Page 60 of Bearly Out Loud

“Dojin.”

He blinked. She was watching his hands. He looked down—his fists were clenched hard enough that the veins stood out along his forearms.

He unclenched them. Deliberately. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for being angry. Apologize for scaring the cat.”

He turned. The orange tabby had flattened himself against the counter, ears pinned, eyes enormous. Every hair on his body standing at full attention. Directed entirely at Dojin.

A voice came from the bedroom doorway: “So you’re Bear Daddy.”

Dojin turned.A lean man in a bomber jacket and limited-edition sneakers leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, assessing him with the open appraisal of a casting director at an audition. Dark hair in an undercut that fell across sharp, watchful eyes. A soundwave tattoo on his inner wrist.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.” The man extended a hand. “I’m Takumi. This is Emi.” He gestured at the flattened cat. “You showed up in twenty minutes and you look like you want to fight the building. I approve.”

Dojin shook his hand. Firm grip, steady eye contact, no fear. He clocked the assessment instantly:Pack. Hers. Important.

“Dojin.”

“Oh, I know.” Takumi’s smile had an edge to it—not hostile, but informed. The smile of someone who’d heard every detail and formed opinions before the introduction. “The beekeeper. The lunch deliverer. The man whose jacket she wore for three weeks.”

Nari’s pen stopped moving. “Takumi.”

“What? It’s useful intelligence.”

Dojin’s breath caught.

Nari was watching him from across the room. Her pen had stopped. Her eyes were dark and knowing and aimed at his face with the focus of someone who noticed everything and pretended to notice less.

“You didn’t wash it right away.” Not a question. The corner of her mouth twitched. “Did you?”

“The break-in.” He redirected. Easier ground. Safer ground. “Walk me through what you found.”

Her pen resumed. But the twitch at the corner of her mouth had become a ghost of a smile—small, private, aimed at the legal pad instead of him. She knew. She absolutely knew.

THIRTY-ONE

DOJIN

Nari did. Methodical, precise, her legal pad a weapon. Entry method. Search pattern. What was touched, what wasn’t, what the omissions revealed. She presented it like a case brief—inherited from James, delivered at Nari speed—and by the end, Dojin had gone from angry to cold.

Cold was worse than angry. Cold was strategic.

“Professional team. Lock pick, no forced entry, systematic search, no damage. They weren’t sending a message. They were running an operation.”

“Mercer’s people.” Takumi’s voice had lost its performance quality. Flat. Sharp. The underneath of someone who built soundscapes for a living and understood exactly what a targeted break-in meant. “He knows she has evidence.”

“He suspects. This was a fishing expedition.” Dojin moved to the windows. Checked the locks—intact. Checked the fire escape access—locked from inside. The entry was the front door. They’d walked in through the building’s main entrance, taken the elevator, picked the lock, and left the way they came. “Building security cameras?”

“One in the lobby.” Nari dropped onto the arm of the sectional. Emi, recovered from his earlier terror, padded acrossthe counter and leaped to the couch, inserting himself into her lap with the authority of a cat who had decided where comfort was needed. She scratched behind his ears without looking down. “Service entrance has a camera but it’s been broken since October. I’ve complained four times.”

“Four times.”

“I sent emails. I left voicemails. I used what Takumi calls my ‘management voice.’ The super told me it was ‘on the schedule.’” She made quotation marks in the air. “The schedule is a lie. The schedule has always been a lie.”

Takumi dropped onto the other end of the sectional. “For the record, I told her to escalate to the building manager.”