Looking for anomalies, flagging deviations from normal behavior, wondering what the data means.
I'm the anomaly.
I'm at Backroads every evening she works, clearing tables or stocking shelves or handling whatever Ellie points at, but my attention is split between the room and Krypton's updates on my phone.
Ellie notices. She notices everything.
She doesn't say anything about the circles under my eyes or the way I check the lot through the window every ten minutes.
She sets a plate of food in front of me one night—brisket, beans, cornbread—and stands over me until I eat it.
"You can't protect anyone if you collapse behind my bar, Prospect." She takes the empty plate. "Eat when I feed you. That's not a request."
The brothers have started rotating through Backroads in the evenings.
Not officially. Not ordered. They drift in one or two at a time, sit at the counter, nurse their drinks, and watch the lot.
Maddox comes Tuesday.
He plants himself on a stool and eats four baskets of wings and talks to Saylor about barbecue for forty-five minutes.
When a man in a baseball cap walks through the door, Maddox turns on the stool and stares at him until the man turns around and leaves.
The man wasn't Creedy. But it didn't matter.
Bracken comes Wednesday with Lock. They play pool and don't look at the parking lot, except they do, between shots, every few minutes.
Coin shows up Thursday with Leah.
They sit in a booth and drink soda, and Leah talks to Saylor about school like it's a normal weeknight and not a coordinated surveillance operation disguised as date night.
Nobody tells Saylor the club is watching. Nobody has to.
She's too smart not to notice a rotating cast of men in cuts showing up every night she works.
She notices. She doesn't comment.
She pours their drinks and takes their money and when Maddox calls her "sweetheart", she gives him a look so flat he apologizes without being asked.
Coin told me once: the women in this club don't need saving. They need space to save themselves. And if the world won't give them space, the club makes it.
The club is making space for Saylor. And she's filling it without being asked.
* * *
It’s just past three-thirty in the morning on Friday.
Saylor is asleep in my room. She's been staying here since the parking lot confrontation—not every night, but most.
Truth be told, I don’t like it when she’s alone at her apartment. Not with Creedy lurking around.
Her Honda is in the compound lot. Her toothbrush is in my bathroom. Her shampoo sits on the shelf next to my soap, and neither of us has talked about what it means.
I'm at my desk. Laptop open. The monitoring system is running its nightly sweep, sorting through the day's access logs, flagging anomalies.
Normal traffic. Normal patterns. Ruger's login, Coin's login, Krypton's login from down the hall.
Then the tripwire fires.