Chapter 41 Knox
Knox
"Status report," East says.
Kyle flips a page. "Playlist swap is loaded on a burner. Just need Ruby's phone unlocked for thirty seconds. Maggie's spice labels are printed and cut. Knox already handled the scrubs last night." He looks up. "I also made a timeline."
"Of course you did," Nash mutters.
"Car wrap guy is on standby for later," East continues. "Once Darla's at the theater with my mom, we move on her car. James has the kitchen handled since, you know, he lives there. Ruby left her phone at the bar last night, which is a gift from God."
"And the ducks?" I ask.
East pops the second trunk.
Three hundred rubber ducks stare up at us. Yellow and smug. Packed tight in four cardboard boxes.
Nash looks at them for a long time. "You said one a day. Building the tension. Gradual escalation."
"I know what I said."
"This is all of them. In your trunk. At six in the morning."
East shrugs. "I couldn't wait."
"You lasted twelve hours."
"Eleven. I started packing at midnight." He lifts a box.
"New plan. We plant a few in her bag, her locker, her water bottle, her car.
The rest go behind the bar. Every shelf.
Between every bottle. Lined up along the rail.
Tucked into the ice well. Stacked in the glass racks.
When she walks in for her shift, three hundred rubber ducks are staring at her from every surface she touches. "
Kyle scribbles on his clipboard. "I'm logging this as a tactical pivot."
East drops the box into Kyle's arms. "Log it however you want. Grab a box."
We split up. Nash and I take Ruby's phone first. The bar is dark, chairs still up on tables. Her phone sits behind the register, screen cracked, no passcode. She trusts the universe too much.
I keep watch while Nash handles the swap. Every song on her bar playlist is replaced with "What's New Pussycat" by Tom Jones. All forty-seven tracks. He scrolls through when he's done, verifying.
"This is going to be loud," he says.
"That's the point."
"She's going to know it was us."
"She's going to know it was someone. We deny everything."
Nash sets the phone back exactly where it was, screen down, same angle. Tradecraft.
Maggie's kitchen takes four minutes. James lets us in the back door while she's out running errands, the face of a man sabotaging his own dinner. He's got the labels in a ziplock, each one printed to match her handwriting.
"She color-codes the lids," he says, pulling jars down one by one. "Green for herbs. Red for heat. Blue for baking."
"So we match the colors to the wrong labels," I say.
"Already done." He peels cumin off its jar, presses paprika in its place. Oregano becomes cinnamon. Garlic powder becomes nutmeg. Every swap matched to the right color lid, so nothing looks wrong until she opens it.
His hands are steady. His jaw is tight.
"You good?" I ask.
"She's going to make pot roast tonight," he says, voice low. "With the wrong garlic."
"That's the mission."
"I know. I just want it on record that I love that woman's pot roast."
We seal the kitchen and leave.
Frankie's car is in her usual spot behind the shop. The magnet is massive. "Frankie's Mobile Petting Zoo. Ask Me About My Cats." Underneath, a QR code that links to a ten-hour loop of cat purring. We slap it on the passenger side, the one she never checks when she's parallel parking.
Nash steps back, cocks his head. "How long before she notices?"
"Could be days. She only checks that side when she's squeezing into a tight spot."
"And when she does?"
"We run."
Sloane's scrubs I handled last night. She was in the shower with the bathroom door closed.
I had maybe eight minutes. Her scrub drawer is in the bedroom closet, bottom left.
She organizes by color. Navy, cerulean, gray, black, burgundy, wine, hunter green.
Seven sets, folded tight, edges lined up because she's Sloane.
I pulled every set and replaced them with bright teal dinosaur print.
Cartoon T. rexes wearing little nurse caps and stethoscopes.
Folded them the way she folds hers, edges aligned, stacked neat so it looks right at a glance.
She wouldn't notice until she was pulling one on at 4:30 a.m., half-asleep, running late for her five o'clock shift.
The originals are in a bag in the trunk. She'll get them back. Eventually.
Kyle handles the ducks. He texts updates every four minutes.
Kyle: Gym bag. Done.
Kyle: Locker. Done.
Kyle: Water bottle was tricky. Had to disassemble the lid. Done.
Kyle: Her car. Six in the glove box, one in each cupholder.
Kyle: Bar is loaded. Every shelf, between the bottles, along the rail, ice well, glass racks. Lost count around 230.
Kyle: Also I kept one. For morale.
Nash reads the thread over my shoulder. "He's going to be a problem."
I snort. "He's already a problem. But he's our problem."
The morning ops wrap before lunch. We regroup at the compound and eat at the pastel-covered table nobody has cleared.
The reports come in throughout the afternoon.
East's mom texts while we're finishing up, confirming she and Darla are inside the theater. We call the wrap guy and head over.
An hour later, East and I are in the theater parking lot watching a professional apply a six-foot photo of East's face to the driver's side door. Black and white. Candid. The photo catches him mid-laugh, chin angled, looking better than any man involved in a prank war has a right to look.
"East's #1 Fan" stretches across the hood in hot pink vinyl. "Honk if you love East" runs along the bumper. The dashboard bobblehead goes in last. Custom made. Shirtless.
East adjusts it twice.
"It's not centered," he says.
"It's a bobblehead of your naked torso," Nash says from the back seat. "Center is not the issue."
"Presentation matters."
The wrap guy finishes, collects his cash, and drives off without a word. East stands back to survey the full effect. His own face stares back at him from the door panel, six feet wide and grinning.
"Beautiful," he says.
"Disturbing," Nash corrects.
"Both," I say. "Now we wait."
We move across the street, turn the engine off, and lower the windows.
They come out around three. Darla stops at the edge of the lot. East's mom keeps walking, notices Darla isn't beside her anymore.
Darla stares at her car.
She walks around it once. Twice. Stops at the windshield, leans in, and stares at the bobblehead on the dashboard. Her head tilts. She cups her hands against the glass for a better look.
Nash cranes forward between the seats. "She's not mad."
"She's processing," East says.
She opens the door, picks it up, studies it, and sets it back on the dash.
East's mom reads the bumper, brow arched. She turns to Darla. I can't hear what she says, but East can read his mother's lips from a hundred yards.
"She said, 'Well, I do love East,'" he murmurs, grinning so wide it's stupid.
Nash exhales through his nose. "Your mother is endorsing this."
"My mother has taste."
They both get in. Windows down. East's six-foot face is on full display as Darla pulls out of the lot.
"They're going left," I say. "That's toward the café."
"Mom's favorite lunch spot." East is turning the key. "We follow."
We tail them at a distance. Three cars honk on the route. East's mom waves at every single one. Darla drives without flinching, parks the shrine right out front of the café, and walks in with East's mom on her arm. Both of them unbothered.
She texts the group chat while they're being seated: "If anyone needs me, I'll be accepting compliments on my beautiful car."
East nearly chokes. Nash reads the text over my shoulder and shakes his head. "She's winning again."
"She always wins," East says, wiping his eyes. "That's why I'm marrying her."
Meanwhile, Sloane's been texting. Her shift started at 5 a.m. She would have grabbed the scrubs out of the drawer in the dark, four thirty, half-asleep, muscle memory.
Would have gotten one leg in before her brain caught up.
By the time it registers, she's running behind.
The hospital won't care what print she's wearing, and she's stuck.
Her first text hits at 3 p.m. while we're staking out the theater.
Sloane: You're dead.
A minute later.
Sloane: Dr. Patel asked if I lost a bet. A PATIENT gave me a sticker. The charge nurse called me "Jurassic Sloane" and it's CATCHING ON.
I laugh hard enough that East looks over from the driver's seat. Nash reads it from the back. "Jurassic Sloane. That's going to stick."
"It better not," I say. But I'm laughing.
She sends one more forty minutes later.
Sloane: I'm wearing them to the clubhouse tonight. If I have to suffer, you have to look at me in them.
Good. That's exactly what I want.
Candace opens her gym bag at four and finds a rubber duck. She holds it up, stares at it, shoves it into her jacket pocket. Finds one in her locker. Her water bottle. Her text to the group chat is a single period. Just a dot. She hasn't been behind the bar yet.
Maggie's pot roast hits the table at 5:30 p.m. James gets a text twenty minutes later. Just a photo. It's the pot roast sliced open. The color is wrong. A second text: "James Michael, what did you do to my cumin." No question mark. Statements are worse.
Frankie hasn't found the magnet yet. That one's a long game.
The clubhouse is loud when I walk in. There's music from the jukebox and voices stacking over each other. Boots on concrete. Pool balls cracking. Home, if home had a liquor license and a dress code problem. I smell fried food, leather, and whatever Maggie's got warming in the back.
Maggie's at the bar with a tray of something golden and warm. Cookies. She sets them down with a smile that's a little too sweet.
"For the boys," she says. "Fresh batch. I used the spices I had on hand."
James goes still.
East grabs one without hesitation, takes a bite, and his face does three things at once. Confusion. Betrayal. Cumin where vanilla should be.