13. Mike
MIKE
I pull it up on the secondary monitor, the one that faces the wall. The main screens are the trading ones — those she's seen. The security feed lives on a different platform.
I play the video. Coffee going cold at her elbow. She types fast. Doesn't look at her fingers. Whatever the password is, it lives in her hands now, not her head.
I slow it down.
Slower.
Frame by frame, her right hand moves across the keys. Index finger. Middle. A pause. Her thumb drops to the space bar.
I write what I see on the back of a bar receipt and run the clip again.
My mouth goes dry.
On the fourth run, I catch myself holding my breath. I let it out through my nose and start over.
On the fifth. I pause it. Rewind.
On the sixth, I stop the footage too late, curse under my breath, drag it back, and watch the thumb again. Space bar. Two more keys.
By the seventh time, I have it.
Sixteen characters.
I sit back and look at it. My pulse is moving in my wrist.
The trading screens glow in front of me, green mostly, the markets quiet. I should be watching them.
I'm not.
I pick up my phone. Ryan's name is there. My thumb hovers over it.
I could call him. But her computer may not have what we're looking for.
I call Janet instead.
"Hey," I say. "Thinking about you."
"Oh, yeah?" Her voice drops a little. "What are you thinking?"
"You in my bed."
A slight pause.
"I have to go home at some point."
"Why?"
"I'll come over after work. I'm walking into a meeting."
"What are you wearing underneath that power suit?"
"You know what I'm wearing."
"Tell me."
"Goodbye, Mike," she laughs and hangs up.
The second I put the phone down, it rings.
Ryan.
I don't answer it.
The screen goes dark.
I pour myself a tequila. It's ten in the morning.
There's a knock at the door.
I know it's Nico before I open it. He stands in the hall with a paper bag, looks me over once.
"You look like shit."
"Good morning to you too."
"You're not sleeping."
"I'm fine."
"Last time you weren't sleeping was Afghanistan. You were worried. What are you worried about?"
"Business."
"Bullshit."
He drops the bag on the kitchen island and starts pulling out breakfast sandwiches wrapped in foil. I make coffee. We eat standing up for the first few minutes, both of us too used to moving to sit down right away. We take the food to the desk.
Nico isn't just security. Security is the word I use because it fits on payroll. He watches the doors, the staff, the money, the customers who smile too much, the men who think a velvet rope means rules don't apply to them. He's my eyes when I'm not in the room.
He knows what trouble looks like before it knows it's trouble.
I open the Nocturne ledger. He opens his notebook. We go through the usual. Whose tab is getting too big? Who spent too much time in the bathroom? Anyone selling. Anyone buying. Anyone bringing problems to my door.
Nico gives me names. I write them down.
The phone sits facedown beside my keyboard.
Nico flips a page in his notebook, but he's not looking at it anymore.
"So what's going on with Janet?"
I keep my eyes on the ledger. "Nothing."
"That's not what I asked."
"It's not going to last."
He sits back. "You looked like you were into each other."
I don't answer.
"So she's on your mind."
"Yeah. It has no future."
He nods once. "Sorry to hear that."
I close the ledger.
"Do me a favor."
"Yeah."
"Don't mention my brother around her."
Nico doesn't ask why. But the question is there, plain as daylight between us.
"Got it."
Janet arrives at Il Cantinori at seven thirty. She has her laptop in her bag.
We talk and discover Costa Rica is on both our bucket lists for different reasons.
For Janet, it's the twelve distinct ecosystems. Rainforest, cloud forest, mangroves, beaches, volcanoes. She says it like she's making an argument in court, laying out evidence for wonder.
For me, it's Arenal. Hiking near the volcano, sitting in thermal water heated by the earth itself.
After dinner, we walk to Nocturne. We take a corner table and order drinks. I don't rush here. No pressure. I listen. It's actually easy.
Later we go upstairs to bed.
Her alarm goes off at six.
She reaches across me and silences it without fully waking up. Five minutes later she's moving. I lie there and listen to her cross the room, hear the bathroom door close, hear the shower start.
I get up.
Her laptop is on the counter where she left it last night. Closed. Charger running along the baseboard, neat and out of the way. I open it, pull the receipt from the desk drawer, and type in the password.
It takes.
Her desktop is well organized. Folders by year, by case number, by borough. Six years of work lined up without a loose file anywhere.
I go to the desk and pull out the drive. Small, black, fits on a keychain. I plug it into her USB port. The transfer window opens.
I select everything.
Seventeen minutes estimated.
I set it running and walk to the bathroom door.
I open it without knocking.
She turns when she hears the glass door slide.
"I thought you weren't joining me."
"Changed my mind."
The water is hot. She's already warm from it, skin flushed at her shoulders, steam rising between us. I put my hands on her waist and walk her back against the tile.
"Mike—"
"You said I was going to make you late."
"You are."
"So we don't have much time."
She laughs, but it dies when I press my mouth to her neck. Her hands come up to my chest — not pushing, but holding on.
I move to her collarbone. Her throat. Back to her neck. I stay there longer than she expects, mouth open against her pulse, until her fingers curl into me. I move back to her collarbone. Her shoulder. Her neck again.
She shifts impatiently, and I don't follow her lead.
I turn her around.
One hand slides up her stomach to her breasts, cupping her, my thumb circling her nipple slowly until she exhales sharply against the tile.
My other hand travels down between her thighs, and she gasps, hips pushing toward me.
I keep the pace exactly where I want it — unhurried, deliberate — until her legs start to tremble and she's gripping my forearm so hard her nails bite in.
She comes with her forehead pressed to the tile, shaking, my name breaking apart in her mouth.
I give her one breath to recover.
I turn her to face the wall, one hand sliding up to cup her breast, the other bracing beside her head, and I push inside her from behind. Deep. Slow. She tries to roll her hips, and I pin them still. She tries to rush me, and I pull back until she whimpers.
She stops fighting it.
I feel every inch of her surrender — the way her body opens, the way her breathing goes ragged and helpless, the way she stops thinking and moves. I build her back up piece by piece, stroke by stroke, until she's shaking again and begging without words.
When she comes the second time, it tears through her. Her whole body clenches around me and she cries out. I press my mouth to her shoulder to muffle it, and I follow her over the edge.
The water goes cold before we're done, and neither of us noticed until now.
She turns, forehead against my chest.
She tilts her face up. I kiss her once, and I reach past her and shut the water off.
"I'll go make coffee," I say.
I step out first.
I dry off fast, pull on sweats and a t-shirt. Shut the bedroom door and walk straight to the counter.
Ninety-four percent. Shit.
I stand there and watch it finish. Listening for her.
I hear her getting dressed.
The window closes. I pull the drive, close the laptop exactly as I found it, slip the drive into my pocket.
She comes out of the bedroom. "Did you make coffee?"
"Oh shit, I got sidetracked with a trade."
She watches me make coffee.
"That was a very nice good morning."
"It was."
I hand her the cup.
We get dressed side by side — both of us in suits. She does her makeup in the mirror while I put on a tie. I watch her in the reflection without meaning to. The way she checks herself. No vanity. Making sure everything is where it should be.
She caps her lipstick and drops it into her bag.
At the door she kisses me once, quick and certain, the way she does when she's already thinking about the next thing.
"I'll call you later."
The door closes.
I lock it.
I go to the desk, sit down, pull the drive from my pocket, and plug it into my machine.
I start at the top and work down. Folders open and close. Case names I don't recognize, docket numbers, exhibits. I move fast, skimming, looking for a borough, a name, a date range.
The file is near the bottom, buried under civil motions and correspondence from six years back. Plain label, no flags on it.
CCTV Footage – Across Street, Northbound View, Camera 3, Opposite Location
The video plays.
Holy shit.
I'm not a lawyer, but even I can see how bad it is.
Why'd you keep it, Janet?