Chapter 24 - Logan #2
The Siren sits in the front passenger seat and hums something wordless that fills the car before the city noise does.
Juliet is in the back beside Wren, her leather notebook already open in her lap.
She closes it after two minutes and looks out the window instead — she's figured out enough to know when work isn't the right response.
Besides, we already have the mole, the rest is just details.
"What happens," Wren says after a few minutes, "after Gunner finishes with Jimmy?"
She says it quietly. Juliet is looking out her window. The Siren's humming fills the gaps.
"We'll know what the Zayas know," I say. "How much Jimmy told them. Whether there are other threads we haven't found."
She absorbs this. "And then?"
"And then we use it."
A pause. She weighs that — the weight of what use it means in this context. She doesn't ask for clarification. She understands the vocabulary of this world better than she did three weeks ago.
"Is Nico going to have enough people to defend the club?" she asks.
"Yes."
"You're sure."
"He's done this before," I say. "With fewer."
She goes quiet again and nods, just once.
The Gilded Lily is dark when we arrive.
The sign is off, the parking lot cleared, two of our people at the door and a third visible inside through the glass.
I run the layout as I come through the service entrance: a long room, low ceilings, the bar running down one wall with the bottles locked away.
The smell of a club at rest — residual alcohol, cleaning product, stale warmth.
Barstools stacked. Stage lights off, leaving everything to the emergency strips along the baseboards and the amber glow from the east-facing windows.
Every footstep is audible over the hum of the refrigeration unit cycling in the back.
I run the sightlines. Four exits. Three covered, one that needs a second position. I speak to Pawlikowski for three minutes at the door and he adjusts.
Inside, the Siren finds a table near the far wall and sits, the humming resuming.
Juliet takes a chair near the bar and has her notebook out before the chair has stopped moving.
She closes it after thirty seconds and looks at the ceiling instead.
Marisol talks to the security at the main door for two minutes, identifies a coverage gap, comes back inside looking satisfied.
"We're fine here," she says to me. Her eyes move to Wren, then back. "Logan."
"I'm leaving in a minute."
"Mm." She doesn’t sound convinced. Then she goes to check on the Siren, touching her shoulder briefly as she passes.
I should go.
Nico's first missed call registers while I'm doing a second pass of the exits. I call back and he picks up on one ring.
"In position," he says. "ETA?"
"I’ll be back soon."
I hang up. Walk the perimeter of the room once more. Confirm with Pawlikowski. All of it necessary. None of it why I'm still standing here when La Sirena is eight minutes away and the Zayas are massing outside it.
Wren is at a table near the far wall, jacket still on, the brace on her right arm visible below the cuff. She looks up when I cross to her and sit down across from her, and she doesn't say you should go because she knows I know.
We sit there for a moment.
"The Gilded Lily," she says.
"Yes."
"Interesting name for a safe house."
"It's a strip club."
"I noticed." She looks at the dark stage. "It smells like a place that has secrets."
"Every good place does."
She looks at me. In the emergency light, her face is quiet and direct — gray-blue eyes giving me their full attention.
"I don't know how to do this part," I say.
It’s not what I meant to say, but it’s what comes out.
"Which part?"
"Leaving." I look at the table. "I know how to manage exits. I don't know how to leave you."
She's quiet for a moment. The pencil turns once more.
"You've been practicing since the night at the Setai. Walking away." The corner of her mouth moves. "You're better at it than you think."
"I came back every time."
"I know." She sets the pencil down. Her hand turns palm up on the table. "That's how I know you'll come back this time."
I cover her hand with mine. Her fingers close around mine immediately, that same unhurried pressure.
"Pawlikowski knows to call me if anything moves," I say. "The back exit is faster than the main door — Juliet's side of the room, not the stage. If you hear anything outside and it doesn't sound like street traffic, you don't wait to identify it."
"I won't."
"You call Nico before you call me. He'll be mobile. I may not—"
"Logan." She squeezes my hand once. "I have the card. I know what to do." A beat. "Go do what you need to do. Then come back."
I look at her face for a long moment. The woman who answered four words into a void at 2am and flew toward a stranger and stayed. Who held my shaking hands in the dark and said nothing because there was nothing useful to say. Who leans toward me, always, when I let her.
I don't deserve this. I know I don't deserve this, but I'm going to keep it anyway.
My phone goes off before I've pushed back from the table.
Nico, calling this time. I hold up one finger to Wren and step toward the far wall.
"We're out of time." His voice has dropped low. "Movement confirmed, multiple vehicles. Get back here now."
"I'm leaving now."
"Logan." The word has nothing in it but urgency. "Now."
I end the call. Turn to find her.
Her chair is empty.
The jacket is still draped over the back of it — her jacket, the one with the deep pockets she's worn since the night I appeared at her motel door.
But the chair holds only the shape of where she was, and when I scan the room — the Siren at her table, Juliet bent over her notebook, Marisol near the door — Wren isn't anywhere in it.
A doorway on the far side of the room. The hallway beyond it dim, leading deeper into the club.
She slipped away while I was on the phone — back room, a quiet corner to wait out whatever comes next.
She does this: moves through spaces without announcing herself, takes up exactly the amount of room she decides to and no more.
She's fine. She's in the next room. The building is secured.
Nico's call is burning in my pocket. La Sirena is eight minutes away. The Zayas are massing and Gunner is in the holding room and the defense needs coordinating and I should be in the car. My feet should be at the door.
I look at the doorway she passed through.
Thirty seconds. I'll find her, say goodbye properly, and then I'll go.
I cross the room and step through into the dim corridor, moving toward where she went.