28. Milo
TWENTY-EIGHT
MILO
“Okay. The mark.” I bite into my turkey club and talk around the mouthful. “I say we hang him in the school gym? Poetic justice and all that?”
We’re on a patio near Eli’s school, in one of those aggressively wholesome neighborhoods where the baristas are shocked if you ask for anything that isn’t oat milk.
I’d have gone for tacos from the truck down the block, but Holden likes his meetings to look like casual hangs.
Knox is across the street from Gull’s babysitting kitten through her shift, Micah’s running building access with a contact, so it’s three of us. Holden, me, and Eeyore—I mean, Eli.
Eli looks like shit. Bags under his eyes, shirt a little rumpled.
Term doesn’t start till next week, but he’s been up at the school every day setting up his classroom—laminating name tags, stapling alphabet borders, whatever the hell kindergarten teachers do before the tiny humans arrive.
I guess prepping a room for a gaggle of five-year-olds takes it out of you almost as much as the actual five-year-olds.
“Too public.” Holden shakes his head. “Don’t want one of the students to find him and be scarred for life.”
“Fair,” I say, nodding. “So we do it at his place then? Staged suicide. Note confessing everything. Classic us. Do we have handwriting samples?”
Holden already has the manila envelope out, passing it across the table.
“Got a few full pages. But the clinic starts the day term opens, and Odin wants Webster in the ground before the first kid sets foot on that campus. That’s the end of this week.
So if you can’t script this in time, we go with the Notes app on his phone. ”
“I do my best work under pressure, Holden. You know that.” I open the folder and study the messy scrawl—this is what I’m here for, after all.
My secret sauce. “I’ve already got his cadence down from the cloud backups.
Give me these and a quiet night and you’ll have a note no graphologist could flag. ”
Webster’s left notes in the margins of the pages, little reminders in all-caps:
CONFIRM ALLERGY FOR SOY MILK
COLLECT UNIFORMS MONDAY.
The pen leaves aggressive gouges in the paper—seems Webster’s got some rage bubbling in him. Good to know. It’ll show in the final product.
Eli rubs his temples. “How tight is this timeline?”
“Including today—six days max. We’ll need to take the window as soon as we have building access.
Odin’s out of town so we won’t get his input on the plan before we execute.
” Holden takes a calm sip of his Americano, but the vein in his temple says he hasn’t slept either.
“I’m thinking three days to case the house, one to prep, two for execution and post-hole cleanup, and we beat the school year bell. ”
I shrug and take another bite. “That’s plenty of time.”
Eli’s not on board. “How do you get inside a house with a wife, three kids, and what, a very large dog?”
“Bring dog treats,” I deadpan. “Or use the service entrance. Every one of these prep school freaks remodel their houses with catering staff in mind.”
“You say that like you’ve robbed a lot of rich people,” Eli says.
I tip my head at him. “I have robbed only rich people, thank you. Else it’s just petty burglary and I’m not about that life.”
Holden’s not even pretending to humor me this morning. He shuts his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s enduring a migraine named Milo.
“Micah’s going to have the floor plan to us today,” I say. “So that means we can run a dry walk tomorrow night and come in cold if we have to. Unless you’re feeling twitchy about the family, in which case, we either grab the guy outside the house or wait for a calendar gap.”
“He’ll be doing term prep this week,” Eli says. “Same as me. We could grab him between the school and home. Swing him off a bridge.”
Holden swipes a hand across his stubbled jaw. “That could work. If we can get in his car, we can lie in wait. Make him drive somewhere out of the way. Note left behind in his car. No chance of kids finding him.”
“Sounds good to me. Lock it in, detective.” I slide the folder away and take another bite of my sandwich. “On to the fun stuff—I’ve been thinking about the Lodge.”
Eli frowns. “The dark web forum Fenrir’s looking into?”
I nod, setting the sandwich down. “My brain keeps getting stuck on the posts he recovered from the main forum—the conversations that happened outside those private messages Odin showed us between SMAN69 and ApexMars.”
“What about them?” Holden asks. “Most of what Fenrir found were snippets. He hasn’t pieced together any complete threads.”
“Yeah. I know that. It’s the way they were all talking. Saying shit in code so it reads clean if anyone looks.” I chew slowly. “That’s been itching at me. Because I’ve seen it before.”
Eli looks up. “Seen what?”
“Back at the cleanup. When I cloned Brock’s phone.
” I dust the crumbs from my hands. “There was a group chat on it. Bunch of guys, all about dog training. Breeds. Temperaments. Which ones are ‘worth the effort,’ how to ‘break a stubborn one,’ whether a ‘bitch’ is ‘trainable’ or you ‘put her down.’” I make the air quotes and my stomach turns doing it.
“I noticed it then because it felt weird, but I couldn’t tell if they were genuinely a pack of golden-retriever dads exchanging tips, or if it was something else.
So I let it go since we had a body to bury and a hundred other fires. ”
The table’s gone quiet.
“I went back to it last night. With what we know now—the Lodge, SMAN69, ApexMars, all of it.” I look up.
“It’s not about dogs. It was never about dogs.
They’re talking about women. The whole thread.
Same coordination Fenrir found on the dark web, just dressed up as a buddies’ group chat so it reads clean. ”
Holden’s jaw works. “You’re sure?”
“Sure enough that I can’t unsee it.” And here’s the part I’ve been sitting with since three this morning. “They talk in dogs, Holden. The whole network. And someone used a dog to get her into those hedges. A hurt little terrier, right where they needed her, right when Micah stepped away.”
Nobody says anything. The café noise swells around us—laughing, silverware—and it all feels very far away.
“And Tyler’s crew.” I lean in. “The guy still bugs me.”
Eli looks up. “He’s cleared.”
“For the attack, yeah. But remember what Amy told Sage? He wasn’t planning to confront her solo.
He had a group lined up. A whole little posse ready to corner her about Brock.
” I tap a finger against the table to illustrate my point.
“What if Tyler’s just the loud one? The barking dog.
What if the other dogs are quieter? Smarter? ”
Holden frowns. “You’re saying you think we should investigate the group?”
I shrug. “It’s possible that Brock had people who helped him, right?
Not just drinking buddies. A crew. The kind that covers for each other.
Which might be why a few of them are kicking up a fuss.
Brock disappears, and they don’t just miss him—they mobilize.
Maybe because they rely on each other. Maybe because they all have blackmail material available.
” I twirl the idea through my head. “I mean, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that there’s a shitty, rapist version of us sitting in a group chat and calling itself a dog club. ”
Holden’s already pulling out his phone. “To be clear, you think Tyler and his friends are connected to the Lodge network?”
“I think the dog thread is the bridge. Brock’s phone, Tyler’s crew, the Lodge.
Same language. I can pull the thread members, cross-reference the numbers against Tyler’s posse and whatever Fenrir’s reconstructing from the Lodge forum.
We might finally have something that isn’t a ghost. We could have a coordinated group working together. ”
“Explains why we can’t pin someone down,” Holden says slowly. “Multiple actors. Different skill sets.”
I nod. “And Stephen’s either the one running it or he doesn’t exist and the name’s a smokescreen.”
Eli’s face hardens. “Then we re-interview Tyler. Lean harder and see if he reacts to information from the dog group.”
“Agreed. But carefully.” Holden’s thumbs are moving. “If the crew’s connected and we spook one, the whole network goes dark. Milo, work with Fenrir and go through that data quiet. Nobody moves on Tyler till we know who he’s standing next to.”
“Carefully is boring,” I say. “But fine.”
My phone buzzes.
Kitten :
Shift over. Heading home. Was thinking we could watch… The Notebook?
I smirk, recalling the first night I made her dinner—I offered to eat her out while she cried watching The Notebook. I fucking love that she remembers.
My thumbs fly across the screen as I text back.
Me:
Fuck yes! Will I have to share?
Kitten :
Only if you want to. <3
I pocket the phone. “Sage’s done with her shift. We should wrap this.”
Holden stands, tossing cash on the table. “I’ll loop Odin in on the group theory. See if his people can toss a wider rope.”
“And I’ll get started on Webster’s penmanship.” I tuck the folder under my arm. “By Friday you’ll have a confession letter that’d make his own mother weep as she reads it.”
Eli nods, still chewing. He’s got that faraway look he gets when he’s running scenarios in his head.
I clap him on the shoulder as I pass. “Brighten up a little, Eli. You’re starting to look like a Winnie-the-Pooh character.
” He looks at me, confused as I walk backward toward the door.
“It’s all right,” I say, in my best Eeyore voice. “I’ll just sit here and eat by myself.”
“The fuck?” he grunts, taking another bite.
I salute him. “Thanks for picking up the tab!”
He stiffens. “Wait. What—?”
I let the door slide closed behind me, and head to my truck, tossing the folder on the passenger seat. I pull out my phone.
Me:
Kitten, ETA 25 min. So hungry for you.
She replies instantly
Kitten :
Showered & ready. I want popcorn and you in that order.
Me:
Wait for me in my room. Panties optional.
The engine turns over and I pull out of the lot, heading for Holden’s place, which has turned into some kind of unofficial barracks since the first threat against Sage.
Nobody’s officially moved in but nobody’s left, either.
Everyone’s claimed a room except Eli, who sleeps on the couch or occasionally the guest bed, depending on his level of self-flagellation that day.
Though, I know he’s also occasionally in Micah’s room because I can hear him through the wall and those two are not quiet.
I’d offer to join, but I’m more of a hobby-dickist than an active collector.
Supportive from a distance. Enthusiastic spectator.
Occasional admirer when a dick is particularly good-looking.
It doesn’t need to go any further than that . . . probably.
I’m happy with the living arrangement so far. And I think everyone else is enjoying it too. Holden hasn’t complained about any of us living there yet, but I’m pretty sure he’d kick us all out in a heartbeat if he wasn’t so worried about Sage’s safety.
I’m half hard thinking of what I’m going to do to her.
But my brain is at war with itself as I drive—it’s split between planning how to track down a ring of dog-metaphor-using dumbasses, how to get Sage to come on my face multiple times before the end credits of the greatest tragic love movie of all time, what I need to do to deal with Webster, and whether I should raise the possibility of us all moving in with Holden full-time.
Track one: the group theory. If I’m right, and Brock had a pack, then the texts from his number aren’t some jilted lover’s grief—they’re a coordinated campaign.
Which means whoever strung Sage up in that noose had backup.
They had people watching her long enough to know her patterns, her shifts, her walking route home.
That she liked dogs. That they could set up the rope next to her apartment and just wait for the right moment.
Track two: The Notebook. Sage wearing nothing but one of my T-shirts, popcorn bowl balanced on her chest, sobbing while I lie under the blankets and feast on her delicious cunt while Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams find their way back to each other through the rain.
I am a man of simple pleasures, and this is my favorite.
I stop at a red light. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel.
The first time we did this—movie night, just the two of us—she was living in that apartment with Amy, and Tyler had shown up and acted like a dick.
I’d been waiting for her when she got home from work, grocery bags and zero plan, made pasta on a stove that had one decent burner, and somehow talked her into letting me stay.
She’d been stiff at first, sitting on the opposite end of the couch with a throw pillow between us, but before we’d gotten through a single episode of Bridgerton, she’d been straddling my lap and dry-humping me like the horny queen she is.
I didn’t let it go any further than that—not on our first night together.
So I gathered her in my arms, set up a Lord of the Rings marathon and just held her.
Before the first movie was even close to finished, she was asleep on my shoulder and I sat there for forty-five minutes without moving because I didn’t want to wake her up and I didn’t want to stop feeling what I was feeling, which was something so big and unfamiliar it scared the shit out of me.
I declared my love for her the night I watched her murder Brock. But this . . . this was different.
The light turns green. I drive.
She’s different now. Harder in some places, softer in others.
The girl on that couch was still processing the things she’d done, looking for a way to feel okay about it.
The woman waiting for me at Holden’s house wants to kill again.
She survived a noose and argued five trained killers into letting her go and pour coffee for strangers and shitty tips.
She doesn’t need a throw pillow between us anymore. She doesn’t need a barricade at all.
I pull into Holden’s driveway. Her text comes through before I’ve even cut the engine.
Kitten :
Hurry. I’m about to start without you
Me:
Please don’t eat the popcorn without me.
Kitten :
I’m not talking about the popcorn…
“Fuck,” I mutter, and run up the stairs, kicking off my shoes and stripping off clothes as I go.
Shit, did I turn off the car—
I skid to a halt in the bedroom doorway, staring at the gorgeous, naked woman on my bed.
Never mind.