Page 142 of What We Bury

“Ugh,” Milo whines. “Texting Stephen gives me anxiety. He’s such a bitch.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, snatching his phone and opening the thread. “I’ll do it.”

My thumbs fly over the screen.

Brock:

Go find someone else’s dick to suck. Mine’s unavailable.

I hit send and hand the phone back to Milo.

“Whoa. Harsh,” he says, looking at the message.

“It’s the truth.”

We watch Tyler for a full thirty seconds. He doesn’t check the phone again, but he does follow the older woman outside.

“Hmm. That doesn’t really prove anything,” Milo says as they disappear through the doors.

A waitress approaches to clear away my empty glass. “Anything else, gentlemen?”

Milo straightens, making a show of pulling a card from his pocket to hand it to me. “Of course. If you need anything, please call. I’m here to help.”

“We’re fine, thanks,” I say, taking the card and tucking it in my pocket.

When the waitress moves on, Milo lets out a relieved breath. “That was close.”

Knox glares at him. “You need to leave.”

“Okay, grouchy pants,” Milo says, pocketing his cell. “I can tell when I’m not wanted.”

“You were never even invited,” I say, and Milo just grins and turns on his heel to leave.

Knox and I work through the brunch as cover. I pay the tab, leave a tip the bartender will remember as generous but not interesting, and walk out to the guest lot.

We head over to the Hardware store and find Milo restocking a shelf in aisle five.

“Okay, chaos demon, tell me you put eyes in the locker room,” I say without preamble.

He grins, all mischief. “Eyes in the locker room. Measurements. The name of every contractor who worked the renovation—three of them guys I went to high school with, one of them owes me money.” He shoves a roll of duct tape into the shelf. “Also the head of facilities wants to be my best friend. He’s never had a Harden rep show up for a personal delivery. He called his wife about it.”

“Hudson’s locker?” I say, trying to wrangle Milo’s brain.

“Number forty-seven. It was the end of the second row, two from the showers, one from the sauna, three from the back exit. I have the floor plan in my phone. I’ll send it to Knox when I get my break.”

Milo’s chaos is a problem. It’s also why we now know more about Hudson’s locker room than his wife probably does.

The three of us stand in a tight little triangle, as people shop around us.

“Tyler’s circle is rotten,” Knox says, pretending to peruse the available tape options.

Milo’s brow lifts. “Tyler himself?”

Knox tilts his head. “Don’t know yet. But the men around him aren’t accidents.”

Three months ago, when Odin handed us Brock Davis in a file, I’d have agreed with thedon’t know yet. Brock was a known piece of shit. We’d cleared Tyler in passing on the original sweep because nothing flagged. Plenty of monsters have unremarkable friends. But standing here now, with what we saw at the country club—Tyler getting a private audience with a man on our kill list, his thumbs working a phone in time with Milo’s pocket buzzing—the pieces are clicking together louder than I want when it’s a guy who has access to Sage.

“He’s either the cleanest dirty guy I’ve ever come across,” I say, “or he’s worse than dirty and we haven’t seen it yet.”