31. Dojin
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 across the 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.”
“I escalated. The building manager said, and I quote, ‘We’ll address it.’”
“‘We’ll address it’ is the building management version of ‘thoughts and prayers.’” Takumi scratched Emi under the chin. “Zero follow-through. Zero accountability.”
Dojin’s phone buzzed. He checked it.
Reo: Five minutes out. Three-man team. Forensic kit.
“Reo’s coming with a security team.”
Nari’s chin came up. “Security team?”
“Forensic sweep. Entry analysis. They’ll pull the lobby camera footage and check for electronic surveillance.”
“Electronic surveillance.” She repeated it with the careful enunciation of a person processing the idea that someone might have bugged her home. “You think they planted—”
“I think we check. Thoroughly.”
She stared at him. Then at the booth—the glass box that held her voice, her work, the recordings she listened to in the dark. The idea that a mic or a camera might be hiding inside the only place in her world that was supposed to be sealed—
“If they put a listening device in my recording booth, I will burn this building to the foundation.” Her voice was low and even and entirely serious.
“That space is mine. The acoustic profile took months. The ambient noise floor is negative thirty-two decibels. If some corporate spy ruins my sound environment, the legal battle will be the least of Mercer’s concerns. ”
Takumi pointed at her. “That’s the most threatening thing anyone’s ever said about decibels.”
“I’m not threatening. I’m forecasting.”
A knock at the open door. Reo filled the frame—compact, alert, already scanning the room before his foot crossed the threshold. Two operatives behind him: a woman with close-cropped hair and an equipment case, a man with the build of a distance runner and a tablet in his hand.
Reo’s gaze swept the loft in one pass. Landed on Dojin. “Entry point?”
“Front door. Lock picked.”
Reo nodded at his team. They moved—silent, efficient, splitting toward the booth and bedroom without a word exchanged. The woman opened her case on the kitchen counter: electronic detection equipment, UV light, fingerprint powder. Professional-grade. A kit that didn’t come from a locksmith.
Takumi watched them work. “You have a forensic team on speed dial.”
Reo didn’t look up from his phone. “Security operations. Standard sleuth protocol.”
“Standard.” Takumi looked at Nari. “His idea of standard involves tactical forensics at eleven-thirty on a Tuesday. Your boyfriend has a private army.”
“He’s not my—”
“He showed up in twenty minutes with a chest vibration and a kill face, Nari. He’s your something.”
Dojin let that land without correcting it. Partly because correcting Takumi seemed futile. Partly because something was closer to the truth than either of them was ready to define.
Reo’s operative emerged from the booth. “Clean. No electronic devices, no surveillance equipment, no tampering with the recording hardware.”
Nari’s entire body loosened. A drop of tension so visible, it changed her silhouette—shoulders lowering, spine softening, the rigid architecture of a woman braced for bad news dissolving into relief.
“The booth is clean.” To no one. To the room. To herself. Her eyes were bright and her voice had a crack in it she covered with a cough. “Good. That’s—good.”
Dojin’s hand moved before his brain authorized it.
Landed on the back of her neck. Not her shoulder—her neck.
The skin there was warm and the fine hairs at her nape were soft against his palm and his thumb settled into the hollow behind her ear because his body knew exactly where it wanted to be, even when his mind was still catching up.
She went still. Not tense—arrested. Her breath caught, held, released slowly through parted lips. Then she leaned back into his hand. Not a millimeter. An inch. Two. Enough that her head rested in his palm for one long, reckless second.
Her eyes closed. Her throat moved on a swallow. And Dojin stood in a ransacked loft surrounded by forensic operatives and a cat and her best friend and thought, with perfect clarity: I am going to spend the rest of my life finding ways to put my hands on this woman.
She opened her eyes. Looked up at him. From this angle—tilted back, throat exposed, his hand cradling her skull—her mouth was six inches from his. Close enough to see the gold flecks in her dark eyes, the remnant of tears she hadn’t let fall, the faint trace of lip balm on her lower lip.
“Your hand is on my neck.”
“Yes.”
“In front of your security team.”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to need to discuss your definition of professional boundaries.” But she didn’t pull away. Her voice had dropped—low, textured, private. The voice she used in the booth when a scene required intimacy. Meant for dark rooms and close quarters. “Later. We’ll discuss it later.”
He removed his hand. The absence of her skin against his palm felt physical—a cold spot, an amputation of warmth.
Takumi watched this happen. Said nothing. Pet the cat. Looked extraordinarily pleased with himself.