Page 100 of What We Bury

Knox is watching me. I can feel it without looking.

“Oh, don’t look so wounded, sweetheart.” Loki waves a hand. “We’re not punishing you. Quite the opposite. Dean checks a lot of our boxes and we’ve been thorough with our checks. We’re simply being practical—doing our due diligence and preparing redundancies. Brock was your catalyst. Mine was another murderous little band of merrymen who botched a job badly enough to make me reconsider how thin we’re stretched.”

“I told you I didn’t like their leader,” Odin murmurs, taking his glass back.

Loki sighs, hand to his heart. “Alas. I’m a sucker for blue eyes and a need for revenge.” He lets it sit a beat. Then turns to me. “Which brings us to you. We’ve held off making a move on Dean because he was always going to be most useful coming in through someone he already trusts. That’s you.”

“You want me to be the one who reads him in?”

TWENTY-SEVEN

ELI

“Iwant you totesthim.” The performance drops out of Loki’s voice entirely—and that’s somehow worse, because it means he’s serious. “Bring him in slowly. A little at a time. See what he does with each piece. A man can want justice in the abstract and still lose his nerve the first time he’s standing over a body that isn’t a metaphor. Before any of us put real weight on Dean McMahon, I want to know he holds it.” He smiles again, the theatrics sliding back into place like a curtain. “Think of it as a long interview. You’re conducting it. Report back.”

“And if he doesn’t hold it?”

“Then you’ll have found that out carefully, at low cost, instead of catastrophically at a high one.” He spreads his hands. “Either way, you’ve done me a service. Now. On to new business.”

He slides a folder across the bar. Milo grabs it first, flipping it open.

Odin takes a sip of his drink, then sets it on the bar. “Next up is Bill Hudson. He’s forty-two, and an investment banker.Dozens of accusations, zero charges or convictions. The most recent victim was nineteen—an intern at his firm. She reported it, was pressured to recant, and was terminated two weeks later for ‘performance issues.’” His voice is flat, but there’s something cold underneath. “He’s been untouchable because of his connections. Let’s change that.”

Milo’s already scanning the file. “Married. Two kids.” He makes a face at that. “Says he’s a regular at a golf club in—Jesus, this guy’s schedule is busier than mine.” He laughs. “That wouldn’t be hard. I don’t keep a schedule.”

“Find a window,” Odin says. “Make it clean. I don’t want another Davis situation.”

“Understood.” I take the folder from Milo, already cataloging the details. Patterns to observe. Vulnerabilities to exploit. A man who thinks he’s untouchable is about to learn otherwise. I hand the file off to Knox without looking at him. He takes it, thumbing through the printed pages, and says nothing.

Odin’s phone buzzes. He glances down, a microsecond of distraction, then rises from the barstool. The rest of us instinctively straighten up, the way dogs do when the alpha walks by.

“Loki, we have to go.”

Loki sighs, getting to his feet. “No rest for the wicked.” He heads for the door, pausing in the doorway. “Toodles.” He waves, before stepping outside.

Odin lingers a beat, his gaze meeting each of us in turn. “I’ll expect a preliminary plan by next Tuesday’s meeting. No outside involvement on Hudson.”

I nod. It goes without saying that Sage doesn’t get anywhere near this.

“We’ll keep the civilian contained,” I say, and I don’t miss the way the others bristle.

Odin lifts his chin approvingly. “Right now, that girl’s a fraying thread that will unravel everything if tugged.” He pauses at the door, hand on the knob, and fixes us with his stern gaze. “Remember why you do this. It’s not about you, it’s about the survivors and those who didn’t make it.”

Then he’s gone, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound like punctuation.

The silence that follows is different from before—less tense, more exhausted. We all let out collective breaths, shoulders dropping, masks slipping just a fraction.

“Well,” Holden says, stretching his arms overhead. “That was fun. Same time next week?”

“He took it better than I expected,” Micah admits, still pulling clean glassware from the dishwasher and racking it. “I thought he’d be angrier about Sage.”

I make myself stop watching the bunch of his biceps as he moves.

“The Davis situation cost us,” I say.

The room turns to me.

“Loki just told us, in not so many words, that we’re watched. Closely. Always have been. Whatever margin we thought we had to pull people into our orbit—we don’t have it. Sage is the largest exposure this operation has ever had, and we’ve been treating her like someone we get to keep.”