11. Milo #2
I steer Brock to a booth in the back corner, and using my knees to lift, I slide him in. It takes two attempts to prop him against the wall. His head tips a little too far, and I grab it and wedge a balled-up napkin between his skull and the wood paneling to keep him upright.
Better.
He looks drunk. Believably, magnificently, this-guy-is-gonna-regret-the-morning drunk.
I sit across from him.
“So,” I say, picking up a menu. “What are you drinking?”
Brock stares at me with his dead eyes behind his sunglasses.
“Beer it is. Good call.”
Holden has a bourbon in front of him now, so I flag down the waitress for myself—a tired-looking woman in her forties with a name tag that says RHONDA.
I flirt heavily, ordering two beers and a plate of nachos because there isn’t steak on the menu.
Plus, I wasn’t lying about being hungry and also because a man eating nachos at a bar is the least suspicious thing in the world.
“Your friend okay?” Rhonda asks, glancing at Brock.
“Lightweight.” I shake my head, fond, exasperated, the way you do about a buddy who can’t handle his liquor. “We pre-gamed. He went too hard on the tequila shots.”
She gives Brock a look that says she’s seen a thousand men in exactly this condition, shrugs, and walks away.
I let out a breath.
Phase one, public sighting. Brock Davis is alive and well, and drinking at Murphy’s on a Saturday night. Rhonda will remember him if anyone asks. He’s the guy in the sunglasses who couldn’t hold his booze.
While I wait for the beers, I pull out Brock’s phone. The real one. I’ve already cloned it—the clone handles the spoofed trail from here. The real one just has to be seen in the right places tonight before it conveniently dies.
I’ve also started a conversation with “Jessica”—a strategically vague college student from Canada who I invented because Brock absolutely seems like the kind of guy who would blow up his life for a girl with no last name and good lighting.
The text chain shows she met Brock while he was walking back from dropping Sage off last night.
They chatted, went back to her place, and had a lovely night together.
Tonight, Jessica’s suggesting they meet up in Santa Cruz for a spontaneous trip.
Brock, because he’s an impulsive piece of shit going through our pre-planned, quarter-life crisis, said yes.
That’s the story. After tonight’s drunken escapades, Brock’ll leave town, make his way to Santa Cruz to meet a girl, and the trail will be planted.
The Instagram posts will continue to trickle out—geo-tagged from locations a new couple would visit that I’ll spoof remotely.
A sunset from the wharf. A coffee from a cafe downtown. Holding hands in San Fran.
Hmm. I wonder which of the guys has the most feminine-looking fingers?
The entire project is a carefully curated digital footprint of a man who’s alive and well and ghosting all his friends because he’s in love and running away from grown-up responsibility.
It’s my best work. My magnum opus. And nobody will ever know.
The beers arrive. I gulp down a third of Brock’s when Rhonda’s not looking, splashing a little on his shirt for authenticity, and position his hand around the glass. His fingers are stiff enough to hold it on their own now. Rigor’s doing me a solid.
“Cheers, mate,” I say, faking an Aussie accent as I tap my glass against his. “To your last night out.”
I eat the nachos. They’re not bad. Brock watches me and, honestly, as a dead sack of meat, he’s better company than most of the living people I know.
I pull out his phone and snap three shots. “That’s it, work the camera, Brock-y.”
I reposition him a little, candid-style, him looking across the bar like he’s contemplating the meaning of life, which I guess he is, in a way.
“Beautiful, Brock. Very pensive. Very ‘man considering his place in the universe.’” I check the shots. “That third one’s actually good. Really captures your dead side.”
At the eleven-minute mark, Holden catches my eye from the bar and taps his watch. I hold up a loaded nacho chip. He discreetly flips me off, which I choose to interpret as encouragement.
I help Brock out of the booth and back into the wheelchair. Getting Brock out is easier than getting him in because I’ve had practice now and also because Rhonda is twirling her hair while engaged in a flirtatious conversation with Holden at the register. Perfect, perfect, perfect.
I drop some cash on the table and push Brock back through the corridor. His shoe catches on the bathroom door and comes loose. I jam it back on, shove his sunglasses up his nose, and keep moving before his arm can swing into anything dramatic.
“You are the worst,” I tell him. “Truly. Zero help.”
Holden appears while I’m loading Brock into the backseat. “Rhonda gave me her number.” He scrunches up the slip of paper and tosses it. “Don’t ever make me do that again.”
“But you’re so good at it, sexy mullet man.” I flash him a grin while I buckle Brock’s seatbelt—safety first—and slam the door.
Holden rolls his eyes and gets into the driver’s seat, starting the car as soon as I’m in the passenger seat beside him. “How do you think that went?”
“Nailed it. Besides Rhonda being besotted by you, she also thinks Brock’s a lightweight. We took pictures for Instagram, and I got nachos. Overall? Nine out of ten. One point deducted because I think I got concealer on your headrest while I was putting him back.”
Holden swivels to glare at the offending smudge. “The fuck, Milo?”
“I’ll pay for the detail,” I say quickly. Then pause. “Actually, I’ll ask Loki to.”
He growls, pulling out of the lot without another word.
I pull out my phone and check the encrypted group chat.
Knox texted twenty minutes ago to say Sage was home safe.
Eli asked if she was any trouble, and Knox said “nothing I can’t handle” which is practically a TED talk from him.
Nothing from Micah. But that’s not a shock.
He’s currently being eye candy for the one percent.
Micah will have clocked in at Unholy Desires by now, the invitation-only kink club where he bar tends.
Knox usually works security there when he isn’t parked outside a murderess’s window.
Which means tonight the place is running without its most intimidating security guard, all on account of one dark-haired girl with a knife. Though honestly, that one’s on us.
Unholy is where this merry band of murderers usually connects with Odin and Loki—our bosses—but that’s a bigger story than I have time for while Brock is leaking fake life into Holden’s backseat. This whole life is Snow White’s apple: one bite and you’re down the rabbit hole.
Wait. Is that the right fairy tale?
Anyways, speaking of Cinderella and her long-ass hair, now is the perfect time to plan my approach on Sage.
Sage.
Just thinking her name gets me hard.
I respect the hell out of a woman who can be covered in blood, shaking apart, and still somehow look like she might bite God if he got too close.
She’s going to need us. Not because she’s broken—she’s not—but because the thing she did under that jetty changed her at a molecular level and the aftershock hasn’t hit yet.
When it does, it’s going to be bad. I’ve seen it before.
The high wears off, the horror moves in, and the person you thought you were starts to dissolve like sugar in rain.
She’ll need someone who doesn’t flinch at what she is.
I don’t flinch at anything.
“Earth to Milo!”
I jump, pressing a hand to my chest. “Jesus, Holden! What the fuck?”
He shoots me a droll look as he pulls to a stop at a red light. “I was saying, where to next?”
I gesture at the road ahead. “Let’s grab some photos at the boardwalk. I’ll need to check the weather every time I post, but it won’t be too hard to match shit up.”
Holden sighs heavily, and makes a right.
“Hey, Holden?”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”
“The answer is still no.”
“Do you think she likes nachos?”
He’s quiet for three full seconds, and I appreciate that he doesn’t even ask who I mean.
That’s because we’re all thinking of her.
“Everyone likes nachos, Milo.”
“See? Common ground. Murder, nachos. A great way to start a relationship.” I lean my head against the window and watch the streetlights streak past. “I’m going to bring her nachos.”
Holden shakes his head, but I catch it—the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“We’ve got a few more photoshoot locations, then we’re picking up Micah at the end of his shift and loading this guy back into the SUV,” I tell him. “Sunday is for grave digging.”
He sighs heavily. “Fine.”
“Can we stop for coffee? It’s going to be a long weekend.”
In the backseat, Brock sits motionless, seatbelt on, sunglasses reflecting the passing lights. He looks peaceful.
I did good work tonight. Nobody will know he’s dead until it doesn’t matter anymore.
The nachos really were fantastic, though. I should go back.