Dawn unspooled in grayscale, the kind of Larkspur morning where fog stitches the cliffs to the city and neon gives up reluctantly. I sat in the car by the pier with the air vents off so the sound wouldn’t shred the silence. The prepaid phone lay face down on the dash, a black card waiting to be flipped. My hands smelled faintly of cucumber from the makeup wipes I’d used to erase the night from my skin. Sugar drifted on the air from a vendor prepping the first batch of caramel lattes, and gulls stitched question marks across the water.
The phone rang once.
I let it ring again so the line would have to work for me, then thumbed it on, speaker off. I cupped the receiver to my mouth with the sleeve of the hoodie I’d found in the locker, fabric soft against my knuckles.
“Alone,” I breathed.
“Alone,” a voice matched, low and frayed, and all the muscles in my back let go at once. “Mara?”
Relief didn’t arrive like a blaze; it moved like warmth into cold fingers. I pressed the phone closer. “I’m here.”
“I have three minutes,” she said, words knitted tight. “I’m safe—ish.” The dash between the halves told me everything the word couldn’t.
“Where—”
“Don’t ask. Contracts,” she whispered. A hiss of HVAC bled through her side, antiseptic air, the sound of expensive ventilation. “I need your question.”
I swallowed and rubbed my thumbnail over the ridges of the phone case. “HIVE JAR.”
A breath on the line. “HIVE JAR,” she answered, our childhood code crossing the distance like a string between tin cans. I saw the glass jar on our kitchen shelf as cleanly as any live feed—marker lines for fines when we broke rules: late texts, borrowed clothes, lying about homework. Not punishment, just proof we could put sweetness back when we took it.
“Confirm pattern?” I asked.
“Three taps is yes,” she said. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Four is no.” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Five means I can’t say—recording.”
I tapped the steering wheel three times to let my hands remember.
“You’re under,” I said.
“I’m under,” she echoed, then swallowed. “They say it’s protective. I say it’s leash.”
A gull landed nearby and shook the car with a careless hop. Across the lot, pop-up cages sat folded, their honeycomb shelving stacked against a mural that had updated overnight to a charity drive wrapped in pastel concern. A ring light blinked awake in a stall; ozone pricked the air.
“Tell me what I can do without setting the clause teeth,” I said.
“Don’t publish the NDAs yet. Don’t force a wellness check. Don’t call Mom,” she whispered. “I’m covered by temporary persona transfer. If you poke the wrong clause, it becomes breach with reputational damages.”
The lingo scraped my teeth. “So you’re muzzled.”
“My bank account is,” she said. “My mouth is on a lease.” She gave a dry almost-laugh that wasn’t laughter at all. “But I can nudge.”
“Nudge.”
“Watch the aprons; he’ll show off.” She compressed the words like she was hiding them in a cough. “He can’t help it when he thinks he’s winning.”
My grip tightened. “When?”
“Soon,” she said. “He’s addicted to the curve.”
I pictured Cass’s graphs, the snake of engagement slithering up and to the right whenever fear pulsed. The pier breathed caramel again, the sweetness thin as fog. “I need a way to know it’s you next time,” I said. “He can fake everything except our kitchen.”
“Our kitchen,” she repeated, and the line softened. “Describe it.”
“Mom’s butcher block with the burn mark that looks like a jellyfish. The hive jar on the left, taped with grid paper so we could draw hexes for fines. The morning we forgot to bring the jar to the school bake sale and you said the honey had to stay home because it was still learning to be brave.”
She inhaled once, silently. “Okay,” she said. “Signal is: Tell me where the jellyfish lives. If it’s me, I’ll answer: In the hive jar’s shadow.”
I nodded into the cold. “And the taps.”
“Always the taps.”
Micro-hook: From the pier, a mini truck rattled to life and rolled past, its tailgate wrapped in vinyl hexagons selling kindness at a markup. The driver glanced at me, then away, because the city keeps its compact: don’t make a scene unless you’re filming it.
“Lyla,” I said, letting her name land without branding, “what do you need first?”
“Time,” she said. “Quiet pressure. Your spine. And for you to avoid the trap where saving me feeds him.” A soft scuff, fabric against fabric, moved across the microphone. I pictured her in a sweater she didn’t choose, ring lights feathering her hair into something that could be sold.
“I can do quiet pressure,” I said. “I can read the contract’s teeth and not let them bite. You have a way out?”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“But you need the curve to dip, or the exit locks,” I guessed.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I let breath move through my throat without grabbing it. “I won’t publish the NDAs. Not yet. I’ll starve him while I stack receipts.”
“He wants you noisy,” she said. “He can sell noisy. He can’t sell boring.”
“So I’ll be boring,” I said, and smiled into the glass.
“No you won’t,” she said, and I could hear the grin I’d taught her by accident. “You’ll be surgical.”
“Penalty language?” I asked. “If you so much as wink at off-script?”
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Got it,” I said. “Then we keep you within, and I cut around.” I pressed my palm flat to the dash to slow the small shake in my fingers. “Question: is the barn dead?”
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Recording.
“Okay,” I said softly. “No more location guesses.”
Her breath hitched. “I have to say this,” she whispered, the words tripping like a child rushing before curfew. “Don’t put a uniform on camera. He wants that. He’s built the failure arc already. He’s labeled it ‘participatory accountability.’ He wrote—”
“Stop,” I said. “Save it for later when we can read it aloud with counsel.”
She exhaled through her nose, that tiny whistle she’d had since allergies in the third grade. “You always were the lawyer I didn’t hire.”
“I’m the sister you can’t fire,” I said, and my voice changed shape around the word sister. “Listen. If he pushes you toward a dangerous beat, can you stall?”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Stall with what?”
“Apron polishing,” she whispered, and despite the context, humor grazed the line. “He’s proud of the hem. He’ll talk for twenty minutes about the hem if anyone sounds impressed.”
“Copy,” I said. “I’ll feed him admiration from a distance and let it choke him.”
She gave a breath that might have been a laugh if there had been sunlight. “You’re terrible.”
“You taught me to roast,” I said. “One more thing. If we’re separated again for days, if the hive goes feral and I have to talk, what do you need me to say?”
“That I’m a person, not a premise,” she whispered. “That the community’s love is real and not a down payment on drama. That if they want to help, they stop paying to enter rooms I’m not free to leave.” A beat. “Say: No more hunger disguised as honey.”
My throat closed on it, opened. “I’ll say it.”
Micro-hook: The phone’s battery icon ticked down a bar. Across the street, a new QR mural blinked. It didn’t care about me, but my body acted like it did, every cell still wired to the ghost-click of phantom notifications.
“I need to give you a precise thing,” she rushed, voice flattening, surveillance pressure like a hand on her mouth. “It will happen on a live demo at Tide Market, the shipping-container row. He’ll—”
“Say the code,” I cut in.
“Jellyfish,” she said.
“Where does it live?”
“In the hive jar’s shadow,” she answered, steady. “Listen, he’ll—he’ll show the underside of—”
The line hissed once, then smoothed to a dial tone that sounded like an ocean pretending to be a machine. I stared at the dash and let the ache run its lap around my ribs before I took it by the scruff and sat it down beside me like a dog that needed a job.
I wrote her exact words in a notebook with a pen that dug. Safe-ish. Watch the aprons; he’ll show off. Don’t publish NDAs. Don’t put a uniform on camera. Jellyfish prompt; hive jar answer. Three taps yes. Four no. Five recording. I underlined boring is unsellable twice.
The pier steamed, sugar heavier now that more stalls were opening. A teenager in a beanie tested a ring light with a grin and a practice wink; ozone licked my nose. Two yoga moms stretched by the rail and kept their voices at a level that said they’d priced their peace. I watched the city wake up and not make a scene—yet.
I powered the prepaid phone down and slid out of the car with an economy I could defend in a deposition. In the trunk, I kept a half-rolled yoga mat and a tool bag; I lay them side by side to change the silhouette of my cargo if anyone glanced in. I tucked the phone beneath the mat and sealed the trunk with the lightest click it would accept. Then I walked the length of the pier toward the first coffee stall, hands visible, pace that of a person who craved sugar for simple reasons.
“One small with nothing,” I told the barista, even though the air sugared me for free. The girl’s apron had a honeycomb stitched at the pocket seam, the embroidery tidy and proud. I traced the hexes with my gaze and counted six before looking away. Pavement here is a stage; I refused to audition.
I stood at the rail with my cup and let the heat through the lid warm the bones of my fingers. Beneath me, the water flexed like a muscle and reflected a billboard in slivers. The mural behind me changed again, this time to a sponsor that used the word care like a coupon. I let the word drift into the water and sink.
I called up the contract language in my head, every clause that could booby-trap a rescue. Temporary persona transfer. Breach with reputational damages. Participatory accountability. Legal poetry for consumption. If I moved wrong, they could call my sister a hazard to her own brand and lock her in place with fines. If I moved right, I could pull air through the smallest cracks until the room remembered oxygen.
I texted myself a phrase so I wouldn’t forget the spine: No more hunger disguised as honey.
A gull screamed at nothing and made it convincing. Fog thinned; neon surrendered. The day sorted itself into lines and edges—lampposts, container doors, the honeycomb of shelving unfolding into retail promise. I set the coffee down and rolled my shoulders until they unhooked from my ears.
I opened my regular phone—my actual, trackable life—and typed a draft to Nessa I wouldn’t send yet: If you see a stream titled Apron Engineering or Hem Reveal, mirror it, no commentary, captions only. Do not engage. Do not thank. Do not tip. I saved it to notes and locked the screen. I would not feed.
I lifted the cup and breathed the bitter. My jaw unclenched. Relief had done its sweep; ache had taken its turn; now strategy stepped into the room and closed the door with a click.
“Okay,” I told the water. “He’ll show off.”
Micro-hook: The stall three doors down rolled a metal shutter up with a cough, and a stack of white aprons—his aprons—sat folded like compliant swans in a honeycomb shelf. A phone stand waited on the counter, its ring light turned to face the walkway where anyone could become an audience by mistake.
I pulled my hood forward, not to hide but to cue myself: watch, don’t react. When Lyla called again—and she would; the jar and the jellyfish had stitched the line—we’d move. Not loudly. Not for applause. With the grace of two girls who’d once fined each other a quarter for leaving the kitchen a mess and spent the jar on real honey because sweetness has to be bought back from the damage.
The prepaid phone slept under the yoga mat, cold and obedient. The tide slid in with quiet hands. The city held its breath.
I swallowed the last of the coffee, grimaced at the grit, and asked the next question out loud so I could hear the weight of it: when he flips that apron and the hem shines for the camera, can I make boring the most dangerous thing in the room?