at the three of us together for longer than necessary.

Ginger turns toward me with panic on her face. I can barely catch her wide eyes behind those sunglasses.

“Actually,” I say, stepping in smooth as anything, “Miss de Montfleury’s had a very long flight. She shouldn’t have to stand around a lobby. I will coordinate with you directly, Mr. Halloran.”

I lift one eyebrow and give Ginger the look. The wide, deliberate, play along, I am begging you eyes. There’s a beat. One single beat where I truly do not know if she’s going to blow the whole thing out of pure diva momentum. Then something shifts behind the sunglasses, and Ginger exhales through her nose like the concept of waiting personally exhausts her.

“Yes,” she says, already turning, bored again. “I will wait in the penthouse. My concierge will secure the table.”

And then she’s gone, Suri falling into step beside her.

Clive directs me in a different direction, a shortcut to the front desk, I suppose. As we step into the elevator, he clears his throat next to me, hands clasped, rocking slightly on his heels, and I realize with a small internal groan that I am now expected to make conversation.

“She travels light,” I say. “For an heiress.”

“Understandably,” he says, and doesn’t say anything else.

Once we reach the lobby, he’s on the phone making calls. I have absolutely no idea what restaurant is even open right now, but he eventually hangs up, looking pleased with himself in a way I find almost sweet, and hands me a folded card with a name and an address scrawled on it.

“They’re holding a private room,” he says. “Table’s held under Flurry.”

I don’t correct him. At this point it feels cruel.

I tuck the card into my jacket pocket and thank him.

“Shall I order you a car?”

“No, that won’t be necessary.”

I turn to get the heck out of here when someone crosses directly into my path.

“Hey.”

Worst. Possible. Timing.

Jeremiah. He is, true to form, unfairly handsome in a Team USA hoodie and an expression that could melt steel.

Not here, I think, glancing over my shoulder at Clive. I do the only thing I can do, which is grab his arm and steer him sideways.

“Walk with me,” I say, guiding him to the far end of the lobby.

“Bossy,” he says, but he goes easily.

Once we’re tucked into the dead zone by the potted ficus, out of Clive’s line of sight, I relax a little.

“Hi, Zesty,” I say, aiming for breezy and not succeeding even a little. “Small world.”

“It is,” he says. “I haven’t seen you around in a few days.”

I feign nonchalance. “Hmmm. I guess not. Weird.”

It is absolutely not weird. I have been actively avoiding him for… reasons.

“So… I was a little worried.” His jaw tightens. “After that guy… at the museum.”

“Oh. That? That guy is nobody,“ I say, and toss my hand. “Ancient history. I’m fine. Promise.”

He studies me a beat longer than I’d like. Then, like he’s decided to let it go for now and not forever, he shifts his weight, clears his throat, and says, “So… there’s this gala I’m supposed to go to.”

He looks at his shoes, rubbing the back of his neck. He’s nervous, I realize, and something in my chest does an undignified little flip. He’s actually nervous.

Then he quickly adds, “You don’t have to say yes.”

I tilt my head. “You haven’t asked me anything yet.”

“Oh. Well... would you... like to come? It’s on July eighteenth. Again, no pressure… I just…”

“Yes!”

“Cool,” he says, aiming for casual and overshooting by a mile. “Cool, that’s, yeah. Good.”

Smooth, I think. Very smooth, Zesty.

His eyes drift over the blazer, the tie knotted too tight at my throat, the hair scraped back hard enough to give me a headache.

“What’s with the outfit?”

I look down at myself. “Why? Do I look like a Build-A-Bear?”

He blinks. “What?”

“A Build-A-Bear. Zoe makes fun of me whenever I wear a suit.”

He’s quiet, and for a moment I think he’s going to confirm exactly what Zoe thinks. That I do, indeed, look like a Build-A-Bear in this suit. But then he laughs, head tipped back, and it does something glorious to his whole face.

“No,” he says, once he’s got it back under control, still grinning. “You don’t look like a Build-A-Bear.” He tilts his head, considering me with an expression that’s suddenly a lot less funny and a lot more like he’s actually looking. “Actually, with your hair like that, slicked all the way back? You look like one of those girls in that old music video. The one with the models playing instruments in matching outfits and bright red lipstick?”

I grimace. “Addicted to Love?”

He snaps, pointing at me. “Yeah. That one.”

I suppose I should take that as a compliment. For the record, I don’t think I look like those supermodels, but if this extremely hot guy wants to see me like that, I won’t complain.

“Maybe I should take up guitar,” I say.

“I could teach you.”

Now that is not what I expected to hear. “You play guitar?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal. Like all hockey players play guitar, like it just comes with the territory.

There’s silence for a long moment. Comfortable, though, not the bad kind. We’re just staring at each other, and it’s almost like the rest of the world has fallen away. Then he blinks and clears his throat.

“We should exchange numbers,” he says, already pulling his phone out, thumb hovering over the screen. “Coordinate gala stuff. Just hold your phone up and tap mine.”

I pull my phone out. It flips open with a satisfying, ancient click. It has a single antenna.

He stares at it.

“Is that… a flip phone?”

“Yeah.” I shrug. “It does the job.”

That is, until I don’t need it anymore. And then I’ll snap it in half and drop the pieces in two separate storm drains. He doesn’t need to know that part.

Something crosses his face. Pity. He thinks I’m broke. He thinks I’m a poor girl who can’t afford a phone that does anything but ring. And he is being so careful not to let that show on his face that it almost undoes me more than if he’d said it out loud.

“Here,” I say, and hold out my hand.

He hands his phone over without hesitation, and I type my number in manually and pass it back.

He looks down at the screen. At the contact I just made.

“Erica,” he reads out loud. Then his whole face crumples, and he brings a palm up and smacks it flat against his own forehead. “Your name is Erica.”

And then his eyes do something spectacular, somewhere between a wince and a full system reboot.

“Erica for short,” I say, watching him process it, staring at his phone. I let it sit, then add, “America for long.”

He goes still.

“Wait.” His eyes come back up to mine, slow, like he’s rerunning the last several weeks through a different filter entirely. “That’s actually your name. You weren’t joking.”

“Don’t spread it around.”

He doesn’t say anything for a second. Just looks at me like I just handed him the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

“Erica,” he says again, testing the weight of it, and then, softer, “America the beautiful.”

Alrighty then.

“My middle name isn’t The-Beautiful, though. I really was joking about that.”

The corner of his mouth tilts into the most adorable grin. “I figured as much.”

He holds my gaze softly, like I’m the eighth wonder of the world.

“I have to go,” I say, before I do something catastrophic like stand here and let him keep looking at me like that.

“Right.” He holds his pinky and thumb up to his cheek. “Call me!”

“Will do,” I confirm, already backing away, already feeling the pull of him like gravity, and I make myself turn around and walk back to the front desk.

Clive looks up, hopeful, the second I’m in range.

“Change of plans,” I say, sliding back into the French accent.

He blinks. “The reservation?”

“Cancel it. Tell them Miss McFlurry sends her regrets.”

15

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

American Girl — Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Coach Badaszek stands at the boards, arms crossed, waiting for us to notice him, which, in my opinion, is worse than yelling.

“Two.” He holds up two fingers, like we might’ve lost count. “Two losses in a row. Somebody tell me what that is.”

Nobody answers. Answering is how you end up doing suicides until your legs file for divorce from your body.

“That is a habit forming,” Badaszek says. “And I did not fly to Washington, DC to watch you people practice bad habits.”

Tyson Lane skates up next to me, chest still heaving from the last drill. He doesn’t look at Badaszek when he mutters, “Man really said ‘you people’ like we’re a book club that keeps forgetting to read the book.”

Accurate, I think, and keep my face very still, because Badaszek’s eyes are doing a slow sweep of the group like a jailer’s spotlight looking for escapees.

He checks on Colt first. Something about gap control. Then Levi, for losing the same draw twice. By the time he gets to me, I’m braced for it, but all he says is, “Precio. Faster hands, slower mouth. Both this time.”

“Yes, Coach.”

“Both,” he says again, like I might’ve missed it the first time, and heads off toward the net to torment Josh instead.

He’s rough on us for the next twenty minutes, but it’s the kind of rough that comes with a softer side. He’ll ream a guy out mid-drill and then find him alone by his stall an hour later to make sure everything is all right at home. It’s tough love.

We run the breakout drill until my lungs feel like they’ve been marinating in battery acid. But somewhere around the fourth rep, it clicks. Twiles hits me with a stretch pass I don't even have to look for, and I one-time it to Dash, and Dash buries it top shelf so clean that even Badaszek almost smiles.

“There,” he says. “That. Do that Sunday and we won’t have this conversation again.”

Tyson gathers us at center ice before we break for water, and for a guy who once told a reporter his favorite color is “clear,” he gives a genuinely solid speech. Something about how West doesn’t get to lose two in a row and call it a slump. If we lose two in a row, it will be the last time it happens.

“Game 4, we need to be on point,” he says. “Every shift. I’m not asking for perfect. I’m asking for accountable.”

We all bang our sticks on the ice.

At the water break, I make the mistake of checking my phone.

I don’t even do it smoothly. I fumble it out of my bag, and the second the screen lights up, my whole face does something involuntary and, according to my teammates, deeply embarrassing.

“There it is,” Bryce says, barely even looking up from his own phone. “The Zesty smile.”

“I don’t have a Zesty smile.”

“Uh-huh.” Colt leans over my shoulder, and I angle the phone away like that’ll help. “Is it a woman? It’s always a woman.”

“It’s nobody.”

“It is definitely a woman,” Kingston says.

Across the bench, Jake’s got his own dumb smile going, aimed at the stands instead of a phone, because Izzy’s up there next to the team staff in a jacket that’s a size too big to be anyone else’s. Neal elbows him. “You gonna keep pretending that’s just ‘PR stuff,’ man?”

“It’s complicated,” Jake says.

Bryce is still glued to his own phone, grinning at whatever’s on the screen. That, I’m fairly certain, is because of a woman.

I saw the newspaper stacked by the front doors on the way in, some enterprising photographer’s shot of him and Hadley outside the arena last night, her looking at him like he just solved world hunger, him grinning like the team didn’t just lose 6–3.

WHO IS BRYCE CHAMBERS'S MYSTERY WOMAN, the headline wanted to know, like it was a scandal and not just two people standing near each other with goofy expressions on their faces. Well, Bryce has a goofy face, anyway. He always has a goofy face, to be honest.

I’ve got no room to give any of them grief. Not with my own screen lit up like a shrine.

I still remember typing that first text, three nights ago, standing at the window in my suite an hour after she gave me her number and walked away. I’d changed her contact name to “Dangerous” because that seemed appropriate. And that phone of hers. Where do you get a flip phone these days?

Me: Can your phone even get texts?

Dangerous: rude. also yes. also this took me 45 seconds 2 type on a number pad so u better appreciate it

Me: I appreciate it deeply.

Dangerous: good

Me: Might be the most effort anyone’s put into texting me all year.

Dangerous: don’t get used to it Zesty

I’d grinned at that phone in the dark like a complete lunatic.

Thursday I told myself I wasn’t going to text her first. Thursday I texted her first anyway, and somewhere in there I stopped pretending I had any self-control left where she’s concerned.

Me: Still owe you that guitar lesson.

Dangerous: u say that like i forgot

Me: Did you forget?

Dangerous: no. i never forget. im like an elephant

Me: Solid mascot choice.

Dangerous: u say that now but just u wait

Me: Oooh, cryptic.

And just because I couldn’t stop myself, I texted again that afternoon.

Me: Pizza topping. One word. Go.

Dangerous: pineapple

Me: I need you to know I respect you less right now.

Dangerous: i need u 2 know i don’t care

Me: This might be a dealbreaker.

Dangerous: ur deeply strange

Yesterday, we lost game three. Badly enough that I didn’t want to talk to anybody, which is exactly when a text from her landed.

Dangerous: heard you guys lost

Wow, she even took the time to write the entire word “you” this time.

Me: Word travels fast for someone with a phone from 1994.

Dangerous: i have my sources. also u okay?

Aaand we’re back to one character words again. I don’t blame her. That phone is a dinosaur.

Me: I will be. Coach is going to make us pay for it in a deeply personal way tomorrow.

Dangerous: want me to threaten him? i know people

Me: You know people?

Dangerous: i know a guy with lots of cousins

Me: Hmmm, wonder who that could be.

Dangerous: eh hes kind of a big goober, dont get jealous

I read that more times than I dare to admit.

Then, later that night, I finally worked up the nerve to send the one I’d been drafting in my head for two days.

Me: I have a surprise for you. For your birthday.

Dangerous: my birthday was a week ago Zesty. u a little late

Me: I’m aware. I’m doing the redo.

Dangerous: the redo

Me: The birthday you actually deserve.

Dangerous: sounds fancy. what is it?

Me: You’ll see. I’m not telling you.

Dangerous: i hate this

Me: You love this.

Dangerous: we shall see

Then, at midnight, when I was lying in bed, refraining from bothering her at a late hour, she texted:

Dangerous: is it weird that today felt long?

Me: No.

Dangerous: ok good because it did and i don’t love admitting that

Me: I’ll allow it. Today felt long here too.

Dangerous: dont get used 2 me being soft. limited time offer

Me: I’m framing this text.

Dangerous: remember that big goober I was telling you about? He’s you.

“Precio.” Badaszek’s voice cuts across the bench, and I nearly drop the phone.

“Phone away. We’ve got twenty more minutes and I’d like your head to be somewhere on the premises.”

“Yes, Coach.”

I put it away. It doesn’t stop the smile.

“Man’s got it bad,” Colt says to nobody, cheerfully, as we skate back out.

“I don’t have it bad.”

“You checked your phone eleven times in the last ten minutes,” Kingston says. “I counted.”

“That’s a sad way to spend your free time, man.”

“Teasing you guys is the highlight of my day,” he says.

Badaszek blows the whistle and we’re back to drills, and nobody’s smiling anymore except me, quietly, on the inside.

By the time we’re done, my legs feel like two sandbags, and my jersey’s stuck to my back in a way that will require industrial-strength detergent. But we ran that last drill clean six times in a row. Even Badaszek, walking off the ice, allows himself a tiny grin.

“Better,” he says, to the group. “Do that tomorrow. Same energy. Less mouth.”

“Yes, Coach,” we all say, and somehow I have a feeling about tomorrow’s game. We’re going to win. I just know it.

In the tunnel, Colt catches up to me, still riding the high of not getting yelled at personally for once. “Hey, Zesty. Few of us are grabbing wings before we crash tonight. You in?”

Four days ago that nickname would’ve made my skin crawl. Now it barely registers, and I don’t mind it anymore.

“Can’t. Rain check?”

“You got something better going on?”

“Something like that.” I peel my gloves off and flex my fingers.

Colt waits half a second for more, doesn’t get it, and shrugs. “Your loss. Brady’s buying, which never happens twice.”

“Tell him thanks anyway.”

He heads for the locker room already texting someone about wing flavors, and I’m cutting through the tunnel when I nearly walk straight into Martín, the facilities attendant here at the Capitol Practice rink.

He’s got a coil of extension cord looped over one shoulder, keys jangling at his hip like always, and something in me just eases at the sight of him. I’ve only been in DC for a few weeks, but I already feel like I know him.

"¡Martín!"

"Precio." He grins, gap-toothed and easy-going.

I ask him about his kids.

"¿Que tal? ¿Y los niños? ¿Cómo están?"

"Bien, gracias a Dios," he says, like the man of few words he is. "Todos bien."

Then he leans in, voice dropping like we're the only two people in the building.

"Todo listo para esta noche." He winks. Everything's set. Tonight.

"¿Y la música?" And the music?

"Sí, sí. Ya tengo." He taps his key ring once, like that settles it, and keeps walking before I can ask anything else. "Buena suerte, jefe."

Buena suerte. Hopefully, I won't need luck.

"Gracias, Martín. En serio."

He just waves it off over his shoulder without turning around.

I pull my phone out and type one more text to Erica.

Me: I’ll see you tonight.

I don’t wait for the reply. I already know she’ll reply with something that makes me laugh on the bus back to the hotel like a man with no dignity left to protect. For once, I don’t mind one bit.

16

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

What's Up? — 4 Non Blondes

Fast Car — Jem

Cold slaps my cheeks out of nowhere, sharp enough that I suck a breath through my teeth, and Jeremiah’s hand tightens around mine like he felt me flinch.

“Almost there,” he murmurs, close enough that his breath stirs the hair by my ear. “Watch the step.”

I lift my foot before I need to. My sneaker lands on something that isn’t concrete anymore, something with give in it, rubber matting maybe? The sound of our footsteps changes too. They don’t just land and stop. They roll out into the dark and keep going, bouncing off something high and far away.

Big. Whatever this is, it’s big.

Where in the world did he take me?

The man blindfolded me twenty minutes ago and I let him.

I’d met him outside the Four Seasons after several back-and-forth text messages… him insisting he pick me up at my house. Me, telling him absolutely not.

The only way to get him to concede was to tell him I’d be at the Four Seasons anyway, visiting my friend who has a room there. Technically I do have a friend with a room at the hotel, so ten points to Gryffindor for creative truthing. The friend is a fictional perfume heiress named Capucine de Montfleury, but I left that part out. We actually do still have the penthouse suite and don’t know what to do with it. We’re trying to stay off the hotel’s radar, after all.

So, after some convincing, Jeremiah pulled up in a rental car looking quite the hot shot frot in a soft gray Henley that did something unfair to his shoulders, and opened the door for me like a perfect gentleman.

Then he held up a strip of black fabric between two fingers.

“I have a whole night planned,” he said. “But I need you to trust me for it.”

“That’s a big ask for a guy holding a blindfold.”

“I know,” he said with the car still idling in the hotel drop-off zone while the valet attendants gave us the side-eye. “May I?”

Well, I thought that was refreshing, asking permission to BLINDFOLD me. Nobody asks nicely these days.

Of course I replied with a resounding, “Yes!”

I honestly had no idea how this evening would pan out with blindfolds involved, but I’m nothing if not adventurous.

He tied it gently, checked twice that it wasn’t too tight, and also that I couldn’t peek. Then he drove for about fifteen minutes with a hand finding my knee every so often like he wanted to make sure I was still there.

Now, this is the part where I’d tell all the girlies to not try this at home, or in a case like this, let a man take you to a second location in a freaking BLINDFOLD!

But that ship has sailed for me, and I’m already neck-deep into really terrible life choices, so count me out as role model of the year.

Now we’re here, wherever here is (see disclaimer above), and a door beeps open under somebody’s keycard. Then a man’s voice greets Jeremiah in fast, easy Spanish right at the threshold before the voice fades off somewhere behind us.

“Is this the place you hide the bodies?” I joke.

He laughs, low, close to my ear, and the sound of it does something unfair to my knees.

My arms prickle. Wherever we are, it is big. And cold.

“Ready?” Jeremiah asks.

“You tell me. You’re the one who kidnapped me.”

Then his fingers find the knot at the back of my head. Light floods down from somewhere impossibly high, rows of it clunking on one bank at a time, and I throw a hand up against the glare before my eyes adjust. It takes a full three seconds for the shapes to resolve into something my brain can hold onto.

Ice. A rink. Big, fluorescent lights. Bleachers.

I blink. “Is this where you play your games?”

“No, this is just where we practice.”

I hum, taking it all in.

“Gracias, Martín!” Jeremiah calls up, cupping his hands around his mouth, and that voice from earlier replies in Spanish from somewhere near the far boards.

I follow the sound and find him. Fifties, maybe. A mustache that means business, and a carefree, smiling face that’s entirely friendly.

“That’s Martín,” Jeremiah says, tucking the blindfold into his jeans pocket. “This place wouldn’t run without him. Good guy.”

“You just have a good guy everywhere you go?”

“I ask nice.”

I file that one away too, right next to the blindfold permission thing. Because it’s true, actually. I’ve watched it happen more than once now. At the festival when a vendor comped his corn on the cob. During the parade when children were so thrilled to see him they cried. And now a facilities guy unlocking an entire professional hockey rink after hours because Jeremiah Precio asked nice. He’s basically a male Ivy except people don’t do him favors because he’s got leverage on them. They do it because they like him, immediately and completely.

He crosses to the boards where two pairs of skates wait in a neat row, laces looped over the blades, and picks up the smaller pair.

“These are yours.”

I look at the skates. I look at him. I look at the skates again.

“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “You expect me to skate?”

“That was the whole plan, yeah.”

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll just sit here and watch you.”

He gives me a flat look. “You can watch me tomorrow night when I win the game. Tonight is for you.”

“I will fall flat on my face.”

He drops down on one knee in front of me. “Give me your foot.”

I do as I’m told and he slips off my sneaker, then slides the skate on my foot and starts lacing.

“Every little girl needs a skating rink birthday party,” he says as he tightens the laces. “Next foot.”

“That’s really tight.”

He winks. “Ankle safety.”

“How do you know my shoe size?”

He wags his brows.

“Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

He ties off the lace, double-knots it, pats my ankle like the job’s done.

Then he sits beside me to start lacing his own, entirely too pleased with himself.

I stare at him.

“I must tell you I have never once in my life stood on a blade.”

“First time for everything.” He’s already got one skate laced, tugging the top hook tight, quick and sure, the same focus he probably brings to actual games. When he looks up and catches me staring at him with my arms crossed, something in his face shifts, softer, more sure of itself. “Come on, Dangerous. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

He knows exactly which button to push.

“Try standing.”

I try standing. I immediately understand why ice skating is a sport and not a hobby.

My ankles buckle inward, my arms windmill, and Jeremiah catches me under both elbows before I can introduce my face to the floor.

“Whoa. Hey. I’ve got you.”

He guides my hands on the ice, positions himself half a step ahead, skating backward while I hold onto him for dear life. “Bend your knees. Weight forward. Small pushes, don’t try to run on it.”

I take small pushes. I fall twice, catch myself on the boards once, and swear at the ice in three languages I don’t actually speak, just approximate badly. But by the fifth lap around the near half of the rink, something clicks, some ancient lizard-brain balance system finally boots up, and I stop death-gripping his forearms quite so hard.

“There,” he says, grinning. “Look at you.”

“Don’t get excited. I’m still one bad push from a concussion.”

“I’ll catch you.”

He would, too. That’s the annoying part.

I get bold on lap six. Bold is generous. I let go of the boards entirely, both hands out at my sides like a toddler crossing a balance beam, and manage four whole strides before my left skate shoots out sideways. I go down hard on one hip, skid a solid two feet, and lie there on the ice for a second just to fully process the indignity of it.

Jeremiah skates up and looks down at me, lips pressed together, visibly fighting a losing battle.

He offers both hands, and the second I take them, the corner of his mouth finally gives out and he laughs, unfairly delighted, hauling me upright like I weigh nothing.

“For the record, that was a nine out of ten.”

“You absolute liar.”

He laughs and doesn’t let go of my waist, and I savor how much I like the weight of his hand right there, steady and low on my hip. Eventually, I’ve got something resembling footing, wobbly but functional. He skates a slow circle around me, checking my form.

“You have done this before,” I accuse, both skates finally, miraculously under me.

“Once or twice.”

“It’s almost like you’re some kind of professional skater or something.”

“I dabble.”

Then he lifts a hand toward the glass booth and calls out something short in Spanish. Up in the booth, Martín’s silhouette shifts, and a thumbs-up appears in the window.

“What was that?”

“You’ll see.”

An acoustic strum echoes throughout the rink, and then the electric guitar slams in over the top of it. I know this song, and I let out a laugh that is ridiculously unladylike.

“No. You did not.”

“Happy birthday, America.” Jeremiah skates backward away from me, spreading his arms wide like he’s presenting the whole rink, the lights, the moment. “Now you get to sing this song unironically.”

He remembered. Back in the Hall of Mirrors when I off-handedly mentioned “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes was a twenty-five-year-old’s rite of passage.

We skate to the song. Badly, on my part, gloriously on his, his hand never fully leaving mine even when I insist I’ve got it, which I do not, not really, but he lets me pretend.

I hold his hands, letting him tow me into a wide loop around center ice, singing along while I try to catch my breath. The cold air bites at my cheeks. The lights blur into long gold streaks every time we pick up speed. Somewhere under the panic of not falling, something in my chest starts to loosen.

The chorus builds. Jeremiah leans in, close enough that I can feel the words more than hear them.

“Let go,” he says over the music.

“Of your hand? I will fall and die.”

“Of the rest of it. Just scream it. Sometimes it feels good to scream.”

I laugh, a little too sharp, and shake my head. “I’m good.”

“It’s part of the song. You have to scream ‘What’s going on’ at the top of your lungs.”

I mouth half the words. I keep it small, controlled, safe.

Jeremiah watches me do it, his hands tightening around mine to let me know he won’t leave me hanging.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Nobody’s here. Just us.” He tips his head toward the booth. “And Martín. But he’s not paying attention to us.”

I glance up at the glass. Martín has his own headphones clamped over his ears now, head bobbing to something entirely different, eyes on some panel of switches, completely checked out of whatever two idiots are doing on the ice below him.

Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s listening. For the first time since I was nineteen years old, I’m not looking over my shoulder in fear.

The chorus hits again, and I open my mouth and let it all the way out.

It comes out cracked and off-key and too loud, my voice bouncing off the boards and the empty seats and coming back at me from six directions at once, and Jeremiah whoops beside me, wildly and gloriously off-key in his own right.

We’re spinning now, center ice, faster than either of us has any business going, and screaming the same four lines over and over. We scream, and scream, and scream, and it’s so cringe and the best kind of cathartic.

I don’t know when the laughing starts. I don’t know when it stops being singing and starts being just noise, pure and unfiltered. Jeremiah’s laughing too hard to finish a lyric, and I’m laughing too hard to breathe, and we’re still spinning, hands locked, and every single thing I’ve kept locked down comes pouring straight out of me.

It is, without exaggeration, one of the best moments of my entire life.

We slow down eventually, dizzy, gasping, still holding both hands. The song fades out on a last ragged chord, and Jeremiah pulls me in against his chest to stop the spin, both of us laughing too hard to stand up straight, and presses his mouth to my temple.

“Happy twenty-five years, America.”

For a second the rink goes quiet except for our own breathing, loud and uneven. Then the next track clicks on. Slower and mellow. More of a looping, melancholy, weeping sound.

Jeremiah’s head comes up. “Oop. That’s not on the playlist.”

“What?”

“That’s not right.” He cranes his neck toward the booth. “Hang on. Let me get Martín to fix it. Probably some shuffle glitch, I told him upbeat the whole night. It’s a party.”

I look up at the booth. Martín isn’t there.

“I got this,” Jeremiah says, already skating for the exit gate. “Let me just cut it…”

“No. Leave it.”

He stops. “You sure? It’s kind of a mood killer.”

“I like this one.”

He studies me for a second, head tilted, then returns back to me slowly, skates scraping a lazy arc across the ice, and something in his expression shifts. Softer. Unguarded.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Then he closes the distance between us and folds me in against him, one hand flat against my spine, the other wrapped around mine and tucked against his chest, and we barely move, just a slow rock side to side, blades hissing soft against the ice.

“You have a game tomorrow,” I say into his shirt, half a question.

“I do.”

“And you spent the night before it teaching a woman with zero balance how to fall down professionally.”

“Best use of an off night I can think of.” He says it easy, like it isn’t a whole confession.

His chin comes to rest on top of my head. I can feel him breathing, his chest rising against my cheek. Warmth soaking through the thin cotton of his shirt. His heartbeat sits right under my ear, nearly as steady as it should be for a man who plays professional hockey for a living.

Mine, I think, and the word arrives so fast and so complete that it startles me. At least for tonight. At least for right now, in this rink, under these lights, he’s mine.

I know what I am. I know what happens on the eighteenth, what I came to this city to do, what happens to a man like this once he finds out what’s actually underneath the trailer-park backstory and the good one-liners. None of that changes what’s true in the next thirty seconds, in the warm, quiet truth of this exact moment.

I have never in my life been held like this. Not once. Not by anyone.

Something behind my ribs, something I’ve kept locked down since I was nineteen, gives way all at once, and the floodgates open completely. A full, ugly, shoulder-shaking cry, the kind that comes with sound effects, hiccupping and wet and completely without my permission, right there against Jeremiah Precio's chest.

He freezes.

“Hey. Hey, hey, whoa.” He pulls back enough to look at me, hands coming up to frame my face, thumbs already swiping under my eyes.

“What happened? Was it the song? I can turn it off…”

“It’s not the song.”

“Did I say something? Do something? Because I will absolutely apologize, I just need to know what for.”

“Jeremiah.”

“Because I really thought this was going well, and if I somehow ruined a hockey rink birthday party, that’s a new personal low.”

“Jeremiah.” I laugh, wet and hiccuping, which does nothing to convince him I’m fine. “It’s not the song or anything you did wrong.”

“Then what?” His thumbs are still moving, gentle, useless against the steady leak of it, his brow pulled into a knot of genuine alarm. “Talk to me. Please.”

“I’m not sad.” The words come out thick, half-laughing, half-sobbing, an absolute mess of a sentence. “I’m happy. I don’t… I’m not sure I’ve ever been this happy. Ever. In my whole entire life. And it’s just.” I gesture vaguely at all of it, the rink, the empty stands, his hands still cradling my face. “It’s a lot.”

He goes still again, studying my face, and I watch the alarm drain out of him slowly, replaced by something that cracks his whole expression wide open.

“Happy tears.”

“Happy tears.”

A laugh punches out of him, relieved and a little wrecked around the edges. “You scared the life out of me.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He wipes both thumbs under my eyes again, careful and unhurried, cupping my jaw reverently. “I’m happy too. Just so you know. In case that wasn’t obvious from all the screaming.”

“It was obvious.” I press my palm flat against his chest, right over that too-fast heartbeat, and feel it kick harder under my hand. “Very obvious.”

“Good.” His hands settle around my face, thumbs resting just below my cheekbones like he’s memorizing the shape of me. And the noise of the rink, the fading song, the distant hum of the ice compressors, all of it goes soft and far away, like someone turned the whole world down to a whisper just for this.

“I really want to kiss you right now.”

My pulse trips over itself. Every single thing in me goes quiet at once. The cold, the ice, a lifetime of careful distance, all of it gone, replaced by his thumb tracing one slow line along my cheekbone and his eyes not moving off mine for even a second.

“What are you waiting for, Zesty?”

Then his lips slant over mine and he’s kissing me, slow and unhurried.

One hand slides from my jaw into my hair, fingers curling loose against my scalp. The other flattens against my back and pulls me in until there’s no cold air left between us at all, and I forget, entirely, that we’re standing in the middle of an ice rink.

I forget the skates, the empty seats in the dark, the fact that gravity still technically applies. There is only this. His mouth, warm against mine. The scrape of his jaw. The unsteady thud of his heart under my palm, no longer trying to catch up to mine, just matching it, easy, like it always meant to.

I rise up onto the toes of my skates, chasing more of him, and he makes a low sound against my mouth that undoes something in my chest.

His thumb traces the curve of my jaw. His mouth moves like he’s committing mine to memory, deliberate, again and again, and every time I think it’s slowing down it only deepens, pulling a soft sound out of me I’ll unpack later.

Every nerve ending I own lights up at once. It’s majestic. There’s no other word for it.

I don’t know how long it lasts. Long enough that my knees have gone soft and unreliable. Long enough that when he finally pulls back, just far enough to breathe, I chase him half an inch before I catch myself.

His forehead comes to rest against mine. Neither of us says anything for a long moment. Our breath comes out in twin clouds between us, and somewhere, the last slow chord of the song fades to silence, leaving just the two of us and the hum of the empty rink and his thumb still moving in slow, absent circles against my jaw like he isn’t ready to stop touching me yet either.

“Happy birthday, America,” Jeremiah says again, quieter this time.

I open my mouth to say something clever. Something about how he’s definitely living up to the nickname Zesty. Or how he’s been unfairly holding out on me and I’m entitled to compensation.

But it all sounds stupid in my head.

So I don’t say anything at all. I fist my hand tighter in the front of his shirt, pull him back down, and kiss him again.

17

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

Diamonds — Rihanna

Ionly know Jeremiah’s team scored because the whole section jumps up screaming at once, and half a second later I’m on my feet too, screaming right along with them. Ha! As if I have the faintest idea what’s happening on the ice.

Jeremiah offered me two tickets so I could bring a friend. I came alone, because can you imagine if I’d brought Zoe? She’d have her face mashed against the glass, fogging it up with actual drool. One of us needs to maintain a shred of dignity. Might as well be me.

Now I think it’s the second period (out of who knows how many periods), and I’m watching large men in blue and large men in red crash into each other. I am trying and failing to reverse-engineer the rules from context clues. Blue jersey good. Whistle bad, usually. Sometimes the whistle is apparently fine, and everyone claps, and I clap too, a half beat behind, like I’m a tourist doing the wave.

I’ve given up tracking who has the puck. Instead, I watch the crowd. When the section around me rises, I rise. When they roar, I roar. It’s like pretending I know the words to “Benny and the Jets,” just mouthing along to whatever I think the lyrics are.

The man directly behind me has been cheering with his whole chest since the team filed onto the ice. He’s three beers deep by my count, and when the goal horn blares, he throws both arms straight up like this is the most important thing to ever happen to the universe. His beer is liberated into the air. It lands on me.

Someone please give this man a sippy cup because he has no concept of how liquids work.

Now I have half his beer in my hair and down the back of my neck and it’s dripping in a slow, sticky line down my spine.

Toddler man doesn’t notice. He’s still roaring. Everyone is still roaring. And I’m standing in a puddle of Bud Light, screaming “WOOO” with the rest of them, because what else am I supposed to do? File a complaint?

This is the most action my hair has seen all week, I think, and keep clapping.

By the time the horn sounds for real, the final one (maybe), I’ve stopped even pretending to follow along. Jeremiah’s team wins.

My whole section is hugging and at least one man is crying into a foam finger. A stranger hugs me and doesn’t seem to notice the beer smell on me. Then the guys in red leave the ice, and I think it’s over, but then I have to sit through some kind of ceremony where they announce the three stars of the game. Jeremiah’s name isn’t called, but one of the guys had green hair, so that’s fun.

Finally, the stadium starts to clear out, and I go to the place Jeremiah told me to go to meet him after he’s done with all the things hockey players do after they win a game. I’m picturing champagne in the locker room and hopefully a shower. Not that I’m actually picturing Jeremiah in the shower, just that I imagine he would want to wash the sweat off. Kind of how I want to wash the beer out of my hair.

There’s a door marked FAMILY & FRIENDS, where a woman with a lanyard checks my name off a list and waves me toward a lounge. One look through the doorway and I know I’m not going in. Couches full of women I don’t know, huddled over somebody’s phone, a few of them in (and I’m not making this up) blinged-out red, white, and blue jackets.

I decide to stand in the hallway, so I find a stretch of wall a few feet down the corridor and lean against it instead. Whatever Jeremiah has to do while I wait for him eats up the better part of forty-five minutes.

When he finally emerges, Jeremiah is showered, hair still damp and pushed back, in a soft gray team hoodie and joggers, and has his feet shoved into slides. I suppose actual shoes were too much to ask of him tonight. He spots me against the wall and his whole face lights up, and he makes a determined beeline toward me.

He pulls me against him like I’m about to fly away, and kisses me, his lips crashing onto mine like one of those WW2 reunions. Then he squeezes his arms around me and spins me in a sweeping circle.

Oh, I think, somewhere very far away. Right. This is a thing we do now.

When he puts me down, he’s grinning like a man who just won something bigger than a hockey game.

“You’re my lucky charm,” he says. “I need you at all my games from now on.”

“Uh…How many more games are we talking?”

“All of them.” He says it like it’s obvious, like I asked what time it is. “Until I retire. And then some.”

And then some?

“You could sit with the Wags, so you don’t have to be alone,” he offers, steering me toward the exit with a hand at the small of my back.

“What on earth is a Wag?”

“Wives and girlfriends of the players.”

I snort. “I am neither of those things.”

“It’s early days.” He says it breezily, as if I wouldn’t notice. “In the meantime, I could introduce you to some of the women.”

“Are you talking about those ladies wearing the bedazzled jackets like they’re about to break into ‘Summer Nights’ at the lunch table?”

“You could be Sandy.”

“I’m more of a Rizzo.”

“I can see that.”

“Besides.” I tug my beer-soaked collar away from my neck. “I’ve always liked the T-Birds jackets better. You couldn’t pay me to wear one of those glittery things.”

“Really? After that whole Build-A-Bear ensemble?”

“Hey. You said I looked like an Arnold Palmer girl.”

“Robert Palmer…”

“Robert Palmer girl.”

He laughs, low, and bumps my shoulder with his. “I’m just teasing. I don’t want to push you into joining a sparkly girl gang if you don’t want to.”

“Good. Because I’m a terrible singer.”

“You’re my leading lady.” He says it so simply it nearly knocks the wind out of me. “We don’t have to put a label on this yet. I could just introduce you as my… my…”

“My Sharona?”

He blinks. “Huh?”

“How about lover?” I say, testing the way it feels. “How do you say ‘lover’ in Spanish?”

“Amante.”

“Ohh, I like that. Amaaaannnte.” I draw it out, telenovela-announcer style, dramatic enough to earn its own theme music.

He laughs, but he’s already shaking his head. “No. You can’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“That’s not what this is. That implies a fling.” His voice drops half a register, serious under the joke. “And I don’t do flings.”

I pout.

“How about we figure it out over dinner?” he says. “I’m starved, and there’s a Mexican place I want to try so I can silently judge their salsa.”

“Why would you want to silently judge their salsa?”

“Because I’m Mexican, dear. That’s my duty.”

“That’s a good one. Dear. I can be your dear.”

“So when I introduce you, I’d say, this is Erica. My dear.” He pauses, delighted with himself. “A female deer.” Then he catches himself, wincing. “Sorry. I watched way too much The Sound of Music growing up. My nanny loved it.”

“How do you say it in Spanish?”

“Querida.” He tilts his head. “But that one reads more like something you’d call a daughter.”

I let that sit for a beat, and somewhere underneath the joke a small, quiet, unhelpful thought surfaces. Girlfriend. His girlfriend. Nobody is ever going to measure up to this again, and you know it, and you’re going to end up alone with a lot of cats who don’t even like you very much.

I just shrug. “You’re right. We don’t have to put a label on it.”

We’re a few steps down the hall when a voice cuts through the corridor behind us.

“There he is. Primo!”

Two men are already crossing toward us. Both have Jeremiah’s same dark, easy coloring, but that’s where the resemblance splits: one’s built lean and fit, the other looks like he splits firewood for a hobby. Jeremiah’s whole face breaks open with surprise and he pulls each of them in for a quick bro hug.

“No way.” Jeremiah holds them both at arm’s length, grinning like he still doesn’t believe it. “What are you two doing here?”

He turns, an arm sliding around my waist. “This is Erica.”

No label. No My Sharona. No Dear, a female dear. It’s better this way.

“Erica, these are my cousins. Nacho and Dante.”

Dante is the one built like a lumberjack. I shake both men’s hands. Very demure.

“Wow.” Jeremiah shakes his head. “So good to see you guys.”

“Tickets for this thing were harder to get than the FIFA World Cup,” Dante says.

“I could’ve gotten you tickets.”

“Nah. We didn’t get too much of a nosebleed.“

“How’s Olive?”

“Due any day now.” Nacho says it with the pride only an expectant father could. I suppose this Olive person is his wife. Hmm. I think I’ll order nachos with olives at the restaurant.

“She wanted to come but couldn’t fly. I’m here one night, tops. I didn’t want to leave her too long.”

“Erica and I were just about to go eat,” Jeremiah says.

“We plan on silently judging the salsa,” I say.

“Yes!” Nacho throws his fist in the air, not unlike Toddler Beer Man. Sans beer. “Judging salsa is my favorite pastime.”

“Oh no. Here we go.” Dante’s already shaking his head. “He doesn’t stop at the salsa. He judges the whole restaurant. Then he makes fun of everything.”

“Nacho’s a chef,” Jeremiah explains. “He owns eight restaurants.”

“Nice!”

“He’s insufferable at restaurants,” Dante says, grinning like it’s the best thing about him.

“If you can’t be insufferable at restaurants, what’s the point of living? I always say.”

Nacho points at me like I’ve just confirmed something he already suspected. “She’s a keeper.”

I’ll allow it.

Luna Roja is a short walk from the arena, tucked between a shuttered dry cleaner and a bar with a line already snaking out the door.

The cousins fall into step around Jeremiah like they’ve done it a thousand times, and I can see the family resemblance, not just in their looks but also the way they carry themselves.

They banter, easy and loud, picking up some old inside joke about a goat. The cousins include me in the crazy conversation, just dropping me in as if I was there that day. No small talk. No asking what I do for a living. It’s refreshing.

“What do you recommend?” Nacho asks me once we’re seated, already frowning at the menu.

“Never been here,” I admit.

“Oh! Well, next time we’re in DC, you’re taking us where the locals actually eat. Not this.” He gestures at the room, the string lights, the laminated menus, with real disdain.

“I’m not a local. I’m just visiting DC.”

I don’t look at Jeremiah when I say it. I don’t have to. I feel the half-second hitch beside me anyway, small and quiet. He doesn’t say a word. He just reaches for the chips.

Careful, I tell myself, and keep smiling.

Nacho glances between me and Jeremiah, a chip halfway to his mouth. “Got it. So you came out to see my cousin play?”

“This guy? I just met him.” I turn to Jeremiah with a squint. “What did you say your name was?”

“Zesty.”

I snap and point at him. “That’s right. Zesty.”

Nacho and Dante volley their eyes back and forth between us.

“Explain,” Dante says.

For some reason, I feel so comfortable with these guys. Like they’re an extension of Jeremiah. And I can’t help myself. I point at Jeremiah.

“So I was just minding my business, when this strange man started stalking me. He just jumped out of the bushes and said, ‘Hey, my name’s Zesty. Would you like a hockey stick?’”

Nacho and Dante almost spit out their margaritas. Jeremiah turns beet red.

Dante is practically choking on a full-on laugh but says, “Why do I get the sense this isn’t far from the truth?”

“You were the one stalking me, if you recall… Sticky fingers,” Jeremiah says through his teeth. “And you said the present I did give you was soooo much better than… how did you put it? Some little stick.”

Nacho guffaws so hard, margarita almost comes out of his nose. “Dude,” he says, recovering from a laughing fit. “Quit while you’re not ahead.”

I take a dainty sip of my Coke. “Anyway, I’m just in town on a girls’ trip.”

“We had commemorative hockey sticks to give to fans!” Jeremiah cries, trying too hard to explain the truth.

Dante shakes his head. “Primo. Just stop.”

“I gave her a nice present. Her birthday was on the Fourth of July.”

“No way,” Nacho says. “My abuelo’s birthday is the Fourth of July. But Zesty here probably already told you that.”

“Nope.”

Jeremiah blinks at him. “I did not know this information.”

“How do you not know your own grandfather’s birthday?” I squawk.

“Well.” Jeremiah rubs the back of his neck. “He’s not actually my grandfather. He’s my father’s cousin’s father.”

“If you think American family trees are confusing,” Dante says, “Mexican ones are a whole other level.”

“Technically my grandfather is Jeremiah’s great-uncle,” Nacho says.

“And my dad is Jeremiah’s first cousin once removed,” Dante adds.

“And we’re second cousins,” Nacho finishes, like this settles everything.

“But we just call each other primo,” Jeremiah says. “And out of respect, even though he’s technically a great-uncle, I call their grandfather Abuelo.”

“Same as how he calls our dad Tío,” Nacho says. “Even though in English, that’s just cousin.”

“Okay.” I hold up a hand. “You’re right. It’s confusing.”

“Much simpler to just use uncle and grandpa for anyone older than you,” Jeremiah concludes, like that settles things.

I turn to him. “That doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t know his birthday.”

“Hey.” He holds both hands up. “I met that side of my family seven months ago.”

“It’s true,” Dante says. “He’s been hiding from us his whole life.”

Jeremiah flicks a chip at him across the table. Dante doesn’t even flinch, just plucks it off his shirt and eats it.

“Next year,” Nacho says, turning to me. “We should have a party at Abuelo’s ranch. Big cake, for Abuelo and you both. He always says the fireworks are just for him.”

“Same,” I say, and something in my chest goes soft and stupid for half a second, thinking of my own dad, who used to say the exact same thing to me every birthday.

Nacho promises, with total conviction, to show me what real salsa tastes like the next time I’m out his way.

Dinner is tasty and the conversation easy. Nacho does judge the salsa. And the carnitas. And the rice. He does, however, concede that the fresh-made tortillas are good. Jeremiah orders a plate called the El Jefe Platter, and I think his eyes are too big for his stomach, but he polishes off the whole thing.

Somewhere between the entrees and the flan, Dante leans back in his chair and tells Jeremiah, “Once you’re settled in California, you have to make it to Sunday dinners when you can get away. I know LA is a little far. Are you staying in Irvine?”

“Newport Beach,” Jeremiah says, dipping his spoon in his flan he absolutely would not share with me. I had to order my own.

“Oooh.” Dante whistles low. “Newport Beach. Ricachón.”

“What does ricachón mean?” I ask.

“Moneybags.” Color climbs the back of Jeremiah’s neck.

“Just promise us you won’t be driving around PCH in a Cybertruck,” Dante ribs.

“I’m not going to suddenly turn into a snob.” Jeremiah points his spoon at him. “Enrique’s the one who married an actual heiress.”

“That’s fair,” Dante concedes.

An heiress. My ears prick up before I can stop them. An actual heiress would be so much more useful on a job than inventing one from scratch, the way we did with Miss Capucine de Montfleury.

No. Absolutely not. This is the last job. There is no next job. There is no heiress to recruit, real or invented, ever again.

“What do you mean, heiress?” I ask, mostly to drown out my own brain.

“You’ve heard of January Madison?” Dante says.

“Who hasn’t?” I snort. She’s the poster girl for the color pink and small dogs in diamond collars. Also, more to what she’s supposed to be famous for, Madison hotels are in every city.

“My brother Enrique married her.”

I look around the table at all three of them. “So there’s a hockey player, a TV producer, a telenovela star, and now a hotel heiress.”

“Should we tell her about Francesca?” Nacho asks Dante.

“Francesca?”

“Our sister,” Dante says. “She’s an actress. Her husband’s a Broadway star and a famous YouTuber.”

“There were a lot of celebrities at the wedding,” Nacho adds, like this is a minor footnote and not an entire personality trait for a family. “Oscar winners.”

“One of them was knighted,” adds Dante.

My mouth actually falls open. “What kind of family is this?”

Dante looks at me, flat, deadpan. “Crazy rich Mexicans.”

Nobody says anything for a second. Then I lose it, laughing so hard I have to push my flan to the side lest I bend over into the whipped cream.

“Emphasis on the crazy,” Jeremiah adds, delighted with himself.

By the time the check comes, Jeremiah’s leaned back with both hands over his stomach in genuine pain.

“That’s it. No more restaurants for me.” He says it to the table at large. “Not until after the tournament. Nutritionist meals only from here on out.”

“Man of discipline,” Dante says, and scrapes the dregs of melted flan sugar off his plate like he’s just happy he doesn’t have to be on a special diet.

The cousins have an early flight and a hotel across town, some overpriced room they only got because, per Nacho, the whole city’s a madhouse, no rooms anywhere, and the goodbyes take twice as long as they should, full of hugs and shoulder squeezes and Nacho telling me, with total sincerity, that he hopes to see me again soon. Dante hugs me too, a full-body, rib-testing thing I did not see coming, and tells me it was good meeting me. They mention something about Christmas and a gift-wrapping competition and I smile, chest aching a little because I know that won’t be in the cards for me.

“California,” Jeremiah tells them. “In a few weeks. I’ll see you both then.”

We Uber back to the Four Seasons, and Jeremiah insists on walking me home. He refuses to hear a single word about it, and I’ve learned by now that when Jeremiah Precio decides he’s escorting you somewhere, arguing just delays the inevitable. Plus, I’m too tired and full to sneak up to the penthouse suite and sneak back out.

“Can I ask you something?” he says, a few blocks in, hands in his pockets. “When we met on May fifth. I just assumed you lived here.”

Here it is.

“I was only ever here for my birthday trip.” True enough, technically, if you squint. “That day we met, I was actually looking for an Airbnb. I never trust the listing photos.”

Which is, also, technically true. I really was hunting for a place back in May. Just not the kind most people book.

I stop him a few doors short of my actual building.

“I’ll wait until you’re safe inside,” he says, nodding at the front door. “Just in case there are burglars.”

I bite back a laugh. There are, in fact, six burglars currently inside my actual home. They’re probably eating my cereal.

He shoos me along. “Signal me from the window.“

I just stand there on the sidewalk.

He lifts one brow. “That’s not your Airbnb, is it?”

I slump. “No.”

He knew, dangit. And yet he’s so gentle about it. Like he expected it of me and can just laugh it off.

I trudge the rest of the way, three doors down, to the converted auto shop that doesn’t look, from the outside, like anywhere a person would willingly sleep.

Outside my door, he kisses me goodnight, soft and lingering, one hand curved at my jaw like it’s found its favorite spot. I turn for my door and he pulls me back by the wrist for a second kiss. This one is longer. A goodbye kiss that neither one of us wants to end. Both of us are smiling into it by the end.

“Have breakfast with me,” he says, brushing his nose against mine.

I gasp, pretending to be scandalized. “Mister Precio!”

He flushes fast, stepping back. “No, I don’t mean. I’m not implying…”

“Relax.” I bite back a grin. “I’m kidding. Also, didn’t you just declare a moratorium on restaurants?”

“It’s a team breakfast. Just a buffet downstairs at the hotel. Brooke, our nutritionist, runs it like boot camp, but there’s a grab-and-go table too, for guys who’d rather eat on the bus. Half the guys’ women come.”

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

“No singing required.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Then I’ll have breakfast sent up to my room instead.”

My eyebrows go up. “Your room?”

“Not like that.” He gets the words out fast, hands up. “It’s a suite. There’s a living room, a tiny office space, and a small dining table. I’ll keep the bedroom door shut the whole time.” He crosses his heart. “Scout’s honor.”

I tilt my head at him. “That’s only a few hours from now. Aren’t you bored of seeing me every single day?”

He doesn’t even pause.

“I’m addicted to you.”

18

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

America — Simon & Garfunkel

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon — Urge Overkill

Erica is barefoot, wearing my hotel robe over her dress, and it’s so big on her that she had to roll the sleeves twice so her hands could show at the cuffs. It was the second thing she did after she kissed me hello. She’d walked in, saw the robe draped over a chair, then kicked off her sandals and said something about luxurious, fluffy hotel robes.

She pulls the collar over her nose, and takes in a breath.

“It smells like you,” she says, delighted.

“That’s usually how laundry works.”

“No. I mean it smells like you. Not detergent. You.”

I don’t know what to do with that information except tuck it away and keep it forever.

And keep her, if I’m being honest with myself this early in the morning.

I let myself just watch her for a minute.

She’s lingering by the window in a patch of golden light. The glow of the morning sun spills across her cheekbone, her jaw, backlighting the flyaway strands of her hair with threads of yellow gold running through the brown. She tips her chin up into it without knowing she’s doing it, sun-drenched and lazy. She has no idea she’s the most beautiful thing in this entire city.

The whole suite has gone soft and quiet. Time slows until the moment is stretched. Hazy at the edges… soft in the middle. I don’t know how to hold onto it except by memorizing it while it’s happening, and some part of me is already grieving the second it ends.

She’s been circling the suite for ten minutes now, picking up a room key. A hotel pen. Picks up a stack of hotel stationery, reads the letterhead. Picks up a roll of my skate tape, turns it over once, sets it back down. Picks up the paperback I never finished, flips to the dog-eared page, reads half a line, snorts, closes it.

Her bare feet drift straight through the middle of a shaft of light cutting along the carpet. I don’t move. I just watch her cross the light and come out the other side of it, laughing at something only she finds funny. The sound of it does something to my chest.

She’s a fairy in a fantasy story. A Midsummer Night's Dream. For one deeply unserious second I think, if she’s the enchanting fairy, I’m the guy with the donkey head. The burro.

Fitting.

She picks up the framed photo on the dresser next, my team picture from the Jr. Kings I take to all my away games like a lucky mojo. In the picture are sixteen scrawny kids with expressions more serious than mugshots. We really thought we were so tough.

“Which one’s you?”

“Guess.”

She studies it, squinting at each face. “This one. Front row. Looks like he’s about to throw up.”

“No, that’s just my regular face.”

She laughs again, that scratchy, low sound I find far too attractive. She has several laughs I find attractive, actually. I’ve started keeping a list without meaning to. The way she laughs when something surprises her. The way her whole face gets involved, not just her mouth. I could listen to her laugh on a loop for the rest of my life and never once get bored of it.

She sets the photo down and floats over to the desk.

She picks up my watch next. The same one she tried to lift off my wrist. She holds it, testing the weight of it, turning it once in her palm. When she looks up and catches me watching her do it, she just raises an eyebrow.

She finds the horrible GILL POWER hat on the desk and puts it on without a word, tips the brim back, catches her reflection in the mirror by the door, and decides on the spot to keep wearing it. She turns her head one way, then the other, admiring herself with a straight face.

Something about the way it swallows half her head, the ridiculous orange barf color of it against her hair, makes my heart expand.

Keep it on forever. Give me an excuse to keep looking at you like this.

Room service arrives and she abandons her perusing for the cart, lifting every lid one at a time.

“Fruit. Croissants.” A pause over the eggs. “These smell amazing.”

Brooke, the team nutritionist, has strong feelings about her protein oatmeal. The breakfast of champions. I actually went downstairs to shovel some down my throat before Erica was due to arrive. Then, because I’ve made friends with the hotel staff, I requested someone in room service bring up a selection from the team’s buffet. Eggs, sausage, a fruit platter, the works, exactly what the team gets every morning. Plus one bowl tucked in the corner that isn’t on the menu.

Erica finds it before I can explain it. “Is this homemade salsa?”

“I have a salsa guy.”

“Of course you do.”

There’s a small dining table in the corner, but we end up on the loveseat by the window instead. I drag the cart close enough to double as a table.

She steals bites off my plate, and I let her, because watching her reach across me for a piece of melon is my new favorite program. I feed her the next piece with my fingers instead, and she takes it without breaking eye contact, her knee pressed against mine on the cushion.

Heaven help me.

My phone buzzes on the side table. I glance over, see my mother’s number and a string of exclamation points, and turn the screen face down without picking it up.

Erica watches me do it.

“You’re not going to get that?”

“No.”

“Everything okay?”

"It's my mother," I say. “She wants a photo for some press anniversary thing. It’ll wait.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I know.” I don’t, and she doesn’t push, and that alone tells me enough about her.

“I never met mine.” She rips a corner of croissant and stuffs it in her mouth.

I wait while she chews. Swallows. Takes a sip of coffee. Then she shrugs and continues on.

“My mom. She was not great at taking care of an infant, I guess. One day, she just up and left. Just like that.” She says it plainly. Eyes bright and radiant. Not mournful or downcast with self-pity. “Then it was me and my dad in a camper trailer on the open road.” A small laugh, like it’s a special memory she takes out of a box every now and then. “He used to say we were out to conquer the world. His truck broke down outside Scranton. Twice. It was the thought that counts.”

There it is. Another piece of her I didn’t have yesterday.

“You were happy, though,” I say. It’s not a question. I have the feeling, no matter what situation Erica finds herself in, she will find joy in it.

“Yeah,” she says. “We were.”

I can tell by the soft, distant look on her face that she really loves her father in a special way. This little detail is a gift. But I want more of her, any little crumb she will give me. So I lean over and brush my finger along her eyebrow.

“How did you get this?” I whisper, feeling the groove of her scar with my thumb.

There’s a playful glint in her eye. “Would you believe… I’m secretly a hockey player?”

“Hmmm. I’d have to check if you have all your teeth. Come’eer you.”

I grab her hips and slide her closer to me on the small sofa. Giggles pour out of her as I lift her top lip to expose her gums, then pull down on her chin, opening her mouth even more. I make a show of examining her teeth like a dentist.

“Hmmm. All incisors intact, it seems. Canines… number eleven cuspid a little crooked… Nope. Not a hockey player.”

I use the opportunity to tickle her, and she screams in delight.

“Mercy! Mercy!” she squeals through fits of laughter.

I ease up and give her some reprieve.

“Okay, let me guess, then. Not a hockey player. So… fight club?”

She shakes her head, biting her bottom lip, and it’s so adorable that I might die right here.

“How about… you lost a staring contest with a cat?”

She giggles some more. “Nope.”

“Tried to shave it into a cool shape and your hand slipped?”

Shakes her head again. “Nah-ah.”

I throw my hands up. “I give up.”

“You really want to know the gory details?”

“Every lurid one.”

“Brow piercing.”

“Oh no! I see where this is going.”

“Pulled a hoodie over my head too fast and the drawstring caught the ring like a fishhook.”

“Gaaah no! Agggh! That’s worse than fight club. Ouch!”

I think I’ve lost my appetite now, and Erica just giggles at my reaction.

“Seriously. Ah! Did it bleed a lot?”

She shrugs. “Not too bad. This is why I don’t wear any jewelry anymore.”

I lean over and kiss her scar, ever so gently. Then both her cheeks. Then her lips.

She melts into the kiss. Then her eyes fly open and she smacks me on the arm.

“Number eleven cuspid a little crooked?”

She’s smiling, though, and I tilt my head, admiring her teeth that actually are (mostly) very straight.

“Just a tiny bit. It adds character. Like the scar. And these freckles.”

These are all things I’m memorizing and storing in my heart.

Then, before I let the morning get away from me, I get up, cross to the closet, and pull the envelope out of my jacket pocket where I stashed it. Then I sit back down before she can ask what I’m doing.

“This is for you.”

She opens the flap and goes still. “What? What’s this for?”

"To buy a dress for the gala."

She thumbs through the six Visa gift cards without pulling the whole stack out.

“Three thousand dollars!? How much do you think a dress costs?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never bought one.” I’m completely serious, but now I’m second-guessing myself. “If it’s not enough, I have cash.”

“It’s too much.” She’s already trying to hand it back. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I want to.”

“Jeremiah, don’t be silly.”

“It’ll make me happy.” I say it flat, like this is my final answer on a game show. “There’s going to be a red carpet. Let me do this.”

She looks at the envelope for a long second. Then at me. Whatever argument she was building, she sets it down instead of finishing it, and tucks the envelope into her bag before I can change my mind, which I have no intention of doing.

She settles her back against me, and I curl my arm around her. We must doze off for a while because she sits up suddenly.

“I should go. It’s already late.”

She stands, shrugging out of the robe.

No. Not yet.

I catch her wrist before she gets two steps. “Ven aquí.”

I press my mouth to the inside of her forearm, then her elbow, working my way up until she’s laughing and swatting at my shoulder with her free hand, and I don’t let go. I wrap both arms around her waist, and press my face against her stomach through the fabric of her dress, breathing her in.

Her fingers automatically slide into my hair, and something in my chest gives out completely.

“Don’t go yet.”

“Jeremiah, I really do have to.”

“Stay.”

“I can’t. I have to work.”

I lift my head. “I thought you were on vacation.”

A flash moves through her eyes, and she laughs it off immediately. “Ain’t no rest for the wicked.”

I let it go. I don’t have to know every piece of her yet, and right now I’d rather hold on than pry.

“Stay,” I say again, tighter this time, my arms not loosening even a little.

“Don’t you have practice?”

“Stay. Five minutes.”

She laughs, already leaning back into me despite herself, her fingers still moving through my hair. “You’ll be late.”

“No.” I press my face harder into her, breathing the scent of her. “Actually, not five minutes. That isn’t enough. Stay forever. I’ll build a small fortress out of this room and we’ll never leave it. I’ll have provisions sent up. We’ll live like hermits.”

“What about hockey?” She’s laughing outright now. “You’d have to leave sometimes.”

“Nope.” I shake my head against her, feel her stomach tighten under her laughter, and mean it more than I’ve meant almost anything in my life so far.

This is how it happens. This is how men set fire to entire kingdoms. Is this what falling in love feels like? What is this woman doing to me?

She goes still against me, her fingers slowing in my hair like she’s waiting to see what I do with the silence.

"Or," I say. “We can run away instead. Go off the grid. Watch sunsets in an empty field.” I tip my head back so I can see her face. “And every Fourth of July, we’ll lie in the grass and watch the fireworks like a couple of kids, and I’ll tell you they’re all for you.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Her hand goes still in my hair, and the whole room holds still with it.

And then, like turning on a light, she breaks the silence, her voice breezy on purpose. “That watch is a knockoff, by the way.”

“I know.”

“So I could probably just have it.”

“No.”

“Worth a shot.”

“You can keep the hat, though.”

She laughs, then bends down and presses her lips against my hair.

“Okay,” she says, flopping onto me on the loveseat. “Five more minutes.”

19

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

NYC Larceny — Daniel Pemberton

Tanya is crying into a throw pillow, and the worst part is, I get it.

“I’m a terrible person,” she says.

“You’re not a terrible person.” I peel the pillow away from her face before she smothers herself. “I’m the terrible person. I’m the one who talked you into this.”

“Operation in progress, ladies.” Zoe doesn’t turn around. Six monitors glow in front of her, one of them looping the same eleven seconds of an empty hallway while she works around it. “Some of us are hacking a private security network over here. Keep it down to a dull sob.”

We ignore her.

“I lied to him.” Tanya’s voice cracks straight down the middle. “The love of my life. I lied to the love of my life.”

“You didn’t lie.” I hand her a paper towel off the roll we keep by Zoe’s monitors for exactly this kind of emergency, though usually the emergency is spilled energy drink. “You omitted some details. Some very important details. But you didn’t lie.”

“He’s such a good guy.”

“He has green flags all around him. Like a parade. A very sincere, slightly derpy parade.”

“And I can’t start my marriage with…with omitted details.” She swipes under her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I’m going to tell him.”

“Tanya.” I catch her by both shoulders. “Tanya, look at me. We’ll tell Dale together. But stop for one second and think. Are you prepared to lose him?”

She doesn’t even blink.

“Better to lose him with honesty than keep him with a lie.”

Oof. That hits me right in the solar plexus. I know my relationship with Jeremiah isn’t the same as Tanya and Dale’s. I’ve only known the man a few weeks, and even then, we’ve only been… what did he call it? Amantes? Well, whatever we are, it’s only a few days old. I have no business comparing my feelings with Tanya’s. But the sentiment still gets me. She’d rather keep him with honesty. That’s the one thing I can’t give him.

I don’t say any of that out loud. I just watch Tanya wipe under her eyes with the heel of her hand and pull her phone out of her back pocket.

“You’re calling him now?”

“I’m calling him now.”

“OPERATION,” Zoe cries. “IN PROGRESS.”

Tanya calls him now.

Dale picks up on the second ring, and the first thing out of his mouth isn’t hello.

“Hey there, Sugarplum. My Sweet Cheeks. I missed you so, so much today.”

Tanya’s whole face changes. The wobble drops out of it, replaced by something soft and lit from the inside.

“I miss you, too, Schmoopy.”

“I wub you, Pudding Pop.”

“I wub you too, Big Mac.”

“I wub you so, so much, my Pop Tart, my Honey Bunches of Oats.”

Oh boy! Did somebody miss breakfast?

Dale’s voice echoes through the whole room, not realizing he’s on speakerphone. “You’re my Squishy. My Tater Tot. My whole entire heart, Marshmallow.”

Tanya does not seem to mind the public display of food pet names, and just responds back to him. “You’re my Cuddle Dumpling. My Poochie Woochie. My Muffin Man, forever and ever, no take-backsies.”

“I cannot wait to make you my wife, my Sugar Plum Fairy. The day I get to call you Mrs. Booboo Bear, I might actually die.”

“I can’t wait either, my. My Sweetie-boots. You’re my one and only McMuffin till the end of time and possibly after.”

I reach over and take the phone before she can dissolve entirely into a puddle on the floor.

“Dale. Hi. It’s Erica.”

“Erica! Hey.”

“Hey, thanks for the shortbread. It’s incredible. I’ve had probably six pieces since this morning and I regret nothing.”

“Oh, good, it made it! Wasn’t sure with shipping this time of year.” Warmth floods his voice, easy and real. “Found a place that does it the old way, real butter, none of the sad stuff.”

“Very thoughtful of you. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Nah, I wanted to. You’re basically Tanya’s family out there.”

He is, without exaggeration, the single nicest man alive, and he has no idea his fiancée is currently three feet from a stolen Victorian jewel scan.

“I appreciate that. Thanks again.”

“Anytime. Hey, is the reception bad on your end? You guys sound like you’re in a tunnel.”

Structurally, the loft is not much more than an industrial converted auto shop, with factory windows, concrete floors, stripped brick, and open ceilings with exposed ductwork. The little furniture we do have was found on the side of the road. So basically, it might as well be a tunnel.

“Old building,” I say. "You know how DC is."

“Say no more, I spent time in Foggy Bottom for a summer that had actual asbestos, don’t get me started.” A pause, warmer, quieter, meant for Tanya and not for me. “Are you there, Honey Nut Cheerio?”

I hand the phone back. Tanya’s already drifting toward the door, voice dropping into the low, private register she saves only for him, and I watch her go, watch the door shut behind her, and think that whatever she decides to do about honesty, it isn’t happening in the next thirty seconds.

I cross to Zoe’s bank of monitors.

“She a loose cannon?” Zoe asks, chin-jerking toward the door without breaking her typing rhythm.

“Nah.”

“Are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Spending a lot of time with el hockey hot pants.”

“That was your idea.”

“You got the gala invite.” Zoe finally looks up, one eyebrow doing most of the talking. “But you’re going to another game?”

“Jealous?”

She huffs. “Yeah.”

“Wanna come?”

“Heck yeah!”

“Don’t drool on the hockey players.”

“No promises.”

Zoe goes back to her monitors without skipping a beat.

Four figures enter a private viewing room at the Bellenden. First Ivy, then Suri and Rue. Dennis Hobbs trails behind them, wheeling in the display case containing the Friendship Jewel. This whole meeting was set up on a wing and a prayer. It’s a miracle we’ve gotten this far in the plan. But my team continues to impress me at every turn.

Ivy’s going by Patricia Whitcombe today. For all Hobbs knows, she’s the gala logistics liaison, here to walk through the unveiling plan. She secured the private meeting by pulling out some dirt on a scheduling aide in Senator Crawford’s office, a nervous, sweaty little man who’d spent the better part of a year quietly diverting sponsorship checks into a defunct non-profit he happened to also own. It wasn’t that difficult to bend his arm. He made a call to the museum and, per Ivy’s instructions, played Hobbs’s ego by requesting him specifically.

Now Hobbs’s tongue is comically hanging out like a cartoon character with three beautiful women in a private viewing with him. He’s beaming. Actually beaming, his whole face lit up like the best thing that’s ever happened to his career just walked into a room wearing four-inch heels.

“Turn it up,” I say.

“Ms. Whitcombe, I have to say, when the board mentioned we’d be doing a private pre-gala review, I had no idea we’d be doing it with someone of your, ah.” Hobbs pauses to find the word, and the word he lands on is, “Caliber.”

“He’s going to hurt himself,” Zoe mutters.

And it wasn’t “the board.” Just a slimy little man in the senator’s payroll who probably got off too easily, if I’m being honest.

Ivy introduces Suri, who is posing as Dr. Adaeze Osei, a gemological consultant retained by the museum’s insurer to authenticate the condition of the jewel ahead of transport. If Hobbs had the brain to check her credentials, he’d find them in tip-top order. Tanya fabricated them, and then Zoe seeded them into three separate DC databases until they looked like they’d always been there.

Then Ivy made a single phone call to put Dr. Adaeze Osei at the top of the review list. These ladies are brilliant.

Rue steps forward. For this ruse, she’s the insurance assessor who Hobbs was told represents the BMAH’s best interests.

She’s running the pre-gala condition review, a job that lets her run gloved hands over every hinge and lock on the display case.

Hobbs, feeling extremely self-important and quite enamored by the professionalism these fine women display (he actually did use the words “fine women”), is falling all over himself with compliments.

Ivy doesn’t blink, just angles her head a half-degree, lets a small, warm smile land exactly where it’ll do the most damage. Before Hobbs can say another word, she produces a small, dark wooden box, and sets it on the appraisal table, right next to the flat velvet-lined presentation tray already poised and ready for the necklace inspection.

“A small thank-you,” she says. “For accommodating the review on such short notice.”

Hobbs opens it right there in the room, because restraint has never once in his adult life been a skill he possessed. Cigars, nested in silk. His eyebrows go up. Takes one cigar out, sniffs it under his nose, and puts it back.

“Cubans. Bold choice for a two-fiftieth celebration.” He winks at Ivy. “I’ll be sure to hide these in a… discreet place.”

“I certainly hope you do,” Ivy says, and gives him another condescending smile he doesn’t clue in on.

He keeps the box open on the table, right beside the presentation tray, angled so he can keep glancing at it while he talks.

“Shall we get down to business, ladies?”

“Walk me through your protocol for the night of,” Ivy says, all business now.

“There’s a formal unveiling, actually.“ Hobbs perks up, delighted to have her attention. “It will be in the east corner of the ballroom. The case opens in front of the whole room, press gets their photos, a few remarks from the board chair. Then it stays open the rest of the evening, on a pedestal, roped off but fully visible. Big finale moment. My idea, if I’m being honest.”

“How thoughtful.” Ivy makes a note on her phone. “We’ll want to run through the whole sequence once beforehand, if that’s possible. Nothing formal, just so the timing’s clean on the actual night.”

“Of course. Whatever you need.” Hobbs says it fast and eager. “Anything for the gala. Big night for the museum. Big night for me too, frankly. Director candidacy’s coming up in the fall, and a flawless gala is exactly the kind of thing the board remembers.”

“I’m sure it’ll be memorable,” Ivy says, and there is not one flicker on her face to suggest how memorable it is actually going to be.

Beside her, Rue works the perimeter of the case, two gloved fingers tracing the seam where the glazing meets the frame.

“Glass-clad polycarbonate, three-ply.” She speaks into the tablet propped against her forearm. “Forced-entry rated. No spalling if it ever took a hit, which means no glass fragments flying inward to trip the photoelectric beams even if somebody got stupid with a hammer.” She taps a spot low on the frame. “Extruded aluminum housing, not steel. Interesting choice.”

“Is that a problem?” Hobbs asks.

“Not particularly.” Rue doesn’t look up. “Just noting it.”

“She’s noting it, all right,” I murmur. Zoe snorts.

“Vibration sensor’s mounted inside the frame itself, not the glass, so it reads the whole housing as one unit. Pressure pad under the base too.” She glances up at the lighting rig without moving her head far. “And I’d bet real money there’s a seismic trigger tucked in there, given how twitchy that fixture is.”

Hobbs practically puffs up. “I pushed for that upgrade myself when I took over Provenance. Plus a humidity regulator most people don’t even know to ask about.” He says it like he’s handing her a gift. “I don’t cut corners on something like this.”

“Biometric lock’s engaging properly?” she asks.

“Like a dream. No keys anywhere near this case anymore. Card readers are for department stores.”

“Do you think she can get past all that?” I ask Zoe.

Zoe lets out a big sigh. “Remains to be seen. She might have to replicate the whole dang case, and I’ll bet it’s heavy as heck.”

“That’s gonna cost a pretty penny.”

“Don’t underestimate Rue just yet. The idiot just said the case would be open for photographs.”

“We’ll need a bigger distraction,” I say. “Where did you say the Argentinians are sitting?”

“Seating chart’s over there,” she says with a wave of her hand.

I find the seating chart and look for Jeremiah’s name. According to this, he and his plus-one (me) are at table three. The Argentinians are four tables over. It’s my job to make sure they don’t leave that room.

“May I?” Suri asks, and Hobbs practically trips over his own feet unlocking the case again.

He gingerly lifts the necklace out, cradling it with both hands and sets it down on the small velvet presentation tray. Right next to the cigars. Seriously, we couldn’t have planned this any better.

Suri leans in with her loupe.

“Widow’s teardrop setting, silver-topped gold, hand-wrought.” She tilts it toward the light, angling for the clasp. “There’s a maker’s mark here, right where you’d expect it on a piece of this era. See the cartouche? The little stamped shield the mark sits inside.”

“I, ah, hadn’t noticed that, actually,” Hobbs says, leaning in far closer than the moment requires, mostly, I suspect, because leaning in lets him stand shoulder to shoulder with Ivy.

“Most people don’t. It’s meant to look like a flourish in the design.” Suri sets the loupe against her eye. “Shield cartouche narrows it to a handful of London workshops working in this period. And here, the assay mark. Leopard's head, which confirms London."

“Fascinating,” Hobbs says. He finds absolutely none of it fascinating and all of it a very good excuse to keep standing near Ivy.

“And here.” Suri’s voice lowers to a half-whisper, as though she’s only just speaking to the necklace, like a lover… not unlike how Jeremiah whispers in my ear.

“Date letter. Unique font, unique cartouche shape.” She works the clasp open and shut once, twice, testing the give in the hinge. “Clasp mechanism’s original, too.”

A beat. “Weight, somewhere around forty to forty-five grams total, call it just over an ounce and a half.”

“That is compliant with my records,” Rue says, tapping on her screen.

“Tarnish is exactly where it should be, worked into the millegrain, the kind you can’t fully polish out no matter how good your jeweler is. Gold’s still warm underneath, right where the silver’s worn thin at the edges. I’d want it under a scope properly before I sign off, but nothing here contradicts the file.”

“Suri’s utterly terrifying,” Zoe says, with real affection. “I love her.”

Hobbs claps his hands together once, entirely too pleased with himself. He admires the cigars one more time, closes the lid, and tucks the box under his arm like he’s already deciding how to sneak it out of the museum. “Well. I think that covers everything on my end. Anything else you ladies need?”

“I think we have everything,” Ivy says, and glances, just once, toward the camera.

"Everything," Zoe echoes satisfactorily, hitting a key that means recording, archived, done.

I watch the feed a moment longer. The necklace is back in its biometric or whatever locked case. Hobbs walks Ivy toward the door with his hand hovering an inch off her back, the way men do when they want credit for chivalry they haven’t actually performed.

Rue gives the case a passing glance one more time.

And Hobbs has no idea he’s been playing the perfect fool for a room full of women he’ll never see coming. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when it all goes down.

Tanya comes back inside after her lovey-dovey call with Dale, and she’s back to her normal self. She probably just needed some Dale the Muffin Man therapy.

I could use some Jeremiah therapy myself. Does that make me needy? I was just having breakfast with the man a mere two hours ago.

I spend the rest of the day debating how much I can realistically be honest with him. I get where Tanya’s coming from, I really do. If someone is that special, you don’t want any secrets between you.

I go through the motions the rest of the day. Suri has her workstation spread out over two tables. She came back from the museum with renewed focus and has hardly rested since. We’ve been forcing pizza into her mouth while she mumbles, “Trust the process.”

Rue and Tanya are huddled over what I assume are plans for a replica display case, although I think Rue has a sense of personal professional pride and wants to try lifting the jewel the old-fashioned way.

The day slides into night, and I hardly sleep a wink.

I lie on my side on the fold-out with the window cracked, listening to a siren two blocks over rise and fade.

I think about Dale, how he’s not very much unlike Jeremiah in the fact that they’re both bound by a strict personal code of doing the right thing and being a good man, with boundless, wagging-tail enthusiasm. Admittedly, Dale has a bit more Ted Lasso puppy energy than Jeremiah, but it’s close.

Similar to Jeremiah, Dale was Mark-adjacent. Tanya went and fell in love with the guy anyway.

I think of how she said it was better to lose him with honesty than keep him with a lie.

My thoughts bang around my head loudly until I finally doze off just before dawn. When I wake up mid-morning, I’m resolved to give Jeremiah what I can. A shred of honesty for now. If he takes it well and doesn’t run for the hills, I’ll ease him into the whole me. Slowly. I can’t very well just blurt out that I’m basically the morally gray character in his Captain America story.

I decide to send him a text, because every single time I run the scene in my head I get to the part where his face changes, and I can’t watch that happen live. I don’t have it in me.

me: lets play 2 truths and a lie. go

me: 1. im secretly a time traveling alien sent from the year 2417 to study earth hockey culture

me: 2. im never giving the gill power hat back its mine now

me: 3. my dad is in prison

I read it back twice and stall, thumb hovering over the send arrow like it’s going to detonate. Then I hit send before I can think better of it, set the flip phone down and stare at the water stain on the ceiling.

Then I wait. And wait.

Nothing. No reply.

I wait until the morning turns into the afternoon.

Still nothing.

I suppose silence is the only answer I can expect.

20

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Confide in Me — Miss Sammy J

Golden — HUNTR/X, EJAE

Nine a.m. sharp, and Badaszek’s already laying down the law before half of us have our skates tied.

“Phones stay in the stalls today. All of them. No exceptions.”

He says it like he’s daring somebody to argue. Nobody does, of course. During Saturday’s water break, half the team had their phones out, and he didn't say a word. Today there’s too much riding on game five for anybody’s head to be somewhere else.

I lock mine in my stall like everybody else and don’t think about it again until the whistle blows two hours later.

Skate wraps at eleven. I go for my stall before I even think about the catered lunch waiting down the hall, and my phone’s sitting right where I left it, one message lit up on the lock screen.

America.

While I love the Dangerous nickname, something made me want to change her contact info after yesterday’s breakfast. I dunno. I feel like something significant shifted between us. Don’t ask why that called for a contact name change, but it did.

I’m grinning before I’ve even unlocked the screen. The timestamp says ten a.m., so her text came in while I was in the middle of my morning skate. She was thinking about me while I was getting yelled at for a lazy backcheck. Awww.

I read the first text.

America: two truths and a lie. go.

Bold, starting a game before I’ve even played mine tonight.

America: 1. im secretly a time traveling alien sent from the year 2417 to study earth hockey culture

That gets an actual laugh out of me, loud enough that somebody two stalls down glances over. I’m fairly certain that was the lie. I don’t think she gets how this game works.

America: 2. im never giving the hat back its mine now

The hat, I’d bet good money on, is a truth. That hat’s basically bonded to her scalp at this point. So the next one…

America: 3. my dad is in prison

My stomach drops so fast it actually hurts, like something got yanked out from under it.

I read it four times before the words sink in. Then my whole body goes cold.

Something happened between yesterday’s breakfast and ten this morning, and I’ve had no idea for almost an hour.

I skip the lunch. Skip the shower too, still in my sweaty underclothes, hair damp under a backward cap, and I’m out the door before anybody asks where I’m going.

I take an Uber, knee bouncing the whole ride, to her Airbnb. It looks almost sketchier in the daylight. In fact, it doesn’t look like an Airbnb at all.

I knock. Nothing. Then, muffled through the door, female voices and feet scrambling around inside.

“My stuff is spread out. No, I need these tables.”

“Cover it up.”

“This is delicate work.“

More scrambling about.

“Don’t touch the settings.”

“Then move your stuff.”

“It’s too heavy.”

Then silence. Then the door flies open so fast I take a step back.

A single face fills the gap, framed exactly to the width of the chain. Dark eyes run the length of me, unhurried, like she’s pricing me for parts.

“We don’t want any,” she says, and shuts the door.

I stand there a second, recalibrating. Knock again.

“I'm looking for Erica. Er… America. This is the right building. Right? I brought her here Sunday.”

I think this is the place.

The gap reopens. Same face. Slightly less patient.

“We only open for Girl Scout cookies.”

Door shuts.

I back off the step, try to get an angle on the one window facing the street. It’s so small and so high that I can’t see in. I knock a third time, softer, mostly out of stubbornness.

“Please. I just need to know she’s okay.”

Nothing happens for a long time. Long enough that I've almost raised my hand to knock a fourth time when I hear the sound of chain sliding, and the door finally opens, slow, only a few inches.

Erica keeps her body angled into the narrow space, one hand braced against the door like she’s got no plans to open it any further. Streaks run down both cheeks, both dried and fresh, and her eyes are red and swollen at the rims.

My heart breaks instantly. I reach through the gap and pull her the rest of the way out to me, tucking her head under my chin right there on the stoop.

“I came as soon as I could. What happened?”

She doesn’t answer right away. Just breathes against my chest in short, hitching pulls that make my arms tighten on instinct. When she finally gets words out, half of them get lost somewhere between her mouth and my shirt.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I should’ve…”

A hiccup swallows the rest of it.

“Erica. Talk to me.”

“If you want to leave, that’s…” Another hitch, her whole body shaking against mine. “You don’t have to explain it. I get it. I’ll give the cards back. I haven’t even used them, they’re still in the envelope, you can have them, I don’t need them.”

“Erica.” I pull back enough to see her face, hands on her shoulders. “What cards? Nobody’s asking for anything back. Slow down.”

She shakes her head like slowing down isn’t a thing she knows how to do right now. Presses the heel of her hand under one eye, smearing more than she wipes.

“I’m not good enough for you.” She says it like a fact she’s tired of arguing with.

“Hey now, hold on. I’m here now. Is your dad okay?”

I know she adores her dad, and whatever happened to him, I want to support her. “Do you need to go see him? Because I can get you on a flight today. Right now. Whatever you need.”

“You’d do that.” Not really a question. Something in her face breaks further, like the offer itself is what’s undoing her.

“Of course I’d do that. Talk to me. What happened?”

“You happened.”

“Me?” I’m not following.

“Yes!” she cries through what’s probably snot clogging her words. “You. You and your Ted Lasso puppy energy.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. You texted, I came. Your dad…”

“Exactly!” A fresh fit bubbles up and she’s sobbing into my shirt again.

I am utterly, and completely confused.

“I should’ve told you before. I kept thinking there’d be a better time. A right time to tell you. I mean, when is it ever a good time to say, ‘Hey, my dad’s a jailbird and I’m a loser.’?”

She stops herself, presses her lips together so hard they go white.

Wait.

“Erica.” I pull back another inch, need to see her whole face for this part. “Let me get this straight. This didn’t just happen today?”

She blinks at me and sniffs. “What?”

“You texted that your dad got arrested.”

Two little lines form between her brows. “No, I didn’t. I texted that my dad is in prison. Nobody gets arrested and sent to prison on the same day.”

Aye, que la…

“So, he was arrested before?”

“Yes.”

“And got sentenced today?”

She shakes her head. “What? No. Why would you think? Ohhh.”

“So he’s been in prison for a while, I take it.”

She nods solemnly.

“And you’re missing him today, is that it?”

Still a good reason to cry, but not as urgent as I thought.

“I texted you because I want to be honest with you.”

Then she adds under her breath, “Better to lose him with honesty than keep him with a lie.”

“You’re not going to lose me,” I say softly.

“I’m not?”

“No. What happened to your dad is not your fault.”

“But it is my fault. A little.”

Then she tells me about a man who was working with her father on a job. How friendly he was. How smart he seemed to an eighteen-year-old girl majoring in art history. He seemed so knowledgeable on the subject, and she was a young student, trying to make something of herself at the local community college. How one night, he’d snuck away from the other men planning a thing in the basement and walked into her room uninvited. How he’d shut the door behind him and sat on her bed.

My blood boils when she says this, and now I truly want to burn the world down for her. But I let her finish.

He didn’t touch her. But something about the delivery of his words made her uncomfortable. And perhaps he would have made a move. Her father barged in, saw the man too close to his daughter, and went feral. He threw the man against the wall and threatened him. Erica was young, and downplayed the situation. That was her one big mistake. Because after that day, there was a rift between her father and the man. And that is why he’d set her father up for a fall.

I want to scream and tear down every wall in this country to find this guy. Horrible thoughts run through my head. Thoughts of violent, poetic justice.

But Erica does not need that. She needs someone who will be here, to comfort her. So I just pull her back in against me and let her get the rest of it out in pieces, whatever order it wants to come in.

When she’s finally cried herself down to hiccups, I take her by the shoulders and hold her out far enough to see her whole face, bending until we’re level.

“Listen to me. You did nothing wrong. You understand?”

She doesn’t answer, so I keep going.

“It wasn’t your fault. And I don’t see you any differently because of it or anything else. Nothing you say or do will change the way I feel. You can tell me anything. Everything or nothing or just what makes you comfortable. I don’t care what it is. I just need to know you’re okay. And if you’re sad about your dad, I’m right here. If you’re angry and want to throw things, I’m here. If you want to go find this guy and rough him up… you’ve met my cousins. Especially Dante. He’s huge! And I’ve got a lot more in Mexico and LA and trust me, they would ride at dawn. Except Memo. He’s a priest, so he would probably just, I don’t know… pray at dawn.”

Her chin wobbles and a small laugh escapes through the tears. I use the hem of my T-shirt to wipe under both her eyes, the same shirt I never got around to changing out of, but I'm not letting her walk around with her mascara doing whatever it’s currently doing.

“Gross,” she says, and it’s the first almost-normal thing she’s said since the door opened.

“You’re welcome. You want to blow your nose into it? I don’t mind.”

I pull it over my head and hand it to her. She wipes her nose but then looks like she doesn’t know what to do with it now.

“You can keep it.” I fold her back in, chin on top of her head. “Listen, I’ve got a mandatory nap before the game.”

She sniffs into my bare chest. “They make you take naps? Like in preschool?”

I laugh. “Trust me, some of the guys act like preschoolers if they don’t get some zees.”

“I get a little cranky, too,” she admits.

“You can come with me. We’ll take a nap together. Or you can just watch me sleep. Or I’ll stand on this sidewalk, shirtless, as long as you need. I just don’t want to leave you or make you feel like I’m abandoning you.”

“I’m okay.” She pulls back, swipes under her nose with the shirt again. “I spent the last hour convinced you’d read that text and decided to bolt. I’m not upset about my dad. Much. I mean not more than usual.”

“You thought I ghosted you.” Because I didn’t answer her text right away. “Erica, I didn’t see your text until eleven. Coach made us put our phones away. And then when I did see it, all I could think about was getting to you. In hindsight, I should have called from the Uber.”

She laughs, short and wet, right in the middle of crying. “You should have called from the Uber.”

“I panicked.”

“Me too. And probably overreacted. But I want to tell you the rest of it. Just… not right now…standing on a stoop with my mascara halfway down my face.”

I tip her chin up so she’s looking at me. “Okay. Whenever you’re ready. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me now?”

“I’m sure. One of my friends is having an existential crisis. So I’m not the only drama queen in town.”

I chuckle. “Will you be at the game tonight?”

“Yes, I’ll be at the game tonight.” She thinks for a second, then, “Can I bring Zoe?”

I glance past her shoulder at the door, half expecting a pair of eyes to still be watching through the gap.

“Of course. I’ll leave two tickets at will call.”

“Thanks.” There’s a ghost of a real smile now. “She’ll behave. Mostly.”

I kiss her softly, one hand on her jaw. She comes up onto her toes to meet me halfway. For about four seconds, the whole morning goes quiet. The text. Her truths. All of it.

Then I have a nap to get to.

I wait for her to go back inside, then walk back to the Four Seasons with no shirt on. It’s a hot day anyway.

When game time rolls around, I’m more determined than ever to make her happy, and decide I will win this for her. She’s had so few good things in her life. And although she’s probably indifferent to hockey, she deserves a small win.

After a rousing pep talk from Coach Badaszek, we go out on the ice for stretches, and that’s when I see her. Front row center, and wearing that ridiculous GILL POWER hat. I skate up to the glass and blow her a kiss and mouth the words, “This one’s for you.”

Her friend is with her. Zoe, I think her name is. But she’s looking the other way, taking video of the players doing stretches.

When it’s time for the national anthem, I’m surprised to see Izzy stepping out under the spotlight. Now, I don’t know if she’s Jake’s fake girlfriend or if it’s real between them. I can’t keep up. But, dang, that girl can sing.

I tell him so right before puck drop.

“Dude, your fake, slash, not-fake girlfriend killed it.”

He doesn’t even try to play it cool, the way he usually does. Just watches her walk off toward the tunnel, grinning in a way he usually reins in when the cameras are close.

“She really is amazing, isn’t she?”

I mean, not as amazing as my girl, but I’m not about to say that to a guy with that derpy look on his face.

Then the ref drops the puck, and the rest of the world goes away except skates on the ice, blue sweaters, and the black disk.

East ties it early, a tip that finds iron then mesh. I register it and move on. There’s a scrum in front of our net not long after, all of us shoving, nobody actually swinging. Looks worse from the stands than it feels from inside it, probably. No whistle. We skate away from it laughing.

East finds a gear we haven’t in the second. Three unanswered, and for a few minutes the building sounds like one long groan from our side of it. I don’t spiral. There’s no room for it, not with the next three seconds always sitting right there in front of me. Somewhere in that stretch Dash buries the biscuit. We’re tied.

I fist-bump Dash, glove to glove, and keep moving.

East gets ahead again, twice more and they’re up six to four early in the third. But we’re not sitting on our hands, and Ted brings us up another point.

Then, about six minutes in, Stagmeier gets me with a cross-check, drawing a penalty for the Stripes, and a power play for us.

I find Stone in the right circle and set him up for a wrist shot. It’s in before the goalie’s weight finishes shifting. Six-six, we’re tied again.

With seconds left in the game, Houlihan moves in for the kill, and time stills for one split second. He’s going in for the winning shot. If he makes it, East takes home the cup. My heart skips a beat. The whole arena seems to hold one collective breath.

But Josh makes a savage blind glove save like he’s swatting a fly from the air. The final buzzer sounds.

The whole crowd stands up at once.

I can hardly believe it. We’re forced into sudden-death overtime.

Before getting off the ice to regroup in the locker room, I spare a glance at Erica. Her friend is chatting it up with a guy sitting next to them. But Erica has her nose to the glass, both palms pressed against it, and her jaw unhinged down to her chest.

Back in the locker room, it’s weirdly quiet. It feels like we’re holding vigil on the eve of war. I wonder, briefly, how it would have turned out if only the Revolutionary War was won by hockey instead of bombs bursting in air. It’s just a silly thought, and before I know it, we’re back on the ice.

East takes possession from the start, and less than a minute in, Kingston gets sent to the sin bin for hooking. During a power play, the Stripes almost score when Reeves takes a dangerous top-shelf shot, but Josh blocks it into the crease.

The crowd goes wild, and I take one split second to glance toward Erica. She’s on the edge of her seat, death-gripping the armrests until her knuckles go white.

And then, a miracle. The puck deflects off somebody’s stick and skitters loose. Tyson’s on it before it even settles, one motion, and clears it with a long pass to Dash, who’s wide open. Dash skates behind the net and wraps the puck around the pipe. The building comes apart. We win with a seven-to-six victory.

Erica’s on her feet, hat crooked, screaming along with eleven thousand strangers.

The dogpile on Dash lasts about forty-five seconds before somebody’s helmet goes flying. Then it's everybody's helmet, gloves, and sticks scattered across center ice like the world’s worst yard sale. We peel off him one at a time. Then the whole team is on Josh, tapping his pads, his helmet, whatever we can reach. He made the save that got us here.

The next forty minutes to an hour is a blur.

East and West shuffle into one long row for the handshake. Marchand saying something in French I don’t catch. Congratulations from some of my Olympic buddies who played for the Stripes.

They roll out a carpet across center ice. Tyson goes first, because that’s what captains do. Shakes the presenter’s hand. Lifts the cup over his head. The crowd roars. It makes it to me eventually, and I feel like I’m in a trance as I lift it. Similar to winning gold at the Olympics, this is one of the most surreal experiences of my career.

The locker room is a three-ring circus. Music’s up loud enough that conversation happens mostly by lip-reading. Stone’s found a bench to dance on, badly, on purpose. Somebody dumps a cooler of orange Gatorade over Coach’s head before he’s finished his first sentence to the reporters crowding the door.

I sit through the scrum still in gear, answer the same four questions eleven different ways. By the time I’m showered, the clock says almost two hours since the final buzzer.

Erica’s waiting by the family room doors in the GILL POWER hat. Standing next to her is Zoe, and by the looks of it, she’s posting game highlights on her phone.

“Zesty!” Erica pulls me down by the front of my hoodie for a kiss that gets a whistle from somewhere behind me I choose to ignore.

When we break apart, she introduces me to her friend.

Zoe extends a hand, deadpan. “We’ve met. Sort of.”

“Yes, you slammed the door in my face for not having Girl Scout cookies.”

“And I’d do it again.”

She’s already looking past me at whoever’s coming through the tunnel next, unbothered that half of them are on the opposing team. East. West. None of it seems to register.

Then Dante Leinecker passes, and we catch the tail end of his peacocking to whoever will listen.

“I got thirty-nine penalty minutes.” He looks proud of it. “I should win a prize for hitting a record.”

Zoe’s whole face changes. “Oooh, I love a bad boy.”

I open my mouth to point out that thirty-nine penalty minutes isn’t a selling point. Erica beats me to it. “Don’t. You will not win this one.”

I pull her off to the side once Leinecker’s gone, Zoe already three conversations deep with someone from the Denver contingent.

“I’ve got more media scrums and fan autographs. But if you can wait a while longer, I think some of the guys are going out to celebrate.” I get about that far before she stops me, a hand flat on my chest.

“Jeremiah.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I would’ve fallen asleep standing up somewhere around the second intermission if this hadn’t been the actual championship.”

“You should’ve said something.”

“And missed this?” She gestures at the wreck of a hallway, streamers already stuck to somebody’s shoe. “Not a chance.”

“Tomorrow’s worse, honestly. Exit interviews and media day, here at the arena. They’ve got us from nine to six with a room full of about a hundred reporters.”

I tuck a loose piece of hair back under the brim of her hat. “Maybe you’ll want to go dress shopping until I’m free.”

“You’re serious about this dress thing.”

“Dead serious.” I gauge her squinty stare. “So I guess I mean I want to see you in it.”

“Not till the gala.”

She kisses me once, quick. I've got somewhere to be, cameras and autographs to sign, and Coach probably wanting a word before the night's over.

“You’ve got a way home?” I ask.

“Zoe’s got some kind of rideshare rewards thing.” A tip of her head toward wherever Zoe’s vanished. “We’re fine.”

“Text me when you’re back. I mean it.”

“Bossy”

“Just protective.”

Her fingers are the last thing to let go, dragging off mine as I step back. I decide it right there. She’s not on her own anymore. Not while I'm around.

21

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

Getaway Car — Taylor Swift

Material Girl — Madonna

The knocking is what pulls me out of a heavy sleep. It takes a second to place the sound at all. My blanket is wound around my legs, and one arm is dead asleep underneath me. Someone’s fist is going at the door like whatever’s on the other side can’t wait, like something’s gone wrong. I sit up with a sharp inhale. Jeremiah.

I’m halfway out of the cot, blanket still wrapped around my legs like a straitjacket, when Tanya sprints past me toward the door in bare feet. I’ve only ever seen her run this fast for free samples at Costco.

From the far pullout, Ginger doesn’t even open her eyes. “Tanya.” Her voice comes out muffled. “It is six in the morning.”

Tanya doesn’t slow down.

Zoe cracks one eyelid at me from the beanbag she insists is ergonomically superior to every bed she’s ever owned. “If that’s the FBI,” she says, “I am going to be really miffed.”

Tanya throws the door open before any of us can fully surface, and there’s a beat where none of us know what we’re looking at. A very tall man in the hallway, rolling carry-on parked at an angle behind him, a garment bag over one shoulder, and a leather messenger bag crossed over his chest. Glasses. A face already lit up like Christmas morning.

Dale.

He has just enough time to set the garment bag down, before Tanya jumps and throws her arms and legs around him.

“Sweet Cheeks,” he says into her hair, like it’s the only word he knows.

I blink at the two of them. Then at Suri, who’s surfaced enough to prop herself up on one elbow. Then at Zoe.

"Tanya," I say, still groggy. “Did you know he was coming?”

Tanya doesn’t answer. Tanya is busy.

"She knew," Zoe says. "She knew and didn't warn us."

“Tater Tot.” Dale says it into her hair. “I wub you.”

“I wub you more, Big Mac.”

“No, I wub YOU more, Sugar Plum Fairy.”

Oh, here we go.

“I wub you so, so much, Schmoopy.” She pulls back just far enough to look at him, still wrapped around him like a koala. “So much.”

“I wub you so much more, Honey Pot.” He kisses her nose. Then her forehead. Then, for good measure, the tip of her nose.

This is a lot of feelings for six a.m. on an empty stomach. I need coffee.

“McMuffin.” She says it like an accusation of love.

“Marshmallow.” He nuzzles his nose against hers now.

Somewhere, a Hallmark movie producer just felt a disturbance in the force.

“You said you’d call from the airport,” Tanya says, finally letting him breathe.

“I did call. You didn’t pick up.”

“That’s because I was asleep. And had my phone on silent so it wouldn’t wake anyone up.”

“That’s okay, Pop Tart.“ He sets her down but doesn’t break contact.

Well. I glance at Zoe. There goes any hope of going back to sleep.

He turns, and looks from one woman to the next like he just noticed he had an audience. There’s that lopsided grin of his in place, like his whole face is saying welp, here we all are. I never noticed it before, but he’s kind of Brendan Fraser-coded. Like a young Brendan Fraser with a dad bod.

His eyes catch on the loft for half a second, at the worktable, the monitors, the recording rig, the scale model of the Four Seasons, and then move on just as fast. His face splits into that goofy smile when it lands on me.

“Erica!” He opens his arms, and I get pulled into a hug that’s too squeezy for this early in the morning.

Zoe’s next. He gives her a hug and a cheek kiss and a “Wow! Look at you.”

“You remember Ginger,” I say, and watch him commit to a hug he clearly needs half a second to place. “Ginger! Of course.” And I know he’s trying hard to place where he’s met her before.

Tanya’s engagement party. But there were a lot of faces that night. He’s too polite to admit he doesn’t remember her, so he just holds the hug a beat longer than necessary.

"Good to see you again," he says, a little awkwardly.

Ginger pats his back twice, the way you’d pat a large dog that startled you. “You too.”

Tanya, undeterred, drags him further into the loft by the hand. “This is Suri. Suri, Dale. And this is Ivy.”

Suri gives a two-fingered wave without fully opening her eyes. Ivy, on the other hand, in her bougie silk pajama set, extends both hands to take Dale’s, and gives him a cheek kiss on each side of his face. Like they’re old friends or something.

Incidentally, Ivy is the only one of us with an actual apartment in this city. But she’s been camping on our floor for three days. For the bonding, she’d said when she rolled four full-sized suitcases into the loft.

Zoe catches my eye across the room. Dale saw everything, her eyebrows say. Everything.

I know! And after the lengths they took yesterday to keep Jeremiah out.

Dale finally sets the messenger bag down by the door next to the carry-on, free of everything now except Tanya’s hand, and she takes full advantage, pulling him back outside before anyone can fully register what just happened. She’s still in her pajamas, barefoot, and is walking hand-in-hand with him down the sidewalk like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Zoe shuts the door behind them. The rest of us look at each other for a long beat.

Coffee. We need coffee.

I make it to the cupboard at the same time as Rue, and we end up reaching over each other for the last of the pastries, a sad, slightly stale danish that neither of us actually wants but both of us are, apparently, willing to fight for at six in the morning. She wins. I settle for coffee, black, because whoever finished the creamer last night is a war criminal.

“So what’s the plan today?” Ivy asks. “Besides surviving whatever that was.”

“I have dress shopping,” I say. “The gala’s in three days and I still don’t have anything.”

“Ooh.” Rue, mouth full of danish. “Make sure you get one that knocks his socks off.”

“When do we get to meet this hockey player guy?” Ginger says, peeking into the mini fridge for last night’s leftovers.

“How about the tenth of never,” I say, and take another sip of my coffee like that settles it.

Suri’s already headed for the bathroom, toothbrush in hand. She is not a morning person.

My phone buzzes.

Jeremiah: I’m up and dreading today. If you’re still sleeping, reply when you wake up. I will have my phone in my hand all day. If I just woke you up, ignore and go back to sleep.

Me: im up. got an unexpected visitor just now

Jeremiah: Who? Do I need to throw hands?

Me: LOL no its just my friend’s fiance

Jeremiah: Hold up. If I'd known I could crash the girls’ fort, I'd have been there already

Me: No crashing the girls' fort. No boys allowed

I set the phone down before he can talk me out of it, which, knowing him, he’d probably try. But this loft is way too crowded as it is. No, Dale can’t stay here.

I go for my bag which is hanging off the back of a kitchen chair. It’s an army-green thing tattered in all the right places. A cross between a purse and a backpack. I got it at a yard sale a few years ago and even though it looks like it survived Vietnam, I can’t bring myself to replace it. I dump half of it onto the counter before I find the Four Seasons card wedged behind a lip gloss and a pack of gum.

I turn it over in my fingers. Capucine de Montfleury never did check out.

I’m still holding it when Suri comes out of the bathroom, toothbrush still in her mouth, holding something up between two fingers like evidence.

“Whose is this?”

It takes me a second to place it.

“Is that a playing card?”

“It’s the jack of spades,” she says accusingly. “But look, it has a bird on it. Is someone playing pranks?”

On closer inspection, the playing card looks bespoke. The bird looks like one of those nineteenth century ink drawings under the word “Jackdaw” in an old-fashioned ornamental typeface.

“That’s mine, actually.” Zoe, not looking up from her monitors. “Sorry. I found it on a windowsill over there. I remember thinking it was a weird thing to just be sitting there, but I pocketed it anyway. Then I forgot about it completely until I was getting in the shower last night and it fell out of my jeans.”

“Where’d it come from originally?” Ginger says, heating up chow mein in the microwave.

“No idea.” Zoe shrugs, entirely unbothered. “Maybe it was already here when we rented the place. People leave weird stuff behind all the time.”

I want that to be the whole explanation. I want it badly enough that I almost let it be. The loft was empty when we moved in. I remember walking through it myself, every corner, every closet. But it’s a small thing, a card, easy enough to miss in a shadow or behind a baseboard for however many tenants came before us.

“Probably,” I say, and let it go.

Dale and Tanya are gone long enough that the sun’s fully up by the time they come back. Tanya is practically glowing. Dale, on the other hand, looks like a man who just found out the sky is a different color than he thought.

“Okay,” Tanya says, holding his hand so tight her knuckles have gone pale. “So. I told him. Everything.”

“What do you mean everything?” Ginger says cautiously.

“Like… everything, everything. Starting with the accountant job. The keycards. All of it.”

The room goes very, very quiet. I catch Zoe’s eyes over the rim of her coffee cup. Alarm bells go off in my head. What now, what now, what now? And I can feel the panic settling into my chest.

Dale doesn’t say anything right away. He just looks at me for a long while with an almost pitying expression.

“Your birthright,” he says finally. “Tanya told me the whole story. That’s… that’s a wild story, Erica.”

Nobody moves. I brace for whatever comes next. Probably not a lesson on letting bygones be bygones, or something more along the lines of what Jeremiah would say. Crime doesn’t pay. One of the first things he said to me.

But while Jeremiah is a pillar of morality, Dale is more… I dunno, a golden retriever, eager to please his friends. He just takes us all in staring at him, swings his lanky arms at his sides, and says, “What can I do to help?”

Everyone’s jaw drops.

“Ever drive a getaway car?” I say, half-joking, mostly stalling while my brain catches up to what just happened.

“I have a very clean driving record,” Dale says, entirely serious. “But I’m flexible.”

Tanya beams at him like he just proposed a second time. “Isn’t he the best?”

Dale plants his hands on his hips, smiling as he bobs his head, looking around the room like he’s planning to stay a while. Then his gaze lands on the scale model of the Four Seasons.

“Nice diorama.”

“It’s a scale model, Honey Bear,” Tanya corrects him.

“Did you make that, Pop Tart?”

Tanya nods proudly.

“Incredible,” he says. “You are so talented, Sweetie-boots.”

He kisses Tanya then settles onto a stool at the counter. Tanya gets him a coffee. He takes a few sips, then gives me that derpy smile.

“I just have one question. Why was the property seized in the first place?”

So I tell him. Simple as that. How in 1951, the Armitage patriarch signed away his family’s entire fortune without knowing what he was actually signing. How the company called it "Defaulting on the loan," then seized everything down to the furniture.

“I have the public record right here,” I say, finding my huge stack of papers I’ve collected over the years. I’ve copied them in triplicate and scanned them into a digital archive of my own, but there’s something about the paper in my hands. It makes it feel more like I’m connected to the historical facts.

I read an excerpt to Dale.

“The Borrower does hereby grant, bargain, sell, and convey unto the Lender, their successors and assigns, all of their right, title, and interest in and to the described property.”

Dale hums, thinking. “I’m no lawyer, but it does seem like classic legalese. And your ancestor signed that?”

“He thought he was getting fire insurance,” I say. “That’s what my dad told me.”

“And the company designed it to be unreadable to the average person on purpose.”

“Exactly. And after they took everything, running my family name through the mud, the necklace disappeared. I don’t actually know what happened to it for twenty years,” I admit. “It surfaced again in the seventies when someone made an anonymous donation to the BMAH. But Mary Todd’s letters, Eleanor’s diary? Vanished.”

Dale lets out a long, slow whistle.

“They’re still out there somewhere,” I say. “And I’ve got my suspicions where.”

Dale is quiet for a second. Then he pulls a laptop out of the messenger bag and opens it without further discourse.

“Okay, there’s a paper trail.” He’s typing already. “Money doesn’t just disappear, even in fake books. The money always goes somewhere. What’s the company called?”

“Whitfield & Kane Trust Co.”

He pulls up their website first. I watch it load over his shoulder, all navy and cream and reassuring serif fonts. And then he’s off it almost immediately, clicking into something with a lot more columns and a lot less marketing copy.

“Public filings,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “Historical registrations, whatever they had to disclose even when they didn’t want to.” A pause. “These guys have been quietly reincorporating every fifteen, twenty years.”

“They seized dozens of estates in that era,” I offer. “Not just ours. I don’t have all the names, but there’s enough rumor to know we weren’t the only ones.”

“That actually helps.” He doesn’t look up. “If there’s a pattern, there’s a ledger somewhere that has to account for it, even if it’s dressed up to look legitimate. Companies don’t hide money by deleting it. They hide it by renaming it.”

He goes quiet again after that, clicking through screens while Tanya watches him with hearts in her eyes. This must be her catnip. The competence he displays. It’s kind of how I felt watching Jeremiah sweat all over the ice last night.

It’s a solid two or three minutes before he finally looks up. Not dramatic. Not urgent. Just mild, easy, like he’s about to ask what’s for dinner.

“So.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “We gonna take these guys down or what?”

It catches everyone but Tanya off guard. She just beams harder.

“We don’t take down whole companies,” I say. “That’s not our code. Too many innocent people work there, people who need the paycheck and have nothing to do with what happened seventy years ago. We inconvenience the bad companies. We don’t demolish them.”

“Ummm, I wouldn’t rule out stock,” Dale says, already back to typing. “And bonuses. There are always bonuses that get unevenly distributed. You can do a lot of damage if you know where the money actually goes.”

Then he’s in a zone, hunched over the laptop, occasionally muttering things like “public filing, public filing, where’s the… there.” And then he starts singing under his breath, “Just follow the money trail…” to the tune of "Here Comes Peter Cottontail."

Zoe stares at him. Then at Tanya. Then back at him.

“I did not see this coming,” she says.

“Neither did I,” Ginger echoes.

I turn to Zoe, completely delighted. “Well, that could have blown up in our faces.”

“Ya think?” Zoe mutters.

I don’t have time to find out how it ends today. I’ve got a dress to find and about four hours before the good boutiques close for lunch.

So I grab my bag off the chair, dig out the Four Seasons key card one more time, and press it into Tanya’s palm.

“Here.”

She blinks at it.

“It’s for Capucine’s penthouse so nobody’s going to ask questions, and it’s paid up through the end of July to avoid suspicion. Consider it your pre-honeymoon.”

Tanya’s mouth actually falls open. “Erica!”

“Don’t make it weird.” I’m already at the door, already smiling in spite of myself. “No boys allowed in the girls’ fort. Go be disgusting somewhere with better room service.”

I leave before she can hug me, because if she hugs me I might actually cry, and I have concealer on that I’d like to keep intact for at least one more hour.

CityCenterDC is the kind of bougie place where the stores don’t bother with price tags, because if you have to ask, you’re already in the wrong zip code. Hermès. Chanel. A Dior with what I’m fairly sure has its own private elevator. And somewhere in the middle of all that marble, there’s me in jeans and sneakers.

I have no plan except for maybe something in black that doesn’t look like I borrowed it from a goth girl.

I’m three racks deep into my second boutique when a woman in a cream blouse materializes at my elbow. Her name tag says Bitsy, but going by the look on her face, it should read Disdain instead.

“Can I help you?” Bitsy says, in a tone that suggests she would rather pull out her own fingernails than help the likes of me.

She looks me over. The shoes, jeans, the army-green bag. It’s the kind of once-over that starts at your feet and ends somewhere around your soul.

“Just browsing,” I say, pleasant, because I’ve talked my way past far scarier people than a woman named Bitsy.

“You can’t bring that in here.” She nods at my bag.

“It’s my purse.”

“That is not a purse.”

“It has a zipper. It holds my wallet. I’m fairly confident that makes it a purse.”

“We have a strict no-bags policy on the sales floor.”

“I didn’t see a sign.”

“It’s implied.”

I could leave. That would be the sane, uncomplicated thing to do. Instead I make the mistake of raising an eyebrow, and Bitsy’s whole posture sharpens, like she’s been waiting all morning for someone to give her a reason.

“Perhaps,” she says. “This isn’t the right store for you.”

“Or maybe you could just let me look at a dress.”

“We don’t typically carry items for…” She pauses, just long enough to make it a weapon, “…persons of your demographic.”

A second saleswoman drifts over, drawn by whatever silent alarm summons these people, and the two of them close in slowly, incrementally, like sharks.

“Perhaps she got lost on her way to Walmart,” the second one says, and they both laugh through their noses.

“Or the thrift store,” Bitsy adds.

This one doesn’t even introduce herself, just plants herself at Bitsy’s shoulder and starts nodding along like a backup singer.

“We really can’t have people just wandering the floor,” the second lady says.

“I’m not wandering. I’m shopping.”

“I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for here,” Bitsy snarls.

I should just leave. Seriously, I can’t even with these ladies. But something defiant inside me takes over and digs her heels down.

“I’m actually shopping for a really fancy banquet,” I say. “I’ll let you know if I need your… help.”

Grrrr, these ladies irk me. Mostly because they remind me of high school mean girls. I’ve had to deal with more than a few of those back in the day. When I’d walk to school with holes in the soles of my shoes, and the same four outfits on rotation.

Both women snort at the word ‘banquet’ like I’m just shopping for a backwater prom.

“Miss, I’m going to need you to either check your bag at the front or leave.”

“Check it where, exactly? I don’t see a coat check. I see a blouse with florals straight out of the ’80s, one deeply regrettable haircut, and eyebrows drawn on with what looks like a Sharpie.”

Bitsy’s smile goes thin and brittle. “There’s no need to be difficult.”

“I’m not being difficult. You’re being—” I feel my back hit the rack behind me, the two of them somehow having closed the distance without either of them technically moving toward me, “snobby and rude.”

“Security can escort you out, if that would be easier.”

They have no security. I’m trained to notice these things. But I genuinely consider just leaving when a voice behind me cuts through the whole standoff.

“Excuse me. What is going on here?”

Five women with small shopping bags dangling from manicured fingers stand like a wall just past the rack I’m pressed into. They’re well-dressed, their shopping bags have logos on them from high-end stores like Tiffany & Co., Prada, and Kate Spade. They are all very well put together and not one of them has a raggedy old army-green backpack.

But every single one of them is staring down Bitsy and her backup singer like they’ve just watched someone kick a puppy on live television.

"This is unacceptable." The one with the bob at her shoulders steps directly between me and the rack, voice pitched to carry. The tone of someone used to being listened to. “Do you two do this to everyone who walks in, or did you just decide today was a good day to be awful?”

“Ma’am, store policy⁠—”

"Policy doesn't require you to loom over someone like she's about to steal the register." The blonde in the ponytail cuts in, arms crossed, looking like she's enjoying this a little too much. "I've been standing here two minutes and I've already watched you insult this customer five times. I'm counting."

“We were simply⁠—”

"Simply enjoying yourselves, it looked like." This from the quiet one with hair long enough to brush her waistband.

Bitsy and her backup singer go from smug to scrambling in about four seconds flat, and none of the five slow down long enough to let them recover.

“Come on, sweetie.” The short one links her arm through mine like we've known each other for years. On my other side, another arm slides through, then I’m boxed in by women I’ve never met, all moving for the door in one unbroken line. “Let’s go somewhere that treats people like humans.”

We walk out six-wide, arms linked, and I don’t look back to see what’s left of Bitsy’s face.

Outside, blinking in the sunlight, I get my first real look at them, and something clicks into place.

Sparkly jacket ladies. The ones from the friends and family room after the hockey games.

“Wait.” She's studying my face now, head tilted, ponytail swinging with it. “I’ve seen you. You were there for game five.”

"Guilty," I say, since apparently I've been made.

“I’m Taylor.” She smiles, warm and immediate, and gestures at the others in turn. “Hadley. Paige. Penny. Lauren.”

“I’m uh… Erica.”

"Are you shopping for the gala?" This from Penny. Probably. The introductions were super quick, but I think I got that right. “Because that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But I should probably just order something online.”

Taylor waves her hand. “Oh, sweetie, you don’t have time for that.”

“Girl, we gotchu.” Paige grabs my other arm. “We all got our dresses at the same place on the first try. You gotta come. It’s like magic.”

“That feels like a lot of pressure to put on one boutique,” I say.

“I couldn’t believe it either,” Hadley says. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

I should say no. I have exactly enough self-preservation left to know that letting five strangers adopt me mid-afternoon is not, strictly, part of the plan. But they’re already walking and chattering, folding me into the middle of their group. And something about the warmth of it makes it very hard to remember why I’d want to say no in the first place.

The boutique’s sign is just a discreet brass plaque, and there’s a woman behind the counter who lights up the second we walk in.

“You’re all back!” She comes around the counter in a suit so well-tailored it looks poured on, wearing heels that click in that satisfying ASMR way.

“I kept your purchases exactly as promised. And I put them in our signature leather garment bag so they’ll be safe for the ride home.”

“You’re an actual angel,” Paige tells her.

“This is our friend,” Taylor says. "She also needs a dress for the gala. Be gentle with her, she’s had a day.”

“Say no more.” The saleslady’s eyes go soft and assessing, sweeping over me once, twice, the exact opposite of Bitsy’s once-over. She probably can guess a dress size and give you a color analysis in five seconds flat. “I’m thinking black. Very elegant.”

“I was thinking black,” I say, surprised.

“I am never wrong.” She smiles like we’ve shared a secret. “I’ll get a room started for you.”

What follows is a blur I only half-remember clearly. My new acquaintances split off into five different directions. Hadley pulls something off a rack with a soft “Ooh, what about this?”

Lauren vetoes it before it even makes it to the fitting room.

Penny quietly produces a dress from somewhere in the back that seems custom-summoned by sheer will. I end up in a little curtained room, arms out, being handed things I would never have picked myself, and there is a full minute where I catch my own reflection, surrounded by strangers who are, inexplicably, invested in whether the neckline works. I muse, with genuine bewilderment, that I feel like the frumpy best friend in the makeover montage of a movie.

And I don’t hate it. That’s the part that catches me off guard. I really, really don’t hate it.

“What’s your name, dear?” the saleslady asks, stepping back to study me in the third dress.

“Erica.”

“Ah.” Something shifts behind her eyes. “Well. There’s no America without Erica.”

“That’s what I always say,” I tell her.

She disappears without another word and comes back two minutes later with a garment bag she must have had staged somewhere, waiting. I don’t argue. I just put it on.

The room goes quiet when I step out. Then Hadley makes a small, strangled sound. Then Lauren actually claps, both hands, like she’s at a wedding. Paige just points at me and says, “Yeah. That’s the one.”

I look in the mirror and something in my chest does a slow, unfamiliar flip. It’s perfect. I don’t have the words for it beyond that yet. So I just stand there in it and let five strangers tell me I’m beautiful.

Next thing you know, I think, I’ll be in a bedazzled bomber jacket, singing “You’re the One That I Want” at a tailgate. The thought should horrify me.

It doesn’t, though. That’s the unsettling part. I wouldn’t mind that so much.

Even though I truly am a terrible singer.

We walk back down the avenue together and find ourselves in front of the mean girl boutique I went into. All six of us burst through the door like it’s a dang saloon in a western and we’re some kind of gunslinger posse. Paige scoots to the front of our group and marches right up to the two snobby sales ladies.

“Remember her?” Paige says, pointing at me, her voice carrying across the entire floor. I see two heads pop out of the dressing rooms, curious about the clamor we’re making.

Bitsy’s face twists with recognition, then dread.

“You work on commission, don’t you?” Paige asks, sweet as poison.

A pause. Bitsy’s chin lifts, reluctant. “Yes.”

Paige gestures to every single one of our luxury shopping bags and bespoke leather garment bags. “Big mistake.” She pauses dramatically, channeling her inner Julia Roberts. “Huge.”

And then we’re all giggling, six grown women sprinting out of a luxury boutique in broad daylight. By the time we spill onto the sidewalk, I’m laughing so hard I can barely breathe, bags swinging, heels clicking against pavement, and somewhere behind me I hear Paige, breathless, delighted, confess to no one in particular.

“I have always wanted to do that.”

22

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Bullet the Blue Sky — U2

The iced matcha sweats in my hand before I’m even out the door of the Coffee Loft. That’s the heat I’m dealing with, walking out into a DC morning that’s already going on ninety degrees.

I’m a different man today than three weeks ago when Erica backed into me at the specials board, causing me to spill my drink on my shirt. I wish she were here with me now so we can laugh about it. Without her, the whole block feels like it’s missing a sound effect.

I wanted time with her today. I’ll admit it. But she said she’d be busy all day with gala prep and not to disturb her. Something about her friends wanting to pamper her, getting a manicure and a blowout, whatever the heck that is.

I suppose some rest would do me good today anyway. I can’t very well monopolize every hour of this woman’s life. Okay, I do want to monopolize every hour of this woman’s life. Sue me.

So I got my matcha. Solo.

Yesterday, we’d gotten ice cream and walked it down to the waterfront. Hers was gone before we’d made it half a block, because the woman inhales ice cream like it’s about to be repossessed. Mine was still mostly intact when we reached the fountain because I have some self-respect. Then she’d asked me, apropos of nothing, what kind of dog I’d get if I could get one.

“Black lab,” I said. “Or a Great Dane.”

She’d gone very still, squinting like I was a math problem that refused to add up. “Huh.”

“What.”

"I had you pegged as a Chihuahua man."

“Excuse me?”

“Small, high-strung, technically a dog.” She’d shrugged, entirely unbothered by how insulting that was. “But now that I know you better… yeah. Checks out. Big, loyal, follows you around. Protective.”

Then she’d just reached over without asking and helped herself to the rest of my cone. I just let it happen. I don’t know what that says about me.

As the lazy morning turned into a lazy afternoon, I’d asked her about her dress. I knew she’d gone shopping, and I was curious. I framed it in such a way so it was more about us matching, like if she was going to wear red, I’d wear a red pocket square, for example. She saw right through my plan and told me her lips were sealed.

Then I kissed those lips and said, “Not even a hint?”

“No.”

“An itty-bitty one?”

“Spoilers.”

I will have to let my imagination do the work until I see her tomorrow night. This is torture.

I finish the matcha with one last slurp through the straw and toss the cup in a bin outside the corner store. I go in for my gum and I’m at the rack thumbing through packs when it hits me that I’ve stood in this exact spot before with a fistful of gum. Erica had breezed past me with a coffee, giving me a nod before disappearing through the door.

I hadn’t even known her name yet. It feels like a different lifetime already.

The conversation from yesterday springs forward. We were hand in hand, taking our time before I had to drop her off at the Airbnb. Neither one of us seemed to be in a hurry to get there.

And I’d said, “You know, I spent all this time thinking you lived in DC, and it never once occurred to me to ask where you actually live.”

“Oh. Here and there. I move around a lot.”

“Not too differently than your childhood, I suppose.”

“Yeah.” She went quiet for a second with her eyes on the sidewalk ahead as if it had the answer written on it somewhere. “I guess you could say that.”

“Any chance you’d want to spend some time in California?”

She’d made a noncommittal little sound. Something between “eh” and a hum. Then she’d tipped her head back and pointed straight up. “Ooh. That cloud looks exactly like a rabbit eating a hot dog.”

She said it with the full conviction of someone who’d just spotted a UFO, and the conversation, along with any chance of an actual answer, floated off with it.

I’ll ask her again after the gala. I’m not the only guy on my team with the same concerns.

Half the guys are plotting entire life relocations, trading teams, or moving their new girlfriends closer to them. Somebody’s selling a condo. I laugh. Seems like an unusual number of guys started new relationships during the tournament. Must be something in the water.

The lobby doors part and the AC is heavenly. For a second all I want in the world is to stand in it. Then somebody says my name.

“Precio.”

It’s Blake Davis from the East team with his big goalie energy even in street clothes.

“Bear,” I say. “Where you off to?”

“Someplace better than here, hopefully.” That’s all he gives me, and I don’t push, because I know that look. He glances at me a second too long, though, and his mouth splits into a knowing grin. "Heard something interesting this week."

“That’s never good.”

"You were at the Capitol Practice Facility last Saturday. After hours.” He lets that sit there.

I feel my stomach drop about four floors. “How do you⁠—”

“Relax.” He holds up a hand like he’s stopping a puck. “My uncle Phil runs maintenance over there. He’s tight with your guy Martín.”

“So it was fine? That was allowed? I don’t want Martín to get written up on my account.”

“It’s totally cool. Gave me a few ideas.” He wags his brows. “A whole private skate, lights and music and everything. Very smooth.”

“Yeah, it was my…” I’m about to say girlfriend automatically, but stop myself. “…My date’s birthday. I wanted to surprise her.”

If Davis notices the stutter, he doesn’t say anything about it. He just claps me on the shoulder.

“West played great, by the way,” he says. “No hard feelings, man. Even when you were sending slap shots through my five-hole.”

“You’ll live.”

He fist-bumps me, already half-turned toward the door. “Gotta run. Can’t miss this one.” And there’s that look. I’ve seen it on half the guys’ faces this week, guys who three weeks ago were single and now can’t get out the door fast enough. I wonder if I’ve been wearing the same one and just haven’t caught myself in a mirror.

I’m still smiling about the five-hole comment when I pass the lounge and a voice stops me dead in the middle of the lobby.

“She’s not gonna get away with it, you know.”

I turn.

It’s that slimy little man from the museum. He’s sitting in one of the lounge chairs like he’s been lying in wait all morning. He gets up and crosses toward me, and I’m already on defense.

“What the diablos are you doing here?” I say.

I know for a fact he’s not a hotel guest.

“Get out.”

“Hold on. I just want to talk.” He doesn’t retreat an inch. Takes another step closer instead, hands spread wide like he’s the reasonable one in this conversation.

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you.”

“How well do you know America Armitage?”

Something goes cold behind my ribs at the sound of her full name in his mouth, like he’s got no business owning it. I don’t know yet why that lands as hard as it does. I just know it does.

“What’s it to you?”

“You might want to sit down for the next part.”

“I’m fine standing.” My hands have already curled at my sides. I make myself unclench them, one finger at a time, because decking a man in a hotel lobby is not currently on my bingo card.

“Suit yourself.”

A server sets a mimosa on the low table behind him, and he drops back into the chair like the whole lobby belongs to him.

“The name’s Hobbs, by the way.”

"Say your piece and get out."

“You’re a little aggressive, aren’t you?” He takes a sip, unbothered, watching me over the rim of the glass, probably sizing me up.

I can take him.

“You see, what I can’t figure out is whether you’re her accomplice, or just another sucker she’s using. I’m betting on the latter.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The gala. Funny, I thought she was casing the museum. And then you came running along. A hockey player who, it just so happens, will be at the same gala, at the same time, as the thing she’s been wanting for six years.”

“I swear, if you lay a finger on her⁠—”

“Relax, relax.” He waves it off like I’m the one being unreasonable. “Nobody’s laying a finger on anybody. I’m offering you a way out. That’s all this is.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“You will.” He sets the mimosa down, folds his hands, and leans in. “Because I’m offering you an opportunity. When that woman gets what she wants from you, she’ll chew you up and spit you out. All you’d need to do is turn her over to me at the right time.”

“You want me to sell her out.”

“Think about it. You’re a patsy to her, that’s all. If she’s going to let something slip, it would be to you. You’d be a hero.”

“I wouldn’t betray her trust.”

“She’s a thief, you know.”

That’s the first truth he’s said yet. Sure, she tried to steal my watch. But the devil’s in the details, isn’t he? Mixing in small truths with the lies.

“Just like dear old dad,” he adds. “Did you know he’s in prison?“

“I’m aware.”

“I put him there.” He picks the mimosa back up, entirely pleased with himself. “And tomorrow, I’ll see his brat behind bars too.”

I freeze. He’s the guy Erica was telling me about. The man on her dad’s crew who decided it was okay to close himself in her bedroom when she was just eighteen years old. It’s consistent with the way he’d cornered her at the museum. Now, looking him over, every piece clicks into place.

“It’s you.” My voice comes out flatter than I expect. “You’re the guy. The creep who hit on her when she was barely old enough to vote.”

He doesn’t even flinch. Doesn’t have the decency to look uncomfortable about it.

I want to put my fist through his face right here in the middle of a hotel lobby. I don’t. Not because he doesn’t deserve it. Because I know better, and because I’m not giving him the satisfaction of playing the victim.

“Don’t underestimate me, little man.” I keep my voice down, grinding the words through my teeth. “I’ve got fifty hockey players who will back me up, and trust me, you do not want to find out what that looks like. If I see you anywhere near Erica… I will end you.”

He finishes the mimosa in one long swallow, sets the empty glass down with a click, and stands, straightening his tie like he’s the one who came out ahead here.

“She’s going down, hockey player.” He’s already walking, already tossing it over his shoulder like a parting gift. “The question is, are you going down with her?”

I watch him go, watch the doors swallow him whole, and for a second all I can hear is dear old dad and thief and behind bars, looping like a bad replay review.

I don’t trust that man or anything that comes out of his mouth, even his half-truths. A man who’d set up another man as his fall guy is just as guilty of whatever put Erica’s dad in prison.

If he shows up at the gala tomorrow night, I’ll be ready.

My hands are still shaking as I make my way up the elevator to my room.

23

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

Snake Eyes — David Holmes

Game On! — Daniel Pemberton

Dale is truly terrifying and I’m not even remotely upset.

“I got you, suckers!”

He bursts out of the penthouse bedroom in yesterday’s wrinkled polo, glasses crooked, and his laptop held over his head like a championship belt. Every single one of us jumps.

“Dale!” Tanya presses a hand flat to her chest. “Goodness! My heart.”

“Sorry, sorry.” He isn’t sorry. He’s grinning like he swallowed the sun. “But you all need to see this.”

He turns the laptop around. Even from across the room, I can read the header on the file he’s pulled up. Whitfield & Kane Trust Co. Foreclosure Filings, 1928–1971.

“The money funded political favors,” he says. “It trails all the way back to before the Depression. There’s falsified paperwork on basically every file I could get my hands on. Not just the Armitages. It’s a pattern. A whole ugly, decades-long pattern.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes!” He sets the laptop down on the table where I’m having my bagel. “It’s all here. The trail starts in Lexington, that’s where I looked first. But then I went down this rabbit hole of disputes. Families who pushed back on false loans. None of them won, of course, but then I followed the money. Beneath the ledger, Whitfield & Kane operated a systemic political machine.”

“That’s some rabbit hole,” Ivy says.

“And this is where it gets really good,” Dale continues. “Over the years, Whitfield & Kane took out ghost loans, which were then transferred to private offshore accounts. This washed money bought votes, funded luxurious campaigns, or paid for blackmail material to keep uncooperative politicians in line.”

“I’m a little bit scared right now,” Rue says.

“And check this out, Whitfield & Kane used code words to conceal what they were really doing. A ledger entry reading ‘Bought 4,000 crates of premium structural bananas’ was actually a code for bribing a state senator. Isn’t that cool?”

I lick cream cheese from the corner of my mouth. “I… guess?”

“Then, when the fake loans defaulted, Whitfield & Kane wrote them off as bad debt caused by the economic crash, hiding the crime in plain sight. I mean, I’m not saying they caused the Great Depression, but I’m not NOT saying it either.”

“That’s quite a bold claim,” Zoe says.

“Not if you consider how the greed of a few individuals was basically knocking over the world’s biggest economic domino line.”

Rue kicks her feet up on the sofa. “Wow.”

“How did you find all of that?” I ask.

Dale slides his glasses off in one smooth motion like Clark Kent transforming into Superman. “I’m an accountant. Finding numbers is what I do.”

“That’s my man,” Tanya says, beaming at him.

Dale clicks the keyboard. “Oh yes. I think the average everyday employee at Whitfield & Kane will be… juuuust… fine.”

Zoe stares at him a beat too long. “We created a monster.”

Dale takes his laptop over to the armchair, mumbling something about compiling all the data into a spreadsheet, and we all sit there dumbfounded for five minutes.

I finish my bagel, down the fresh-squeezed orange juice room service delivered, and look around at my crew. My heart is full. There are my people. Well, except for Jeremiah. I wish I could fold him into this part of my life.

I clear my throat and begin the morning-of address I always do. It’s more of a checklist, really, one which I probably don’t need to go over. My girls are the best in the biz. They’re ready.

I do it anyway, if only to calm my nerves.

“Suri.” I start with her because she’s got the hardest job tonight. “How are we on the biometric override?”

“Tested twice. We’re good.”

“Tanya. Keycards? Turndown cart?”

“All accounted for.” She pauses for a second. “I can’t believe I’m the maid again. I have a business degree.”

“Keep the uniform,” Dale calls from the armchair. “For the honeymoon.”

Tanya’s whole face goes pink.

“Rue,” I say, knowing she’s been practicing the swap with Suri’s forgery. “What’s your latest time?”

Her feet tap on the armrest. “One point five seconds.”

“For the extraction or replacement?” Zoe asks.

Rue gives her a dry look. “Both combined. Do I look like an amateur?“

“Just asking.”

“Ginger?” I call across the room. “What’s the code word you decided on?”

“Baguette,” she says in a ridiculous French accent.

Tanya snorts. “Baguette?”

Ginger blinks at her. “Erica will be eating dinner. It’s not a weird thing to say.”

“I’m still jealous you get to eat Beef Wellington bites,” Zoe says.

“I’ll get you a doggie bag,” I say.

“Anyway, what’s the code word for the Argentinians?” Zoe asks.

“Evita.”

“For Eva Perón?” Ivy asks.

“Or Eva Braun,” I say. “It works double duty.”

Rue lifts a finger. “I like it.”

“Zoe.” I leave her for last because she’s been with me from the beginning and knows this job inside and out, just as much as I do. “Are we good with comms and cameras?”

“The latest tech, boss.”

“And Dale…”

Everybody looks at Dale. Dale looks up from his laptop, glasses sliding down his nose.

“You can sit in the van.”

His chest puffs up like I just handed him a medal. “Getaway driver. At your service.”

“We’re going three blocks,” Zoe says.

“The man in the van,” he quips. “With the plan. Eating flan… out of a pan.”

“If you don’t stop, I’ll lock you out,” Zoe says.

“Like a ban?” He smiles brightly.

Tanya just shakes her head at him.

“You’re an honorary member of our clan,” I say, and leave it at that.

For the rest of the day, we run logistics and go over the timing until it’s ingrained into our brains. Dale clears out the penthouse so there’s no trace of anything but what we’re taking with us downstairs. Then they go to the loft and sweep it clean, including breaking apart Tanya’s scale model of the Four Seasons, which Dale was sad to throw in the trash.

Ginger and Suri go find the hotel manager and harass him into letting them into the vault once more to retrieve Miss Capucine de Montfleury’s sacred perfume formulas. We don’t want any loose ends.

When early evening rolls around, Ivy does my hair and makeup.

“Stop fidgeting,” she says. “I need you to stop thinking for one hour. Just let me work.”

“I’m not thinking too hard.”

“You’re running the whole night in your head.”

“Am not.”

“You were mumbling numbers,” Suri says, while working on something with tools at the table.

“What’s that?” Rue asks.

“A retractable lightsaber,” Suri says casually. “I’m still not happy how the internal chassis is working with the housing. See?”

She picks it up and rattles it.

“I need to secure the blade base connector so it matches the interior hilt pins.”

“You had time to make an entire lightsaber?” Zoe cries. “From scratch?”

Suri just shrugs. “I’m neuro-spicy. My hands need a side quest or I lose power. Speaking of power…”

She presses a button and a glowing blue light bursts out with a shhh-krrr sound followed by a buzzing hum.

When it’s time to slip on my dress, I use the bedroom for privacy, and also because I like a big reveal. Ivy comes in with me to help me zip up and do the last fluffs of my hair. She looks utterly pleased with her handiwork, and does one last-minute sweep of my hair to the side of my shoulder that’s bare.

I wouldn’t have thought a dress like this would have worked, but the nice saleswoman understood the assignment.

The dress is monochromatic black, head to toe, but unmistakably the flag if you look twice. A structured one-shoulder bodice wraps asymmetrically across my chest. The whole thing is dense with crushed velvet stars against satin.

Below the waist, the stripes descend in wavy, alternating diagonal panels in matte crepe and satin that flare when I walk. It’s both gothic and patriotic, and completely, deliberately me. And underneath, laced tight to the ankle where nobody will think to look, a pair of black combat boots.

I step out of the bedroom, and there’s a collective hush among my friends.

Rue’s jaw hangs down. “You look hot, girl.”

“You look like justice,” Suri adds.

“Good,” I say. “That’s what I’m going for.”

I’m nervous on the elevator ride down. Funnily enough, not for the job, but in anticipation of seeing Jeremiah.

But when he sees me, all my anxiety floats off into the ether.

He is devastatingly handsome in a tailored tux. It gives in all the right muscular places, and tapers into a sleek silhouette.

“You are… stunning,” Jeremiah says. His tongue is effectively on the floor. He takes me in slowly. The hair, the makeup, the dress. And then his eyes catch on the hem where I’ve hitched my skirt to step up to the red carpet without tripping, and he stops cold. “Erica. Your shoes. I told you, if the gift cards didn’t cover everything, I had cash.”

“Oh, the gift cards covered more than everything.” I let the skirt fall back over the boots. “I bought these to go with the dress.”

“Of course you did.”

“And I bought myself a pair of Wonder Woman boots too. Couldn’t help it.”

He nods, laughing. “That checks.”

Camera shutters fire in overlapping bursts in a wall of white light. Reporters are shouting questions over each other from behind the stanchions. A boom mic dips toward a couple two spots ahead of us. Someone’s publicist is already steering a starlet toward the backdrop emblazoned with the tournament logo and positioning her at an angle so the photographers can get her good side, probably.

“Judge Marchetti, ten o’clock,” Zoe murmurs in my ear. Her eyes are on the security feed from the van. “And that’s Cordelia Byrne air-kissing her way down the carpet. She’s chaired six galas this year alone. This one’s probably just a regular day for her.”

Somewhere behind us a photographer calls out, “Who’s the date, Precio?”

“My lady,” Jeremiah says, without missing a beat.

Something in my chest does a happy, undignified flip, and we go in the ballroom.

Jeremiah’s whole body changes the second we clear the doors, a shift so small most people would miss it entirely. “He’s here,” he whispers. “That man.”

Across the ballroom, Hobbs lifts two fingers to his own eyes, then points them at me. Watching you. Is it inappropriate to give him the finger at a black-tie gala? Probably. I settle for a cheeky salute instead.

“Don’t mind him,” I say. “He’s harmless.”

“I know he’s the guy,” Jeremiah says through his teeth, staring down Hobbs from across the room. “Don’t tell me otherwise.”

“Yes, he’s the guy from the museum.”

He turns to me, and his expression is really, really grave. “The guy, Erica. When you were eighteen.”

“Okay, yes. He’s the guy.” No point pretending. “But please don’t make a scene. He’ll be out of our lives soon enough. I’ve got it covered.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll tell you.” I squeeze his hand once. “I’ll sit down with you and tell you everything. Tomorrow. I promise.”

He studies me a long moment, then nods, like he’s banking it. “Tomorrow.”

I peel off a few minutes later to get some champagne because his coach decided to stop him to talk hockey numbers and my brain completely checked out. And also to meet up with Rue in the back of the room.

She’s already holding two flutes on a tray like she knew I’d need one.

“Talk to me,” I murmur into my glass.

"Looping the hallway cameras for the next forty minutes. Mainframe's asleep," Zoe says briskly in my ear.

“En route to the corridor.” Suri’s voice is brisk and slightly echo-y.

“Ivy’s got Hobbs cornered,” Rue adds, low, watching the room behind her tray.

“Tanya. Turndown service time,” I say. “Go.”

“On my way,” Tanya replies over the comms.

Jeremiah finds me before I’ve finished the champagne, and escorts me to our table. We have some appetizers and Jeremiah jokes with his teammates sitting with us while I keep my eyes on everything in the room. How Hobbs is standing like a sentinel beside the Friendship Jewel display, even though there are two museum guards flanking the case. How Ivy offloaded some politician on him. Rue, circling the ballroom with a tray in one hand while warming up the other for the switch.

And across the room, the Argentinians hold court four tables over. A tall man, silver at the temples, and a woman with severe blonde hair. They’re visibly snubbing a man who has no clue he’s being ignored. He just keeps talking.

“That’s General Fairfax,” Ivy says behind a napkin so no one sees her lips move. “He’s retired but still does some shady business with South American diplomats. Next to him is Congressman Ashcombe, his golfing buddy who also happened to be photographed at a luxury brothel. I’m holding onto that tidbit for another day.”

Good ol’ Ivy.

“You keep looking over your shoulder,” Jeremiah says, somewhere between the Beef Wellington bites and caprese skewers.

“Hoping a server comes back with more rolls,” I say.

“Rolls.”

“And the butter. Did you try the butter? Unreal.” I smile at him like bread is the most fascinating subject in Washington, and he laughs, and lets it go, and I go right back to watching the blonde woman over my shoulder.

“Suri’s in position,” Zoe murmurs, so quiet I almost miss it under the clatter of silverware.

“I made the drop. Waiting for the load,” Tanya says a minute later. “Geeze, this uniform is itchy.”

“Remember, you’re keeping that,” Dale chirps in my ear.

“It’s not a cute French maid costume, Dale.”

“I don’t care, honey bunches of oats.”

I can hear Zoe throwing something at Dale in the van.

“Ouch.”

“Keep the comms clear, lover boy.”

Meanwhile, Ginger is somewhere in the hotel running through a set of lip trills, then mutters under her breath, “The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue. Red leather, yellow leather.”

“Does Ginger need a microphone?” Rue asks dryly.

“Yes!” I say, too loud, and catch myself half a second too late.

Jeremiah blinks at me. “Yes to what?”

“Yes, I would love to look at the silent auction. Isn’t that what you just said?”

“You’re acting weird.”

I’m already on my feet, pulling him up with me.

The Argentinians sit square in our path to the auction tables, and the congressman is deep in a story about a fishing trip while the silver-haired man leans over to the woman and says something in Spanish. The woman replies back with a snide expression, and takes a sip of wine.

As we pass them, Jeremiah leans close to my ear with an amused whisper. “That’s not Argentine, you know.”

“What?”

“They’re speaking Spanish but with a German accent underneath. Not Rioplatense. Argentines have more of a lilting, almost Italian quality to their accent.” He laughs. “I mean, they’re only talking to each other. Why not just speak German?”

Oh, if he only knew who those people really are.

“Fascinating,” I say, while pretending to be enthralled by the VIP season passes for some New York team. I place a bid anyway.

“Status,” Zoe murmurs in the comms.

“Biometric override’s holding steady,” Suri reports.

Then the band shifts into something slow, and Jeremiah pulls me onto the floor before I can protest.

“I’m a terrible dancer,” I say, laughing all the way.

He spins me under his arm. “You survived on ice skates. This should be a piece of cake.”

He pulls me in close after, one hand warm against my lower back, the other holding mine like it’s something precious, and for one whole song there’s no vault, no earpiece, no man across the room counting the minutes until he can ruin my life. Just this. His chin against my hair. His heartbeat, steady under my palm.

“I just wanted one dance,” he murmurs. “One thing that’s not about anything else.”

Me too. Gosh, me too. Just this. Just for a little while.

I let myself have it, the whole song, every last bar of it, because I don’t know when I’ll get another one like it.

“Evita’s on the move.” Rue, sharp in my ear.

My whole body goes still. Over Jeremiah’s shoulder, I see the Argentinians rise from their table.

“I see,” I say.

Jeremiah pulls back an inch. “See what?”

“Pee. I really have to pee.”

He kisses my forehead and I excuse myself.

I dodge a waiter, a cluster of hockey bros, and a lady who’s had too much champagne already, and finally clear the doors.

“Ginger. Operation baguette.”

The second I’m through, she’s already in motion, planting herself in the entrance and informing the maître d’, at full volume, that she has never in her life been asked to produce a reservation confirmation. Does he know who her family is? Get her the manager, immediately.

“Keep it up, baguette,” Rue says, amused. “It's working.”

“I’ve got eyes on Evita,” I say.

“Hobbs in pursuit,” Rue adds.

“Right on schedule.” Zoe says.

The whole confrontation with Ginger is escalating. “She actually fainted,” Ivy says.

The perfect distraction. That’s Rue’s cue.

Meanwhile, the Argentinians are twenty feet from the front desk and closing. I catch up to them just short of it.

“There you are!” I say, breathless. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”

The man gives me a look that says he has no idea who I am. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t leave.”

“Why not?”

Think. Think, think, think.

“Because… you won! The door prize. They just announced it. A private yacht tour. You have to come collect it, they’re waiting.”

The woman’s eyebrows lift. For one endless second I think she’s going to walk straight past me. Then she says something clipped to the man in German, no pretense of Spanish left in it at all.

Then Suri’s voice comes through the comms. “Vault door is breached. I’m in.”

“I could kiss you right now, Suri,” I say.

“What?” The blonde woman looks completely scandalized.

“I said… you could miss it right now. Hurry.”

“Oh.” Her lips press together in a wrinkly line.

“Roger that, Suri. Tanya, heading to the rendezvous.”

“Your turndown will be waiting.”

I hear the laptop close and the van door slide. Zoe is on the move.

The German-Argentinian man gives me a hard look.

“We will go,” he says.

I point them toward the red carpet. “Right that way. Ask for Brenda.”

There’s always a Brenda.

“Locked and loaded,” Rue says in a hurried voice. "Over and out."

“She made the switch,” I say. “Baguette, stage two.”

Whatever kind of fainting spell Ginger fabricated is over, followed by lots of French swearing at the poor soul trying to help her.

“I will take my complaint to the front desk,” she says.

I see Hobbs coming around the corner where the German-Argentinians just disappeared. I gotta go.

“Houston, we’ve got a problem.” Suri’s voice cracks through, and it isn’t a joke. “Copy me, Zoe. Do not leave the van.”

“I’ve got Hobbs on my tail.” I’m already moving. “Suri, what’s wrong?”

I can hear Zoe’s footsteps in the corridor and she says, “Talk to me. I’m already halfway to the trade-off point.”

“The vault has an internal mass scale. It’s measuring air displacement. I’ve got an automated lockdown counting down right now.”

“Oh no. The floor’s a scale. Suri, did you step on it?”

“No. My foot’s off the threshold. But the clock is ticking. Ninety seconds.”

“Don’t move,” Zoe cuts in. “Copy me, Suri. Do not step forward, and do not pull that door shut. Alarms auto-engage if it closes.”

“I’m aware,” Suri says, tight. “Standing very, very still.”

I take the first hallway I find, walking briskly but with the look of calm elegance. “Zoe, can you override this?”

“On my way back to the van.”

Then Ginger in her best French accent harasses the front desk.

I take another turn. Hobbs is somewhere behind me, closing in.

“Sixty seconds,” Suri says.

“I’m sprinting,” Zoe pants. “Just hold on.”

“Copy. Engine’s warm,” Dale says, entirely too cheerful.

Then, layered under it, a new voice. “Sir, you can’t park there.”

“I have to wait for my coworker.” Dale’s tone is instantly earnest. “Please, I’ll get written up.”

“Sir, there are no deliveries past ten.”

“Please? Just five more minutes. I’m sure she’ll be back lickety-split.”

Lickety-split?

The security guard lets out a sigh, like he’s not paid enough for this. “Okay, sir. Five minutes.”

“Oh, thank you. Wanna see a magic trick?”

“I’m good. Gotta go take my break anyway…” he trails off.

“You’re too friendly, Booboo Bear,” Tanya mutters.

“You love me.”

"Yes, I do, my Poochie Woochie.”

“And I love you, my Squishy.”

“Guys.” Suri’s voice is flat. “Trying to concentrate here.”

I take another turn. Then another. Now I’m wondering if I’ve lost the poor dolt.

“Forty-five seconds,” Suri says.

“I’m in, booting the tower.” A frantic clatter on the keyboard. “Come on, you piece of garbage, wake up.”

“Oh, there you are,” Dale says. “Security says we gotta move it out soon.”

“Thirty seconds.”

At the end of a hallway, I go through glass doors and find myself in a garden courtyard. It’s quite nice out here, actually. Quiet. And the muggy heat is starting to let off to make it a serene space away from the city noise. There are string lights strung across the courtyard, a grid of plants growing directly out of the stone and red brick accents, and stone benches placed throughout.

I sit. I smooth my skirt over my boots. I make myself breathe like a woman who has all the time in the world.

“Fifteen seconds.”

“Talk to me,” I say.

“System’s air-gapped. I have to forge the handshake manually.” A frantic clatter of keys, audible even through the earpiece. “It’s asking for a system sync. Rejecting my signature.”

That’s when I see Hobbs.

He’s coming down the hallway fast, eyes locked on me, shoulders already squared for a fight. He bursts through the double glass doors like a Bond villain. I guess he kind of is.

His chest is heaving, tie crooked, and he finds me sitting there, cool as anything, like I’ve been waiting on him for an hour.

“So we meet again,” I say.

He straightens his jacket, buying himself a beat he doesn’t need.

“Such an elaborate ruse to get me alone. You shouldn’t have.”

“Oh you know me,” I say. “I’m nothing if not impractical.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way. Erica. Just give me half the plunder that’s all I’m asking.”

“If you’re trying to entrap me, it’s not going to work.”

“I’m not trying to do anything of a sort. I know you want that necklace and I want for you to ditch the hockey player.”

Just the mention of Jeremiah out of his mouth gives me rage. “Leave him out out of this.”

Somehow, Zoe’s voice brings me back to my senses before I whack Hobbs with my super cool combat boots.

“I’m overriding the environmental control module! I’m telling the computer the weight change is just a pressure drop from the ventilation system… come on… accept the packet…”

“Five. Four. Three.” Suri’s voice trembles.

Then static.

Then a sharp digital chirp, and Zoe’s voice, ragged with something that isn’t quite a laugh. “Scale’s zeroed. Computer thinks you weigh nothing, Suri. You’re a ghost.”

“Tanya standing by for the load,” Tanya says, already moving toward the vault corridor.

I let my shoulders drop for the first time all night.

“You know you’re not gonna get close to that necklace without my help,” Hobbs says.

“I don’t want the necklace, and you know this.”

“Then what do you want?”

“You know exactly what I want.” I fold my arms. “Must we go over this again? It’s getting a little redundant, to be honest.”

“Oh, come on.” He throws up a hand. “Again with those stupid letters. I told you, Erica, they don’t exist.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Hobbs. It’s all over your face.”

He circles, doesn’t sit. “It would be so easy, you know. Things go missing when they’re transported from one place to another. I can help you. I’m the only one who can help you.”

“Just like you helped my dad?” I shake my head. “No thanks.”

His eyes narrow. “Your father didn’t have the vision I have. He's small-time.”

“Careful,” I say, and I don’t even have to fake the edge in it.

“Or what?” He almost laughs. “You'll set your hockey player on me?”

I shrug. “Maybe.”

“Cart’s loaded,” Tanya murmurs, so soft I nearly miss it. “On my way to rendezvous.”

Hobbs tilts his head, studying me the way he probably studies old statues, looking for the crack. “I gotta hand it to you, though. Catching his eye was clever. But you'll break his heart the same way you break everything you touch.”

“The same way I’ll break you,” I say with a saccharine smile.

“Cart’s clear,” Zoe says. “Dale, get the van ready to roll.”

“Born ready,” Dale says.

“Splitting off now,” Tanya says. “Catch you on the flip side.”

“Me too,” says Ivy. “I’m getting out of here before Hobbs comes back.”

“You’re playing with fire, Armitage.” Hobbs gets in close now. “I don’t care who you are or who your great-great-grandparents were. You have no proof and no right. And the Friendship Jewel is under my protection. Mine!”

I let the silence sit long enough that he thinks he’s won it.

“And yet.” I take my time, looking at my fingernails. “Here you are. With me. Out here in this beautiful courtyard. I really love the twinkly lights, don’t you?”

Something flickers across his face before he catches it. His director candidacy. The board. Six years of climbing a ladder he built on my father’s back, and none of it worth anything if the one thing he’s supposed to be protecting walks out of that ballroom on his watch.

He doesn’t say another word. He turns and bolts back toward the ballroom.

“Whew!” says Ginger. “That was a tough crowd. But I made out with ten K in hotel vouchers anywhere in the world, so I call that a win.”

“Good job, Ginger,” Zoe says. “We’re clear and heading to headquarters.”

“Copy that,” Ginger says. “There’s a bottle of chardonnay with my name on it.”

“Dibs!” Ivy says.

“You can’t call dibs. I literally just said my name’s on it.”

“Wait. You actually wrote your name on it? Like with a Sharpie?”

“Shutting you guys off now, are we clear?”

Everyone but Rue, because Rue is long gone, echoes back. “Clear.”

I press a hand flat against my chest and let myself have exactly one full breath. We did it. We actually pulled this off.

That’s when Jeremiah comes through the same door Hobbs just vanished through, breathing hard. His tie is loose around his neck and he’s wearing a face I have never seen there before.

24

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Arrival at National Archives — Trevor Rabin

She's Always a Woman — Billy Joel

She came down the hallway and something in my chest quit working right. The moment I first laid my eyes on her, I forgot every word I knew. In both languages. I’d been dreaming about seeing her in that dress for days, and once the moment arrived, it was better than I could have imagined.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” Genius. Absolute genius, Jeremiah. Four years of college and that’s what I had.

She did a small turn, one hand on her hip, waiting for me to say something that wasn’t “hey.” I had nothing. My brain had left the building. It was black, it had stars on it, and I couldn’t put together a single sentence that didn’t sound like gibberish.

“You look…” I stopped. Started over. “I had a whole thing planned. I lost it.”

“Lost it where?”

“No idea.”

I did, though. That bare shoulder. She was stunning in that dress, her hair in soft waves, smoky eyeshadow, her complexion glowing, her lips a glossy berry.

But the hot-blooded Neanderthal in me had to go and fixate on that one spot. Exposed skin, soft and inviting. It took every ounce of willpower not to clamp my mouth around her shoulder and devour her all the way up to the column of her neck.

“You gonna offer me your arm, or just stand there?” she said.

I offered her my arm. I didn’t trust myself to speak again for at least thirty seconds.

The next hour went by in a blur. I remember the red carpet, and the sheer weight of having a woman like her on my arm. I remember Hobbs, watching us from across the room the entire night, and Erica refusing to let it bother her. She ate like she didn’t have a care in the world. She bid on some ridiculous item at the auction. She danced with me like the room had emptied out around us. For a while it felt like the eye of a storm. Then she slipped away from me, and I should have gone after.

Now I’m rushing down the hallway, frantically searching for her.

She’s been gone too long. This hotel has too many hallways, and every one of them looks the same.

A cart cuts across in front of me and I have to do a double take. It’s Zoe, Erica’s friend. She winks, grins a little, and keeps going like none of this is strange.

My brain snags on that for half a second. What is Zoe doing back here with a cart? I don’t stop to work it out. I file it and keep moving. Only one face fills my head, over and over: Erica.

I’m almost ready to give up and try the other direction when someone slams into my shoulder. He stops, just for a second, long enough to recognize me, then keeps running. It’s Hobbs. He’s come from somewhere in a hurry, and my stomach drops thinking about what that somewhere might have been. His face is pale, ghost-pale, panic written all over it. I want to turn around and put him through a wall. But I can’t. I have to find Erica.

If she’s hurt… No. I’m not letting my brain go there. I just have to get to her.

I shove through the courtyard door at the end of the hall and the noise of the gala falls away behind it. String lights loop overhead, small and white, making everything look soft.

And there she is.

She’s sitting on a stone bench with her hands folded in her lap. She’s hunched over, tapping the toes of those dang combat boots together for entertainment.

Then she looks up when she hears the door close behind me.

My voice comes out gruff. Like sandpaper. “Did that man touch you?”

She just laughs. “He wouldn’t dare. I told him my big strong boyfriend would use his head for a hockey puck.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

I fly to her, crossing the distance in two steps and crash my mouth against hers. Boyfriend. She called me her boyfriend. And I pour every ounce of myself into the kiss.

When I finally pull back, her hands are still fisted in my lapels like she isn’t planning to let go of them. I’m kneeling at her feet, checking for signs of duress on her face.

“You said you had to use the bathroom. Then when you didn’t come back, I thought…”

“What? That I’d leave without having dessert?”

“I didn’t think you’d left. I saw that Hobbs guy go after you. I stood outside the bathroom for ten minutes. Then those German-Argentinians walked by complaining about the woman with the black dress and pointed in this direction.”

“You used your spidey senses to find me.”

“My spidey senses are tingling right now. Were you running from Hobbs? What were you doing out here?”

“Exacting revenge. It would be very satisfying if I had a mustache to twirl right about now.”

I laugh, once, and it surprises me more than it surprises her. Then it dies in my throat, because I know exactly what she’s talking about, and none of it is funny.

“Revenge? For what he did to you when you were eighteen? Or for your father?”

“Both.”

She says it like the answer costs her nothing. I know for a fact it costs her everything.

I sit down next to her, close, my knee against hers.

“Can I ask you something? And I need you to actually answer it.”

“Depends on the question.”

I choose the next words like they’re the last ones I get to spend.

“Your job. The logistics thing. What is that, exactly? Because I’ve asked you probably six different ways over the last couple of weeks and I get six different non-answers, and I keep telling myself that’s just you being private, but…”

“But?”

My jaw works before anything comes out of it.

“But Hobbs cornered me in the hotel lobby yesterday and told me you were casing a museum. And I told myself he was lying. I still mostly think he was lying. But I need you to just… Tell me it’s nothing. Tell me straight and I’ll drop it.”

She goes quiet in a way I’ve never seen her go quiet.

“You really want to know? Right here. Right now? Before dessert?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? There’s layered cheesecake. Strawberry, vanilla, and blueberry. Red, white, and blue!”

“Erica, tell me. I’m a big boy, I can take it.”

She looks down at her hands for a second. When she looks back up, something in her has decided.

“Okay. Here goes.” She lets out a hard sigh and says, “Queen Victoria sent Mary Todd Lincoln a mourning necklace. From one widow to another.”

I open my mouth. Close it again. Brace myself for a history lesson, and let her keep going.

She tells me the necklace is known as the Friendship Jewel. The same one sitting on display right now inside the Corcoran Ballroom.

Mary Todd Lincoln’s own son had her committed to an asylum years later, unjustly. And after she got out she spent a long stretch traveling Europe. She didn’t travel alone. Her companion was a woman named Eleanor Armitage, from a wealthy family in Lexington, Kentucky, the same place Mary Todd herself came from. That woman is Erica’s five-times-great-grandmother.

“Wait,” I say, counting on my fingers. “Your great, great, great, great… great grandmother knew the actual Mary Todd Lincoln?”

“Yes, now pay attention.”

She goes on to say that to keep the necklace out of her son’s reach for good, Mary gifted it to Eleanor. For her unwavering friendship, she wrote. Eleanor kept that necklace for the rest of her life and wrote about it constantly in her own diary, the friendship it stood for as much as the jewel itself. Tucked inside the pages, folded small, she kept the actual letter Mary Todd Lincoln had written her about the gift. Proof, in Mary’s own hand, that it had been freely given. One friend to another. Both of Kentucky lineage.

Erica is a born storyteller. I’ve never noticed it before tonight, mostly because I’ve never seen her sit still long enough to tell one all the way through. Grandfathers do this. So do scout leaders, hunched around a campfire. She’s got that same rhythm, like she’s memorized an Oscar-winning script.

The jewel was guarded by the Armitage family for decades, until 1951, when a predatory lending company falsified loan documents and seized every piece of property the Lexington family owned. Everything the Armitages had was taken by the loan company, and they were left with nothing, including the necklace. It was never found again until the early seventies, when it surfaced as an anonymous donation to the Bellenden Museum of American History.

“Where Hobbs works now,” I say.

“Yes. Hobbs was the inside man on my dad’s crew. It was during the pandemic. It should have been an easy job.”

Then she tells me what happened six years ago. How her father planned for months, bringing Hobbs onto his crew against better judgment. Back then, it was all about the necklace. He was narrow-sighted, and maybe that’s part of why he failed.

But now Erica tells me how she will right those wrongs. How claiming the Friendship Jewel for her family is all she’s thought about for six years. And how tonight, at a hockey banquet of all places, is her one chance.

When she finally stops talking, I just look at her.

“Woah!”

“Are you okay?”

“When Hobbs said you were a thief I thought he was talking about wristwatches and cell phones. I hadn’t even considered… GRAND LARCENY. I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t that.”

“Please don’t hate me.”

“I could never hate you.” I brush a stray strand of hair off her face with the back of my fingers. “Sticky fingers. You already stole every piece of me. You don’t have to steal anything else.”

Her breath catches on that like she wasn’t ready for it.

“This is bigger than you or me.”

“Nothing is bigger than what I feel for you.”

“I… you…”

“Whatever this is taking over my heart… It’s making my whole chest hurt.”

I don’t know how else to say it, so I just say it.

“Erica… I’m falling in love with you.”

Her eyes glisten with the beginning of tears, but she keeps them at bay.

“I was afraid of that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m falling in love with you, too.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

She sniffles. “It is if you get hurt. I couldn’t handle it if something happened to you.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me. I’m supposed to protect you. Not the other way around.”

“You don’t know what Hobbs is capable of. I have to execute this very carefully.”

Execute. She’s really thinking of finishing what her father started. I tread carefully.

“Your dad believed the Friendship Jewel was his to begin with.”

She nods. “The patriarch at the time of the fake loan was my dad’s grandfather. We’re the direct line of descendants. So yes. He wanted it back.”

“But Hobbs set him up for a fall.”

“Exactly.”

“There have to be legal avenues you could take. Proof of lineage. I don’t know… other ways to do this the legal way.”

“Trust me, I looked into that. I know all the legal terms. Chain of Title. Action in Replevin. Writ of Seizure. Blah, blah, blah. I’ve done so much research I could probably pass the bar at this point.”

She could do anything she decided to do. Pass the bar. Run a courtroom. Argue circles around men twice her age. She’s brilliant, and somewhere underneath all of this, she would’ve made a terrifyingly good lawyer.

“But I need the diary and the letters first.”

“So why take the necklace, then? Get your proof first.”

“Ha. You think Hobbs is just going to hand it over if I ask pretty please with a cherry on top? He’s a weasel and a liar, but he’s not dumb. He’s a self-serving social climber, and I have to believe he knows exactly where that proof is.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You don’t get fancy promotions at world-class museums for working hard. He mopped floors six years ago. Now he’s up for a director candidacy? The man has no higher education, no degree, no qualifications. He knows people. And I’m going to find out who they are.”

I stand up and take a step back, like the distance is going to help me think straight. It doesn’t.

“You’re really going to steal that necklace.”

“It’s complicated.”

“It’s really not. Try to find the proof some other way.”

“This is the only way.”

“Please don’t do this.”

“It’s already in motion. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.”

That’s when it all lands at once.

She’s not doing this alone. Nobody pulls off a job like this alone. I’ve watched too many movies and documentaries to know that. There’s always a crew. A driver, somebody watching the cameras, somebody else crawling through elevator shafts or evading laser beams.

And it dawns on me. Her friend Zoe, passing me in the hallway, pushing a cart. The way she winked at me. There was something in that cart.

“This girls' trip. Your friends. You told me on your birthday you had six friends with you. This isn't a vacation, is it? You said the other day you had to get to work. Is this what you've been doing all this time in DC? PLANNING A HEIST?”

“Shhhh. Keep your voice down.”

I’m pacing now. I can’t help it. My legs won’t hold still and my brain won’t either.

“This is crazy! Erica, that man is obsessed with you. He’s going to stop at nothing to take you down. He told me so.”

“Yeah well he can try.”

“Come with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me, we’ll take the first flight to Mexico in the morning. Right now if there is one. You can stay with my dad until this all blows over.”

She laughs, like I’ve said something ridiculous instead of the only thing I can think of that keeps her safe.

“I’m not going on the lam. I have to finish this.”

“Erica no!”

“But you should go. Get as far away from me as possible. Until, you know… this all blows over.”

“I won’t leave your side.”

“You can’t be around for this next part, Jeremiah. It’s too dangerous.”

“You’re Dangerous.”

“Fitting nickname. I think I’ll keep it.”

I want to argue. I want to pick her up off this bench and carry her onto a plane whether she likes it or not. Instead I ask the only question I have left.

“What are you going to do?”

“You’re not going to be able to find me for a while.” She says it steady. “It’s for the best. It’s for your own good. If somebody comes around asking about me, you have to pretend you don’t know me.”

“We were literally just photographed together on the red carpet.”

She pauses. “Oh yeah. I didn’t think that one through.”

I glance around the garden, checking for anyone close enough to overhear us.

“Come up to my room. We’ll talk there. Maybe I can talk you out of doing something stupid.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “Your room?”

“Yeah. You can come up, put on my bathrobe, touch all my things. You can even steal my watch if you want to.”

“I thought you just said I stole your heart.”

“I didn’t say you stole my heart. I said you stole every piece of me.”

“Including your heart?”

I was trying not to be so blatantly trite about it. “Yeah. Including my heart.”

“You have to forget about me for a little while, Jeremiah. It’s safer that way. If someone asks, you can’t know where I am.”

She pulls me into a hug and holds on longer than she needs to. When she finally lets go, her eyes are wet.

“Go,” she says.

“Is there anything I can say? Anything that changes your mind?”

“No.”

There’s no winning this one tonight. I know it the way I know a puck isn’t going in the net or when we’re down three points in the last ten seconds of a game.

I kiss her once. Slowly… trying to leave something behind for her to think about. Then I make myself walk backward toward the door before I turn around completely.

Tomorrow. I’ll try again in the morning, when she’s slept on it, when I’ve had time to build a better argument than “please.” Tonight, I just go.

I don’t head back up to my room right away. I walk out of the hotel instead, down the street with no destination in mind, and somehow every single thing I pass reminds me of her.

25

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

Don't Blame Me — Taylor Swift

$160 Million Chinese Man — David Holmes

Why does this feel like getting stabbed with my own knife?

I watch Jeremiah cross the courtyard, tux jacket over one shoulder, until he’s no longer lit by the string lights and the dark of the hallway swallows him whole.

Every part of me wants to run after him. Grab his sleeve. Tell him I was kidding, that none of it is true, that I’m a raging lunatic with a flair for the dramatic and nothing more.

I don’t, and now my heart feels like a deflated balloon.

I give myself a few minutes to gather the courage it takes not to do something rash, then I find the garden entrance that lets guests slip straight out to the street without passing the lobby. I duck through before anyone official can ask why a woman in a ball gown is leaving alone. I hike my skirt to my knees and start walking. In this dress. In these boots.

I make it to the end of the block before a man with salt and pepper hair plants himself at the crosswalk like he’s been waiting there just for me.

I jump back, startled, wondering if I’d need to put these combat boots to use.

“Erica Armitage,” he says. “We need to talk.”

My stomach plummets through the sidewalk. A cop? Museum security? Somebody from the hotel who’s onto me? I run through every option in a half second and none of them end anywhere good. I picture the jumpsuit. I have never once looked good in the color orange.

“Who the blazes are you?”

“Someone whose interests are temporarily aligned with yours.” He holds a card out between two fingers. “Call me.”

Then he presses it into my palm and closes my fingers around it like some kind of magician.

The light changes and he’s gone before I can ask any questions.

I look down. The card is heavy stock with embossed letters.

HEATH KANE

Perfect. Exactly what tonight needed. A new guy I have to deal with.

I tuck it into the top of my boot and keep walking. Whatever this is, it can wait until I’ve met with the rest of the crew.

By the time I let myself into the loft, everyone is in various stages of packing up.

Suri already has the loupe in her eye, hunched over the velvet case on the worktable.

“Something’s wrong,” she says, before I’ve even had a chance to change out of my dress.

I lean over her shoulder. To me, it looks perfect. But I’m not the expert here.

Suri turns it under the lamp, frowning. “The weight’s wrong.” She hefts it in her palm like she’s weighing a peach. “And look at this clasp. The forger got maybe eighty percent of the way and just ran out of patience.”

She looks up at me.

“Whoever did this didn't try very hard,” she says. “Part of it is 3-D printed, for Pete's sake.”

Blood rushes to my head. “You mean it’s a FAKE? We just swapped a fake for another… crappier fake?”

“Are you FREAKING kidding me?” Rue cries.

Suri presses the loupe back to her eye and goes quiet for a long moment.

“Interesting,” she says.

“What?” Ginger leans in. “What’s interesting?”

Suri doesn’t answer. She turns the necklace another few degrees under the lamp.

“Huh.”

“What do you mean, huh?” Rue’s voice climbs half an octave. “Suri, tell us already.”

Suri holds up one finger, the universal sign for wait, and keeps staring into the clasp. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Is what a joke?” My patience has officially left the building.

Suri finally lowers the loupe and looks up at the whole room. “There’s an engraving inside the clasp. The letters are so small you’d need a microscope to catch them without this thing.” She taps the loupe against her palm.

“What does it say?” Tanya asks.

Suri reads it out loud, “The Jackdaw sends regards.”

All our jaws drop in unison.

Rue is truly offended now. “Have we just been given the middle finger… from a playing card?”

Ginger drops onto the lumpy sofa. “Now what? We have no leverage.”

“Hobbs doesn’t know that,” Zoe says.

“Unless Hobbs is the Jackdaw,” Rue says. She’s looking around at every one of us, clearly confused why we’re not losing our cool, tossing chairs into the wall. I tend to be calm under pressure, but that doesn’t mean I’m not raging inside.

Ivy crosses her arms. “Doubtful.”

“This is bad,” Tanya says. “Very, very bad.”

Rue throws her hands in the air. “I can’t believe this.”

The whole room goes silent. All this planning. All these months. Years for me. And we lifted a fake.

Finally, Zoe says, “Erica, your call.”

Every head in the room turns toward me at once. I want to disappear into the floorboards.

“We continue with the plan,” I say. “I’ll pay Sal a visit. Maybe he knows something about this Jackdaw person.”

“Or persons,” Tanya says. “Could be a gang.”

Dale perks up from the corner where he’s been quietly watching this unfold. “Like The Italian Job. I love that movie.” He frowns. “Sadly, I don’t fit into a Mini Cooper.”

“In the meantime,” I say. “We’re sitting on hot goods. Zoe, how long do we have before the Argentinians catch on?”

“Two days max. Realistically, more like twelve hours.”

“That doesn’t leave us much time.”

“They’ll keep it quiet,” Ginger says. “And not get the authorities involved. Remember, they’ve been holding onto it illegally and won’t want to draw attention.”

“Yeah,” Ivy says. “But they know people in this town. The kind that can make someone disappear.”

Nobody needs me to spell out what kind of people she’s talking about.

“Okay, Ginger.” I turn to her. “Are you ready to fence some goodies?”

She cracks her knuckles. “Bring it on.”

That’s when the back gate rattles and Dale wheels in the housekeeping cart from the van he’d parked in the back alley.

“Who wants to do the honors?” I ask.

Everybody looks at everybody else. Nobody moves.

“I think Suri should do it,” Ginger says. “She’s the one who almost got blown up in the vault.”

“That’s not what happened,” Suri says, already reaching for the latch. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

Suri crouches at the cart and comes up with something flat, a thin sandwich of foam board and glassine paper taped shut like a shipping envelope. She peels back the tape with two fingers, the paper crackling free. Everybody gasps at once.

“Is that—?” Ivy starts.

“Oh my Lanta,” Tanya says.

“Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man!” Ginger’s voice wobbles on the last word.

“That’s not a fake too, is it?” Rue asks, a little skeptical now.

The whole room goes reverent. Ginger takes it from Suri with both hands like it’s made of eggshells, turning it toward the light, running her thumb along the raw edge of the board without ever touching the paint itself.

“I’d need forensic tests,” she says. “But I’m like ninety-five percent certain this is the real deal.”

Nobody says anything for a second. This painting’s been missing since the Nazis stripped it out of a Polish collection in 1939. It’s right up there with the Amber Room panels and a Dürer drawing nobody’s laid eyes on in eighty years. There are hundreds of thousands of artworks still unaccounted for, and here we are, standing around a piece of history lost since World War Two.

Two more come out of the cart the same way, flattened and taped like contraband cheese. One of them, Ginger says, is Bosschaert, a still life last seen before the war ever started.

The third one is a floral still life. I wouldn’t be able to pick it out of a lineup, but Ginger looks like she’s about to pee her pants.

She turns it over, checks the back, checks it again. Steps back, and shakes her head in disbelief.

“Mignon,” she finally says. “Abraham Mignon. This one’s been at the top of a restitution list for years. Someone thought they saw it on a real estate listing a few years ago. They were able to recover one painting after putting the family on house arrest.”

She sets it down like it might bruise. “When the Argentine police finally raided the place, this one was already gone.”

She looks at all three paintings, then up at me. “You’re going to have two very peeved German-Argentinians on your hands.”

“Not if you fence them first,” I say.

“They’ll sit for a hot minute in the basement of my gallery,” Ginger says.

“I trust you,” I tell her.

She’ll know how to get them off her hands when she returns to New York.

Once the paintings are stacked against the wall, Suri reaches into the cart and goes quiet.

She lifts out a leather attaché case and sets it on the worktable. When she opens it, there are thirty to fifty folded paper parcels. She gently taps the paper so the diamonds slide into a neat line onto the velvet fabric she’d rolled out.

Suri is silent for a solid ten seconds. She holds one stone up between two fingers. Then another. Then a third. Nobody interrupts her. This is Suri’s Super Bowl and every one of us knows it.

She finally surfaces enough to string a sentence together. “Magnificent,” she says, still not looking up. Her hands are actually shaking. “Do you understand what this is?”

“The Ommeren cache,” I say, and I let that sit for a second.

Ginger and Ivy both look at me with their eyes wide. But it doesn’t ring a bell for the rest of the crew.

“It’s basically Nazi buried treasure,” I explain succinctly.

“Like… a pirate map? With X marks the spot and everything?” Tanya asks.

“I mean… sure.”

“So how’d you find it?” Rue asks.

“I traced it to our friends in Argentina.” I don’t elaborate on how many nights that cost me. “Along with the Ommeren loot, I also stumbled upon investment stones and statement jewels, probably acquired in shady transactions over the years.”

Rue whistles low. “So we just stole from Hitler.”

“Not really. Hitler wasn’t a diamond guy. Just a garden-variety psychopath.“

“You can say that again,” Suri says, not looking up from the loupe.

“My hands are sweaty already,” Ginger says, flexing her fingers.

“When will you go to Tel Aviv?” I ask her.

“In about a month.”

Suri turns one of the stones between two fingers, studying it. “Seems a shame to cut these down.”

Tanya says what everyone is thinking. “I feel weird about this.”

Zoe levels her with a look. “It’s ninety-nine million dollars in diamonds. You’re not supposed to feel like Gandhi.”

“Listen,” I explain. “I couldn’t have gotten close to the Friendship Jewel without you guys. But that’s not your payout. The diamonds are, and it was the only way I could pay you all what you’re worth. I’m not taking any of the cut for myself.”

“Wait.” Rue frowns. “You’re not getting a cut? But the necklace is fake.”

“I’ve got a bigger prize in mind.” I don’t elaborate.

“You having second thoughts, Tanya?” Ivy asks gently.

Tanya looks around the room, then to Dale for support. “I mean, what’s the difference between the diamonds and the Friendship Jewel? Both belonged to someone’s grandma once upon a time.”

Suri sets her stone down like she suddenly lost her appetite for chocolate. She glares at the little velvet pile, then at Tanya. “Thanks for that, Tanya.”

“What?”

“Now I’m picturing an actual grandma,” Zoe cries. “I had a whole speech in my head about how this is basically finders-keepers.”

Rue stares off into the middle distance. “Well, there goes my good night’s sleep.”

“Okay.” I hold up both hands before this turns into a full support-group circle. “We are not doing the twentieth century’s exit interview at eleven o’clock at night. We table it.”

“Table it,” Ivy repeats.

“I concur,” Ginger agrees.

Zoe buries her face in her hands. “Aww heck.”

“Good,” I say, the matter closed. “In other news, we have to clear out of here within the hour. Tanya? You got the tickets?”

She sighs. “Yes.”

Tanya pulls a tablet out of her bag and swipes to her digital wallet.

“Ginger, you’re on the 3am night owl train to Manhattan,” she says, tapping and texting the ticket to Ginger.

Ginger gets a ping. “Love that for me.”

Dale clears his throat. “I don’t really feel comfortable with that. A woman traveling alone with priceless art and diamonds in the middle of the night? No.”

“Okay,” Tanya says. “You go with her but pretend you’re not acquainted.”

“I’ll keep my eye on her the whole way.” Dale nods, solemn as a bodyguard. “And the loot.”

“Especially the loot,” Ginger says.

I turn to Tanya. “You okay to fly alone?”

“I’m good. I booked a 6am flight to Louisiana. I’ll be traveling light.”

She swipes to the next item. “I got your flight to San Diego, Suri. You’ll be at Comic-Con on time.”

Suri presses a hand to her chest. “May the Force be with you.”

“Ivy?” Tanya taps the folder. “You requested… Colorado?”

“Just until the heat dies down. I have scores to settle in DC before I relocate for good.”

“And where will that be?” Ginger asks. “There’s always a place for you in New York.”

Ivy gives her a grateful smile. “I was thinking Hawaii, but I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

Tanya looks up from her tablet. “Rue, you didn’t want travel arrangements?”

“Road trip for me.” Rue’s already got her duffel bag zipped up. “I’m going off the grid. Shooting for forty-eight states.”

“Okay.” I clap my hands once, mostly to keep myself from getting sentimental about it. “We’ll all check in with Zoe in two months’ time.”

“And what will you do?” Ivy asks.

“I have unfinished business here. Zoe will stay for tech support.”

Tanya tosses a set of keys underhand across the room. I catch them one-handed.

“Your safehouse, my liege,” she says.

“You’re a gem, Tanya.”

“Okay.” Zoe gets up. “That about settles it.”

“One more thing,” I say, before this room scatters to the winds for two months. “A man stopped me at the crosswalk and gave me this.”

I dig the card out of my boot and hold it up.

Zoe snatches it out of my hand before I can stop her. “Heath Kane?”

“What did he say?” Tanya asks.

“Just that our interests were temporarily aligned.”

“That’s not ominous at all,” Ginger says.

“Was he trying to be mysterious?” Suri asks.

“I’m a weirdo magnet.” I drop onto the arm of the couch. “I have to deal with Hobbs, then this bozo… not to mention whoever this Jackdaw person is.”

“Men.” Ivy shakes her head. “Why are they so dramatic?” A beat, a glance at Dale. “Sorry, Dale.”

“No worries.” Dale doesn’t even glance up. He’s too invested in a sub sandwich, not even noticing the mustard dripping on his shirt.

“Where did you get that?” Tanya asks.

He shrugs. “Late night bodega.”

Zoe’s fingers are already flying across her keyboard. It doesn’t take her long.

“Got him.” She turns the screen around. “Heath Kane. Estranged grandson of Walter Kane. Disinherited over some family dispute, yadda yadda. Was squeezed out of his position at the family company by the board of directors in twenty-twenty.”

“And the plot thickens,” Rue says.

Zoe turns the computer screen toward me. There’s a photo of Heath Kane in a crisp suit.

“That him?”

“Yep.”

A knock at the door cuts through whatever anyone was about to say next.

Zoe zooms over and signals us all to hide. There is really nowhere to hide in this open loft, so we all just crouch, as if that would help at all. Zoe wrenches the door open a crack, as much as the chain will allow. Doesn’t see anyone out there, then slowly unlatches the chain and peeks outside. She looks to the right and to the left. There’s no one out there.

“Ding dong ditch?” Ginger says, “Very mature.”

Then Zoe takes off down the sidewalk in her bare feet.

I step out onto the landing while Zoe’s still searching for our ding dong ditcher, and that’s when I notice something sitting in shadow on the welcome mat. A jack of spades. I almost didn’t see it there.

I pick it up and turn it over in my hand. At the bottom, there are four stamped numbers. My stomach drops somewhere around my ankles.

Zoe comes back up out of breath, hair everywhere, hands braced on her knees in the doorway. “Nobody. Checked the sidewalk, checked between the buildings. Nothing.” She immediately throws the deadbolt, then checks the window latches on her way past them. “We need to get to the safehouse.”

I hold up the jack of spades to show the room. “This was on the mat.”

Rue scoffs. “Now he’s just gloating.”

“What do you suppose he wants?” Ivy asks.

“There are four numbers stamped on it,” I say, handing the card to Ivy.

“Is it a code?” asks Ginger.

“A safety deposit box number!” Tanya says, hopeful.

“No,” I say. “It's an address. Sal's favorite diner. In Brooklyn.”

26

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Wicked Game — Chris Isaak

Jake asks if I’m going to eat my bacon. I don’t answer. He reaches over and takes it.

The Corcoran Ballroom is set up for morning brunch, and you wouldn’t know there was a black-tie event in here just hours ago. A banner over the buffet says CONGRATULATIONS WEST STARS in gold script and is already crooked at one corner.

The culinary team put on a real spread, but the only thing I want right now is coffee. More coffee. I didn’t sleep at all last night.

Somewhere behind me, Dash is doing a bit with a butter knife, and the guys around him are losing it. Bryce is re-litigating a blown call from Game 4 with anyone who'll listen. Jake's got his elbows on the table, still riding the high from last night.

Tyson stands up two tables over and taps his glass with a fork until the room quiets. Something about brotherhood, something about the ice, something that gets a laugh I don't really hear.

Coach Badaszek claps twice, hard, the way he claps for goals.

I put my phone face-down on the table. Then I turn it back over.

I sent Erica eleven texts since last night. Not one of them answered.

I can’t help it. I have to try again.

Me: You okay?

I delete it. Then try again.

Me: Just tell me you’re safe. I delete that too.

Badaszek drops into the chair beside me before I’ve settled on a better way to not sound so desperate over text messages.

“You didn’t touch your eggs,” he says.

“Not hungry.”

“Mm.” He watches Tyson get needled by Stone about the toast. “Whoever she is,” he says, not looking at me. “Eat something anyway. Can’t chase a woman on an empty stomach.”

I hum a response. He gets up, claps Josh on the shoulder hard enough to make him spill his orange juice, and moves on.

I go back to the phone.

Me: I love you.

I send it before I can think twice.

I put the phone in my pocket and finish a piece of toast I don’t taste.

The room keeps going without me. Someone starts a slideshow on the screen behind the head table, photos from the tournament, Dash mid-air after the OT goal, Josh’s blocker up in front of his face at the buzzer, the parade, the horses, all of it flattened into a highlight reel.

Jake throws a sprig of parsley at me and says something about the picture where I’m mid-celly with my mouth wide open like an idiot. I say something back, but my words sound muffled in my own ears.

I look for a lull in the festivities. A moment I can slip out without anyone noticing. I’ll pull an Erica and say I have to use the restroom.

Another round of coffee comes around.

Badaszek gets pulled into a conversation with Ronnie Irwin about the East coaching staff’s flight times. His back fully to me. My teammates are busy needling each other over what's left of breakfast.

I stand up, fold my napkin once, and walk.

I’m in the lobby before I decide to call Erica instead of sending unanswered texts.

I dial. Then the automated voice comes on, telling me the number I have reached is no longer in service.

I hang up. Dial again, like the second time might get a different result.

Same recording. No longer in service.

I lower the phone and just stand there with it in my hand.

That’s why she had a flip phone. It was a burner.

How do you find someone who made herself impossible to find on purpose?

I don’t stop to think. I’m out from under the Four Seasons awning and moving before the valet finishes asking if I need a car.

“I’m good,” I say, already three steps past him. I sprint the four blocks to Erica’s loft as fast as I can, which I now realize isn’t an Airbnb, but probably some kind of heist headquarters.

By the time I hit the brick sidewalk on the loft’s block, my lungs are on fire and my legs feel like spaghetti. Four blocks is usually nothing for me, but I’m starting to feel the sleep deprivation. I should have listened to Coach and had my protein.

I stop in front of the building with my hands on my knees, chest heaving, sweat running down the back of my collar, and for a second all I can hear is my own pulse slamming in my ears.

I straighten up and pound my fist against the door. Three times, hard enough to sting.

“Erica.” Nothing. I hit it again. “It’s me. Open up.”

I jab the buzzer next, hold it down, listen for footsteps, for the deadbolt, for anything. The building gives me back silence. I bang on the door a third time with the flat of my hand until my palm goes hot. Somewhere in the back of my head a voice that sounds like Badaszek tells me to get it together. I ignore it.

The window’s the only other option, and it’s not built for looking through. It’s tiny, and set high in the brick above a low iron railing. I haul myself up onto the railing, with one hand flat against the wall for balance, and finally get level with the glass.

I look inside. The place is gutted. No couch. No rug. Nothing on the walls. Bare floor.

It’s completely abandoned.

I stay up on that railing longer than I should, both hands pressed to the glass. A jogger slows on the sidewalk, watching a grown man propped up to look into an empty building.

“Forgot my keys,” I say, like that explains anything. He shakes his head and picks his pace back up, already deciding this isn’t his problem.

I climb down. Then I see it.

FOR LEASE.

The air leaves me like I’ve been checked into the boards. My knees give out from under me, so I sit down hard on the stoop and don’t move.

She’s gone.

27

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

I Did Something Bad — Taylor Swift

These Boots Are Made for Walking — Loni Lovato

When I was a kid, my dad used to watch the show called the A-Team, and at the end of every episode, the guy with the cigar would always say something like, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

I feel like the man with a cigar right now.

After Zoe and I took a couple days to hang low in the safehouse, I took a day trip to Brooklyn to pay Sal a visit.

He was, of course, expecting me.

He listened while I got everything off my chest, briefed him on the job… about the execution of all of it. And then I got to the part about the Jackdaw. How the necklace was switched before we even got to it, and the four numbers stamped on the playing card left at our door.

I asked him if he knew anything about who the Jackdaw is. If anybody in his network knew.

He said he had only heard stories, as if the Jackdaw was some sort of legend, always leaving behind a bespoke jack of spades as his calling card.

But he (or she) was a ghost. Nobody knew who the Jackdaw really was.

Then Sal reached into his back pocket for his wallet, opened the billfold and produced a small folded piece of paper.

“This was waiting for me on my table the other day,” he’d said. “Donna told me it was already here in an envelope with my name on it before the diner opened. A jack of spades attached to it. She’d asked the night shift if it had been there when they closed the night before. It had not.”

Sal slid the paper across the table and told me to read it.

It was more numbers, but they didn’t make any sense to me.

Then below the Jackdaw’s signature, in fine print, it said:

DO WITH IT WHAT YOU WILL.

I’d looked up at Sal. Confused and a little worried.

“The numbers are coordinates,” he’d said. “I checked them myself. The longitude and latitude point to a bank in Lexington, Kentucky. I had one of my buddies call the bank and they confirmed a safety deposit box set up for one America Armitage. All you have to do is show your government ID.”

“Sounds like a trap,” I said.

Sal gave me one of those East Coast full-body shrugs and said "Eh, could be. You'll never know."

From DC to Brooklyn to Lexington. The Jackdaw is using the United States as their own personal poker game.

The question is, who are they and why are they helping me?

I suppose I’ll learn that when I pay them a visit in Lexington because I have a feeling they’re waiting for me there.

I’ll go right after I’m done here in Dennis Hobbs's office. It was ridiculously easy to sneak in here and sink into his cushy leather chair.

My Wonder Woman boots are already up on Dennis's desk when the door opens.

He stops two steps in, keys still in his hand, like he can’t decide if he should call security or double check he’s in the right office.

He drops his keys, and they clatter hard against the wood of his mahogany desk.

“Get your feet off my desk.”

I don’t move.

“Where’s my necklace, Erica?”

“How should I know?”

“Because you took it.”

“Moi? Somebody stole something from under your nose, and you think it’s me?”

His jaw ticks. “Who else would it be?”

I hold his eyes. No sarcasm this time.

“I swear on my dad’s honor, I’ve never laid hands on it.”

It’s true. I just don’t mention who I think did it, or why they leave playing cards behind like souvenirs.

“I could call security right now and have you arrested for breaking and entering.”

I shrug. “A little bird sent me a tip. It actually led me straight to your own surveillance system. Funny thing, technology. Records everything, even the stuff you’d rather it didn’t.”

I pull out my phone, thumb the video open, and turn the screen toward him.

It’s a recording of him in the private viewing room the day Ivy, Rue, and Suri met with him to inspect the Friendship Jewel. Except in this version, Zoe completely erased everyone but Hobbs from the footage.

It shows him taking the necklace out of its case and placing it on the velvet tray. Then he opens the cigar box. But it’s not filled with cigars. Instead, it contains the forged necklace, and clear as day, he removes it from the cigar box, putting it in the display case.

In short, it proves Dennis Hobbs stole the Friendship Jewel and replaced it with a forgery.

“This is fabricated.” He’s already reaching for calm and missing it by a mile. “Some kind of deepfake garbage.”

“It’s real footage, Dennis. Pulled straight off your own server. Forensics will back it up any day you want to test that theory.”

Zoe encrypted the footage with the museum's own feed architecture and matched BMAH's timestamps down to the millisecond. My girl is a bonafide genius.

“Sorry but this is you switching out the Friendship Jewel before it even got to the gala.”

I tap the screen once more before I pocket it.

“Okay, I see what game you’re playing. You think you’re soooo clever.” He slow claps. “I really gotta hand it to you. This flair for theatrics would be entertaining if you weren’t so pathetic.”

“I wonder if the museum board will think it’s entertaining when they review you for the director candidacy.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I? I’m just an anonymous concerned citizen who happened upon this footage on social media.”

I toss a card on the desk with Heath Kane’s name facing up.

Dennis scoffs. “That man is a clown. Disgraced by his own family.”

I shrug. “Maybe you’re right. He only has archived copies of you stealing the Friendship Jewel in a private viewing room.”

“Did he put you up to this?”

“No. But he took a shining to me and told me a really interesting story. How he found Eleanor Armitage’s diary among his grandfather’s private records. How there were letters from Mary Todd Lincoln to her traveling companion tucked within the pages. How he held onto them because he knew the historical significance. He knew their worth. You know how that goes, don’t you, Dennis? The value of leverage?”

I reach into my jacket and slide a folded document across the desk. He doesn’t want to touch it. I watch him lose that particular battle with his own curiosity in under three seconds.

“It’s a notarized statement by Heath Kane about how he made a deal with you. The diary and letters in exchange for your part in exposing the corruption of his family.”

Dennis sinks into the chair across from his own desk like his legs stopped being consulted on the decision.

“He had a lot to say, actually. Fun guy. You see, after his dispute with his father and getting squeezed out of his inheritance, he was ready to take down Whitfield & Kane Trust by proving the fraudulent and predatory loans over several decades. How easy it would have been for someone who, let’s say… someone who worked in the museum to stumble across the diary and expose the truth about the secret donor. Are you writing this down? Because here’s the crazy part. Walter Kane had held onto the Friendship Jewel for twenty years. But because of the historical significance, he couldn’t just sell it. So he donated it for clout.”

Dennis's lips quiver in a hard line.

“Of course, you probably already knew this. Because instead of following through on your deal with Heath, you turned around and leveraged your new diary to press your advantage. A recommendation here, commendation there. Certain influential players bounce your name around the DC circuit. And suddenly, you’re up for director and maybe a future in politics. I mean, this is some crazy Hollywood material.”

Dennis is silent for a long while, just staring at me, chewing his inner cheek.

At length, he puts on a smug facade. “You really think this gives you the upper hand? You are a criminal. You were at the gala.”

“I didn’t go within twenty feet of that necklace and I can prove it. But you…” I glance at my fingernails. “You’ve been hiding the fact there’s a fake on the museum floor ever since you quietly commissioned your own off-books authentication.”

His pupils dilate a fraction and I can tell he’s panicking now.

“All those people paying good money to visit the museum don’t even know they’re looking at a forgery. And the funniest part is that you’re too paranoid and cowardly to alert your superiors.”

He swallows hard and I know I’ve got him. I take out my phone again, letting Zoe’s altered footage light up the screen.

“Here’s the deal. You hand me the diary and the letters, and this footage never sees daylight. Gone. Like it never existed.”

“This is blackmail,” Dennis says.

“Funny word, coming from you. You didn’t call it blackmail when you were cutting a deal with the Kanes.”

He narrows his eyes at me. Calculating. But he’s trapped. There’s no scenario where he can talk his way out of this one.

He drags a hand down his face. “Fine.” He says it like it costs him a rib. “But I need to know that footage is gone for good. Not sitting on some hard drive somewhere waiting to resurface. And I want the real necklace back on that pedestal before the board notices it’s missing.”

“The footage disappears. You have my word on that.”

“And the necklace.”

“The necklace, I don’t control.” Not entirely a lie either. “I don’t know who lifted the necklace, but whoever did, can return it just as easily as they took it. Without getting caught. I might know someone who can get in touch.”

That person is me. I can get in touch. The Jackdaw is watching how I work the angle. What I might do with this leverage.

DO WITH IT WHAT YOU WILL.

That sounds lovely, thank you very much. I have a feeling that I’ve made myself a new friend. One that leaves playing cards with birds drawn on them. I suppose everybody needs a hobby.

Dennis gets up and crosses to a painting I’d bet good money he picked up at a yard sale because he doesn’t have an ounce of taste. He swings it aside, and works a combination.

The safe door swings open. Inside sits a flat archival case, sealed tight enough that when he cracks it, I hear the little hiss of air that’s been locked in there.

He lifts the lid.

Inside the case is a leather-bound diary, the cover gone soft and dark with age. He lifts it out slowly and gingerly, and sets it on the desk between us.

“Read it,” I say. “The Lincoln letter. Out loud.”

His hands aren’t steady when he lifts the top page. He clears his throat twice before anything comes out, and when it does, his voice shakes on every third word.

My Dearest Eleanor,

Pau, France

the 12th day of March, 1877

In these last quiet seasons of exile, I have come to think that certain beauties in this world are not meant to console, but to remind. The necklace Her Majesty pressed upon me so many years ago, one widow’s offering to another, in the black spring after Mr. Lincoln was taken from me, was once a solace. Now it burns against my breast as a memory of all that cannot be undone.

You have been to me a steadfast friend when friendship was scarce and dearly bought. In my son’s prudence I find only cold accounting; in your company, the gentler arithmetic of mercy. I will not leave this jewel to family hands that would weigh it in dollars, nor to statesmen who would mount it behind glass and call it legacy.

Know then, Eleanor, that I give this necklace to you. Not to hold for me, not to mind until I ask for it back. It is yours now, as surely as if I had placed it in your hands myself and said so aloud. I can think of no one else I would trust with something that has cost me so much to carry.

Wear it if it pleases you, or don’t. Only let it be worn for love, the way I have never once been permitted to wear my own grief. That is all I ask of it, and all I ask of you.

With the affection of one who has learned that beauty is not madness,

— Mary Lincoln

“Close it,” I say, when he’s done. “Slide it over.”

He does.

Then it hits me. The weight of my family’s legacy written on a frail piece of paper. The historical significance of it. I almost feel like I’m dreaming. Like this can’t be real.

I delicately wrap the diary in a scarf I’d brought and place it carefully in my bag. The same bag that caused a scene in a CityCenterDC dress shop.

I take a deep breath and get up from Hobbs's desk chair. “I’d say it was a pleasure doing business with you but I don’t think I’ll be back. Zero stars.”

I go for my grand exit, but something inside me makes me stop. It’s like an itch I’ve had for six whole years, and I just need to finally scratch it.

“One more thing.” I don’t turn around right away. “Why’d you set up my dad as your fall guy?”

“I didn’t set your father up.” His voice pitches high, wrong. “You’re… you’re out of your mind. Crazy woman, coming in here with your accusations and your fake footage.”

I turn around now.

“Don’t lie. I know the truth. I sat in that courtroom. Poured over every law book I could get my hands on. I could recite it to you backwards. So tell me, Dennis. Why. Did. You. Set. Up. My. Dad?”

Something in him just gives out. He drops back into the chair, hands over his face, shoulders slumped.

“Why?” he says, muffled behind his own fingers. “Why are you making me do this?”

“Because you owe me this.” I don’t dress it up any prettier than that. “That’s all. I just need to know for my own peace of mind.”

He looks up fast, eyes red rimmed. “You’re not recording this.”

I point at the camera mounted above his door, a small black eye in the corner of the ceiling.

“It’s temporarily disabled.”

He lunges for his computer, taps the keyboard hard enough that the plastic might break, and the security feed on his monitor dissolves into a wall of gray static.

The blackout is just on his terminal, though, while the rest of the building hums along without noticing a thing. That man is so dumb he doesn’t even stop to think that if the security cameras were really offline, this whole museum would be on lockdown. Alarms galore.

Seriously, his browsing footprint is so predictable, Zoe didn’t even try hard to take control of his computer. It’s just static.

And as for the real security cameras, she’ll scrub every frame of me walking through this building the second I’m out the door.

“Tell me how you did it,” I say. “All of it. Slow.”

He tells it to me in pieces. How he fed my father security details that were never true, watching him build a plan around information that was rigged from the start, then stepping forward at exactly the right moment to look like the hero who caught him.

“I saw an opportunity… during the pandemic. There were no visitors at the museum at that time. Night watch was a skeleton crew. It was easy pickings. I couldn't pass it up. But when things got hairy, and I knew there was no way we’d get away with it, I made Ben the fall guy. To save my job. I didn’t even rat on the rest of the crew, and I could have. Remember that.”

“And your testimony.” I keep my voice level. “At the trial. I know you exaggerated so the judge would give him the maximum sentence. Why?”

“He was a liability. So what if I made some… embellishments? Attempted theft of an object of cultural heritage from a museum is a federal crime. But it’s still just an attempt. But possession of the blueprints of Bellenden’s laser grids, reckless disregard for public safety? Maybe a… tiny inflated valuation of the Friendship Jewel. That easily stacked six and a half years to his sentence. And that’s six and a half more years I needed to become too powerful for him to touch me once he got out.”

I take a moment to soak in his confession. I already had a good idea of what he would say. This was just confirmation. I thought it would make me feel better. But it doesn’t. My father is still in prison when he might have been sentenced for only three and a half years. He’d have served less than three years for good conduct. But they threw the book at him, and the man sitting in front of me orchestrated it.

I’m not saying my dad is a saint. He was a little reckless. He got caught. I don’t have a problem with the justice system.

What I do have a problem with are weasely little men who step on other people to get ahead in life. And I’ve decided I’m done. If this were a hockey game, Dennis Hobbs would be in that little box they put guys in when they do penalties or whatever. I don’t know the terms. I’m still learning the game.

I adjust the strap of my bag on my shoulder, turn, and walk out.

A few steps down the hall, I press two fingers to my ear.

“Did you get all that?”

Zoe’s voice comes back warm and a little smug, exactly the way I like it.

“Oh, I got it. I got it all. Dennis Hobbs is going down.”

As I walk away from Hobbs's office, I picture myself in one of those action movies, completely unbothered by the bright orange explosion directly behind me. My Wonder Woman boots hit the marble floor in a slow motion victory strut, fireballs shooting off in every direction, the whole building going up in flames. The force of it blowing wind in my hair with a cinematic blast.

And I have a little smirk on my face and don’t look back because I just completed Mission Impossible.

28

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Money for Nothing — Sultans

America the Beautiful — Leslie Odom Jr.

Iset the mug down on the kitchen island and look out at the backyard, at the pool I haven’t had the time to use yet, at a sky so clean and blue it looks like a movie. October in Southern California. The locals call it "locals' summer," not too hot. Not too cold. The tourists have gone home and taken the crowds with them, so a guy can show up to a beach on a Tuesday and have four hundred yards of sand to himself.

I’ve got the day off today. Fall camp wrapped, the season’s three games in, and Irvine is two and one, which is not nothing for a brand-new expansion team. Coach runs a tighter room than Corpus Christi ever did, and I like it. I like my teammates. I like the equipment staff who remember how I tape my sticks without being told twice. It’s been an adjustment, learning how to vibe with a new roster, but it’s a good one.

I’m a little tired today. I could stay on this couch and play video games until my thumbs go numb. Or I could drive down to the beach and do absolutely nothing productive with sand between my toes.

Or I could think about her again, which is what I actually end up doing no matter which one I pick. I’ve been thinking about her nonstop for three months.

My cousins have been a good distraction. Nate and Memo are closest to me here in Orange County. Memo has a lot of responsibilities at the Abbey which gives him a little free time for a movie or ice cream every now and then, but I have lunch with Nate about once a week. He’s in Laguna Beach, which is right down the coast from my house in Newport. Nacho, Dante, Roman, and the rest of the wild cousins and tíos are a little further drive from me in LA. But it’s still closer than family has been since I left home for college all those years ago.

My mother is a different story. Burbank isn’t far, geographically. She still hasn’t driven down to Orange County once. I went to one of her press events last month instead, stood next to her for eleven photos while she introduced me as “my son, the Olympian,” like she’d had anything to do with my success. It made her happy. Or it made the headline happy. Hard to tell those apart with her.

She can’t hurt me anymore. I’ve said that to myself enough times now that I mostly believe it. I’m an adult now. I’ve put the past behind me. All forgiven. All forgotten.

Erica is the one I can’t talk myself into forgetting.

I haven’t heard from her since the night of the gala. It still lands somewhere between grief and dread every single morning, like my chest hasn’t gotten the memo that this is just what my life is now.

But I still check every day. I scan the internet for DC news searches. Robberies. Missing jewelry. Nothing, nothing, nothing, for months.

Until three weeks ago, I stumbled upon this article:

Recovered Nazi art and diamonds worth over $200 million, turned in anonymously.

Sources point to a vault at the Four Seasons in DC. Removed sometime in July. The details stay vague on purpose, the article said, though plenty of people online were happy to speculate. Vigilantes. Fortune hunters. Lots of comments joking to check on George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s whereabouts in July.

Then I went down the internet rabbit hole for the next few days. Every post and article was just variations of the other.

Three lost paintings hang in the Met now, one of the biggest Nazi-art recoveries in history. The diamonds believed to be Nazi loot, linked to descendants of a WW2 German general, now living in Argentina.

Argentina. The couple with German accents at the gala. From there, I began running my own personal inventory of every strange thing I noticed about my time with Erica. Nothing about that woman ever fully added up.

That time she just so happened to be at the Four Seasons, wearing a suit and tie. Her hair was slicked back into a tight bun, and she kept looking over her shoulder. I thought she was just being cute. How she said she had a “friend” staying at the hotel. Zoe, pushing that housekeeping cart. Then there was that thing Erica said to me the last night I’d seen her.

“It’s already in motion. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.”

I know in my gut it was her.

I scoured the internet for America Armitage. I searched her birthdate, did a reverse image search from pictures taken on the red carpet. All that came up was one grainy yearbook photo from a high school in Brooklyn and nothing else, like she’d been erased on purpose. Then, because apparently I have no self-preservation instinct where she’s concerned, I went further and found a six-year-old article about an attempted theft of the Friendship Jewel at the Bellenden Museum six years ago.

I need help.

I think about her every day, even doing mundane tasks, like going to the post office. Or when I go to get frozen bananas on Balboa Island and think, she’d inhale three of these before I finished my first bite. Or that record store in Laguna she would’ve had opinions about. Or when I pass the Great Park on the freeway and think about taking her up on that big orange hot air balloon. How they transform it into a jack-o’-lantern face for the month of October.

How, for the rest of my life, the Fourth of July will never be the same.

I finish my coffee. It’s cold now.

I need to get out of this house before I spend another day narrating my own heartbreak to an empty kitchen. I grab my keys off the hook by the garage door, then change my mind and head for the front instead. Maybe a walk will do me some good.

I open the door and every plan I had for the day flies out of my brain. For a second, I just stand there, not believing my eyes.

There’s a yellow Lamborghini parked crooked at my curb. It is… a very aggressive yellow. And Erica is leaning against the side like she’s been expecting me to walk out of my house any minute.

She looks better than anything I’ve built up in my head for three months, which is saying something, because I’ve built up a lot.

I don’t stop to think or decide anything. My legs just go.

“You’re here.”

I kiss her before she can answer, both hands finding her face like I need to confirm she’s real. She kisses me back immediately, her hands fisting in my shirt and pulling me in like she’s been missing me just as long. She’s leaning against the car, and I press her into it, one hand sliding to the small of her back, and every rational thought I’ve had since July evaporates.

“I thought I’d lost you,” I say against her mouth, and I don’t care how that sounds. “I thought that was it.”

“I’m sorry.” She says it between kisses, breathless, her fingers finding the back of my neck. “I’m here. I’m here.”

I kiss her jaw, her cheekbone, back to her mouth, and my heart is racing. Her hands are shaking a little, or mine are, I honestly can’t tell whose pulse I’m feeling anymore.

Then someone clears their throat behind me.

It doesn’t register the first time. Then they clear their throat again, this time louder and pointed.

I pull back. Erica’s lips are pink and her eyes are wide as she looks over my shoulder. There’s a middle-aged man standing on the sidewalk behind me with his arms crossed.

“Do you mind getting off my car?”

I look at Erica. Erica looks at me.

“This isn’t your car?” I say to her.

“I thought it was yours.”

We both start laughing at the same time, right there at the curb, and the man watches us like a father who’d caught his teenaged daughter kissing the school bad boy.

“Sorry, man.” I raise a hand at him. “I’ll pay to have it waxed.”

He runs a palm along the door panel, checking for scratches. “It’s all good. Just…” He looks at us. “Maybe less PDA next time?”

“You got it, neighbor.”

I get Erica inside before either of us can embarrass ourselves further.

“He was pretty chill,” she says once the door shuts behind us.

“It’s the perfect weather. Nobody’s uptight out here.” I glance at her. “Mostly.”

She’s already tipping her head back, taking in the vaulted ceiling, the curved staircase, the kind of house that looks bigger from the inside than the outside promised. I watch her circle slowly in the entryway.

“If I had a flashy car like that I wouldn’t park it on the street,” she says.

“What else would you do with your millions?”

“What millions? I’ve got twenty bucks in my checking account.”

“You’re telling me the art and the diamonds weren’t part of the Armitage Seven job?”

She squints at me. “The Armitage Seven?”

“It has a ring to it. There were seven of you, right?”

“I’m partial to the Precio Two.”

Something in my chest does a slow, stupid flip.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Am I?”

“I read every article. Watched every news segment about the World War Two loot. Turning that in was the right thing to do.”

She shrugs, easy, like it’s nothing. “Wasn’t my call. My girls are morally pink.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t keep some for yourself. A few diamonds. No one would be the wiser.”

“I didn’t want any of it. Plus, it’s hard to fence stuff like that.” She continues inside my house, looking around. “They did get a no-questions-asked finder’s fee, though.”

“A finder’s fee.”

“Yep. I raised my chickens right.”

“How much?” I’m too curious for my own good. Also, I’ve seen National Treasure. I was always a little peeved at the Nicolas Cage character when he didn’t even consult his partner before turning down a bigger sum.

“My lips are sealed.”

“Yeah?” I catch her by the waist. “Bring those lips over here, then.”

I kiss her until she’s laughing into it, until she finally tips her head back.

“Fine. Ten percent.”

I do the math out loud. “Ten percent of two hundred five million. Divided by six is…” I pause. “3.4 million each.”

“Give or take.” She lifts one shoulder.

“And you took none of it?”

“My girls tried to include me in the split but I threatened to skip Friendsgiving if they didn’t shut up about it. All I ever really wanted was my proof.” Something crosses her face. “Except now.”

“Except now what?” I feel my stomach drop an inch. “Another con?”

“Just one more.”

“Erica!”

“There’s this one heist I can’t stop thinking about.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Oh, I’m serious. I’m calling it the Zesty Job.”

“Erica, you can’t just.” I stop. “Wait, what?”

“The Zesty Job. I’ve got my target in sight. I just need to hack into a vault.” She reaches up and pops the top button of my shirt open.

I laugh, because there’s nothing else to do with the way my pulse is behaving. “Okay. Okay, promise me this is the last one.”

“Thief’s honor.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“There is when you love someone.”

Everything in the room goes quiet. “Love?”

She nods, and it isn’t a joke this time.

“For the record,” I say, “I fell first.”

“You never said the words. Doesn’t count.”

“I texted it.”

“Burner phone.” She spreads her hands. “Never got it.”

“I’m buying you a real phone.”

“Good, because I’m broke and can’t afford one. Speaking of.” She peers past me toward the kitchen. “You got food? I had a pretzel at the airport that cost a small fortune, then the Uber cleaned out what was left. I’m starving.”

She’s already moving, trailing her fingers along the cabinets, and it takes her a full minute to figure out the fridge is disguised as one of them.

“Nice house,” she says, still hunting.

“You spent your last dollars to get here.” I say it slower this time, watching her. “To see me.”

She blinks, like the question doesn’t need thinking about. “Yes. I love you.” Flat. Plain. Like it’s the easiest fact she’s ever handed anyone.

“What if I’d turned you away?”

“That was a chance I was willing to take.”

I open the fridge for her before she embarrasses either of us further searching for the handle. She peers inside, makes a small satisfied noise, and pulls out a tub of hummus and a carton of organic orange juice.

“Someone made a Costco run,” she says, delighted.

“They’ve got the best eggs.”

“Tru dat. You got pita chips?”

“Do you think I’m a monster?”

I go into the pantry and come back with a bag big enough to feed a locker room, setting it on the kitchen island next to her. She climbs onto a barstool, cracks the hummus lid, and starts eating like a raccoon. I pour two glasses of orange juice and slide one across to her, then just watch her dig in. I am unreasonably attracted to her.

“Oh my word,” she says with her mouth full. “This is some yummy hummus.”

“I like the pine nuts on top,” I say.

She keeps eating, and I finally work up the nerve to ask the question that’s been sitting in my chest for three months.

“The necklace. Did you ever get it?”

“I never touched it.”

“No.”

“It’s true.”

“So you couldn’t prove your family’s claim after all?”

“That?” She gulps some orange juice. “Hmm. It should be all over the news by now.”

I haven’t checked the news sites today. I pull up my phone, thumb to the account I trust most, and there it is, in big, fat font at the top of the feed.

LOST LINCOLN LETTER SURFACES: MUSEUM SCANDAL DEEPENS

I read it to myself.

A handwritten letter believed lost for nearly a century and a half has resurfaced, complicating the accepted history of the famous Friendship Jewel, and raising new questions about how it ended up at the Bellenden Museum of American History at all.

The letter, dated 1877 and addressed to a woman named Eleanor, describes Mary Todd Lincoln gifting the necklace. The Friendship Jewel is a mourning piece Queen Victoria had given Mary Todd Lincoln after the president’s assassination, as a personal token of friendship. Lincoln scholars have confirmed the handwriting and paper stock are consistent with Mrs. Lincoln’s known correspondence from the period.

Historical records identify Eleanor as one of Mrs. Lincoln’s traveling companions during her years abroad, until now a minor footnote in the record. The necklace was anonymously donated to the Bellenden in the 1970s and authenticated at the time using period photographs and Queen Victoria’s own letters. The newly surfaced letter is the first evidence of what happened to the Friendship Jewel in the years between, indicating Mrs. Lincoln gave the necklace away entirely rather than passing it down through her own family.

The letter was submitted to museum archivists anonymously, alongside a private diary historians believe belonged to Eleanor herself. Descendants of Eleanor’s family have reportedly been notified.

The discovery comes months after the Bellenden’s director of provenance, Dennis Hobbs, abruptly departed the museum. His exit followed unconfirmed reports questioning his own account of a 2020 attempted theft of the Friendship Jewel. Hobbs could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for the Bellenden declined to elaborate, saying only that the Lincoln letter is currently under further authentication.

I set the phone down slowly. “How did you do it?”

“Let’s just say I have a friend who’s really good at cards.”

I don’t push on that. Something tells me I won’t get anything else, and honestly, I don’t need it.

“How long are you staying?” I try to keep it casual and fail completely.

“I’d like to hang around a while.” She eats another chip. “Get a job. Is there a special LinkedIn for female criminal masterminds?”

“You should ask my mother. She might know.”

That gets a real laugh out of her, and makes her whole face light up. “Actually,” she says, “I’ve been thinking about law school. A brunette Elle Woods, or something.”

“You can do anything you set your mind to.”

I push the hummus and the juice aside and round the island to stand in front of her, pulling her into me until there’s no space left worth talking about.

“As long as we do it together,” I say. “No more secrets. No more heists.”

“The Precio Two?”

“For now. Maybe the Precio Seven in a few years.”

“Seven?”

“Oh, honey, you have no idea what you’re getting into.” I catch her around the waist and lift her clean off the barstool. She yelps, hands flying to my shoulders, laughing before I’ve even set her down on the counter. I step in between her knees like I’ve got every right to be there and I kiss her lips, slow. “I’m keeping you for a life sentence.”

“What about good behavior?” she says against my mouth.

I kiss her jaw instead. “I don’t think you’re capable of that, Dangerous.”

I move to her neck, and I feel her breath catch under my lips.

“Mission accepted,” she says. “Zesty.”

“Glad to hear it.” I pull back just enough to look at her. “Sticky fingers.”

“Oh, okay. I see how it is.” She narrows her eyes, no heat behind it at all. “Watchy El Hottie.”

“Whaaat?” I laugh so hard it turns into a coughing fit, one hand braced on the counter. “Is that what you were calling me?”

“Before I knew your name. Yeah.”

I give her a look and just wait her out, saying nothing.

“Okay, maybe a little after, too.” She bats her lashes deliberately. “Do you feel objectified?”

“I feel like I should. But oddly, I don’t.”

“Okay, so I’ll just keep using it.”

“If that makes you happy.”

“It does.”

“Then don’t ever stop.” I tip her chin up and kiss her, slow, like I’ve got nowhere else to be for the rest of my life. “My America the Beautiful.”

Closing Credits:

Ruth's Action Theme, Pt. 2 — Brooke Blair, Will Blair

Can’t get enough Jeremiah and Erica? I gotchu boo! Read the bonus epilogue here: https://BookHip.com/LTFABSJ

Then turn the page for more hockey romcom adventure fun…

WANT MORE HOCKEY ADVENTURE ROMCOMS?

If you enjoyed Erica and Jeremiah in Gave Proof Through the Night, you'll love my complete Toronto Titans series. Each book is a standalone romance with a happily ever after, featuring its own high-stakes adventure. From fighting hackers, to sneaking around as amateur sleuths, to going up against the Irish mob, all the way to a full-on 007 finale in the series closer. These hockey players and their whip-smart heroines will take you for a ride.

Get the first book, Grump and Ten, FREE

Binge the Toronto Titans series now.

MORE PRECIO GOODNESS:

You've already met Nacho and Dante Precio in Gave Proof Through the Night. Now get to know the whole family in the Precio Brothers series. Each book is a standalone romance following one hardworking, family-first brother finally slowing down long enough to fall for the right woman.

Grab a fan and a tall glass of ice water, because these hotties are muy picante, and when it comes to love, these Precios Mexi-CAN.

Meet the Precio Brothers now.

CONTINUE READING STARS, STRIPES, AND HOCKEY NIGHTS

Oh, Say Can You See by J.P. Sterling

By the Dawn's Early Light by Tia Marlee

What So Proudly We Hail by Marion De Ré

At the Twilight's Last Gleaming by Ellie Hall

Whose Broad Stripes & Bright Stars by Faith Carter

Through the Perilous Fight by Elana Johnson

O'er The Ramparts We Watched by Larissa Hommes

So Gallantly Streaming by Dulcie Dameron

The Rocket's Red Glare by Kerry Evelyn

The Bombs Bursting in Air by Dineen Miller

Gave Proof Through the Night by Gigi Blume

Our Flag Was Still There by Leah Busboom

Home of the Brave by Brittany Mulliner

THE GIGIVERSE

TORONTO TITANS HOCKEY SERIES

Grump and Ten

Head Over Skates

Offside Bride

Cross Check Christmas

Dating Goals

STARS, STRIPES, AND HOCKEY NIGHTS

Gave Proof Through the Night

PRECIO BROTHERS SERIES

Messy Love

The Hate Zone

Nacho Boyfriend

Just Amigos

Merry CringeMas

BACKSTAGE ROMANCE SERIES

Confessions of a Hollywood Matchmaker

Love and Loathing

Secrets of a Hollywood Matchmaker

Driving Miss Darcy

The Friend Act

STANDALONE

Bewitching the Ghost

GET TO KNOW GIGI

Gigi is a USA TODAY bestselling author and hopeless musical theatre nerd who has perfected the art of lollygagging.

Former professional wedding singer, Gigi lives in Southern California with her personal chef (AKA husband) and two weird and awesome kids who have grown into wonderful, artistically talented young adults.

Quoting movies, Shakespeare, and pop culture with her kids is one of her favorite pastimes. A Hufflepuff and die-hard Whovian, she’s convinced magic is really a thing, still believes in Santa Claus, and finds miracles everywhere.

When Gigi's not writing about swoony book boyfriends and the women that bring them to their knees, she likes to take naps, re-read Pride and Prejudice, embarrass her offspring, and get distracted by her dogs.

You can find her on Instagram: @gigiblume

And on TikTok: @gigiblumeauthor