I park the van under the hurricane barrier where the arches turn cameras lazy. The ribs make a cathedral of concrete, and the city prays here with coffee cups and secrets. I taste iodine in the damp air and a hint of diesel from a tug nosing the river. June hands me a cracked thermos lid.
“Drink,” she says. “You’ve been running on adrenaline and citrus mints.”
“Mints hide guilt,” I say, and I swallow coffee that tastes like metal and faith. Rotor hum threads the wind—drones settling into night patrols like cicadas bargaining for heat.
June’s fingers tap the laptop in tempo with the hum. Algae-lit lines of code scroll, green over black, the Spire’s signature color echoing in the van’s cramped dark. “I got something off the maintenance drone that watched the clinic door,” she says. “Not the footage—its habits.”
“Habits?”
“Every machine has a style,” she says. “How the controller calibrates yaw, the packet interval it prefers, the back-off time when it hits interference.” She leans close to the screen; the glow rims her lashes. “This one stuttered at exactly eighty-seven millisecond intervals when it hopped bands. That’s a human thumbprint wearing a factory’s gloves.”
I set the thermos on a coil of rope and slide closer until my shoulder touches the plywood wall. The van smells like solder, wet wool, and last night’s sesame buns from the night market. “Who stutters like that?”
“People who buy in bulk and hire bored contractors,” she says, satisfied. “The MAC block points to a reseller called Windbreak Media. Shell. I tugged it and found a line item in a procurement spreadsheet that shouldn’t be public.” She clicks; a spreadsheet blooms with the kind of accidental transparency careless money leaves behind. “Windbreak Media invoices: story research drones, coastal weather optics, influencer expenses.”
“Influencer,” I mutter. “They bought eyeballs with glitter.”
“They also bought silence with NDAs.” June’s mouth dents at one corner. “Follow the payment trail and you get an LLC vine that wraps a small tabloid called Harbor Ledger. Owns a gossip vertical; sells native ads for ‘resilience’ festivals. Guess who their quiet investor is.”
I brace for a familiar surname and get a familiar sector instead.
“Defense,” I say.
“A liaison-adjacent fund,” she says. “Not the mother ship, but the dinghy it sends to shore. Ledger’s editor is on a panel next week about ‘ethics in crisis reporting.’”
I laugh; it comes out of me like a scraped elbow. “So the third camera wasn’t corporate or government. It was a tabloid chasing scandal shots we can monetize between a pre-roll and a morality lecture.”
“Correct,” she says. “They didn’t want the truth to save anyone. They wanted a viral frame: you and a prince arguing, or a clinic line crying, or a lab door that looks sinister at a sexy angle.”
I rub my thumb over the scar on my knuckle where a lock once fought me and lost. “Now we know who wants to eat us for clicks.”
June tilts her head, studying my face. “You’re thinking of feeding them.”
“I’m thinking of aiming them,” I say. “If they hope for scandal, give them scandal-shaped smoke that blocks the real fire.”
Micro-hook 1
June’s phone vibrates—three short pulses, the pattern for “unknown source, familiar tone.” She glances at the ID, then gives me the look she saves for fun risks. “Ledger’s senior features likes to pretend she’s a journalist,” she says. “She says she wants to help.”
“Put her on speaker,” I say, already feeling irritation rise like heat under a collar. Help is the most expensive word in this city.
June taps, and a voice fills the van. Polished, practiced casual. “I’m calling as a courtesy,” the woman says. “Your client is trending, Ms. Quill. We have sources inside Palmetto House and Dockyard K. I think we can keep the narrative from hurting him—if you help us help you.”
I roll my shoulders; the harness memory bites where it sits. “What do you want?”
“Exclusives,” she says brightly. “A sit-down. A real look at the fake relationship so we can tell the world what’s true. You must be tired of being edited by other people’s agendas.”
I watch June grin without showing teeth. I imagine the Ledger office: ring lights, framed covers, a fridge full of sparkling moral water. “You want me to be a leak you can sell twice,” I say. “You want my trust and his face.”
“We want context,” she says. “Our audience hates bullies. If there are bad actors leaning on the Vance Foundation, we can frame them. We can make the board afraid of looking cruel.”
“By publishing what?” I ask. “Our emergency routes? The names of women in clinics who would lose their jobs for telling you their headaches? You want to help? Don’t watch doors with drones.”
She hesitates, then leans into sincerity like it’s a stage mark. “I can keep you safe from rumor cycles. I can redirect heat. People only believe what they see, and I can show them what you want them to see.”
“Can you keep patients safe?” I ask.
“We don’t publish victims,” she says quickly. “Faces blurred, voices modulated. We’re not monsters.”
“You are what your funders need you to be,” I say, too calm. “Right now they need clicks and cover.”
The pause tells me I landed somewhere she didn’t know how to armor. When she speaks again, the brightness is back but brittle. “Off the record,” she says, which is a prayer, not a law. “We already have staffers who say the relationship is crumbling. If you want mercy, partner with us. Otherwise I can’t protect you from…momentum.”
I see it then: the angle, the lever, the way to guide her toward the false door. I let tiredness into my voice, a hairline crack the mic can drink. “Maybe momentum is honest,” I say. “Maybe we’re ending.”
June’s eyebrows leap; I don’t look at her.
“Ah,” the journalist says, soft with appetite. “So that’s real.”
“What’s real,” I say, “is that rich men get cold when weather hits their reputations. Thursday’s dinner at Palmetto? He might skip it. You want exclusives, here’s one: I have a rule about being humiliated in public. I don’t repeat mistakes.”
“We can confirm he was invited,” she says, too pleased. The keyboard clicks through her smile. “When can we talk on background?”
“You just did,” I say. “Do me a favor, though.”
“Within reason.”
“If you plan to say we’re ending, have the decency to make it my decision.” I let a ragged edge fray the sentence, a careful tear I can sew later. “Women buy your paper. Give them a spine to borrow.”
She exhales in a way she thinks translates to empathy through a microphone. “You’re good,” she says. “But you know we’ll run the photo from the roof, right? People love an arc.”
“Run whatever sells your sparkling water,” I say. “Keep Elias’s name out of any ‘assets’ language. He hates that word.”
“We all do,” she lies, then pivots to logistics. “We’ll push a teaser today. Full piece at noon tomorrow. If your team has a comment, send it by sunrise.”
“I’ll send you silence,” I say, and June ends the call before the woman can offer protection like candy.
The van steadies into the quiet a storm makes before it decides if it will arrive. June swivels back to me. “You fed her a map.”
“I fed her a maze,” I say. The irritation burns off, leaving focus. “Tomorrow the feeds will be busy with breakups and dinner reservations. We pivot under it.”
June’s smile sharpens. “And the third camera’s owner becomes our free smoke machine.”
“Until it doesn’t,” I say. Caution threads the win. “We bought cover at the price of a narrative we’re not writing.”
Micro-hook 2
June turns back to the laptop. “I’ll reinforce the fiction,” she says. “Inject a few tasteful crumbs: ‘mutual friends concerned,’ ‘work demands strain.’ I’ll seed it through BeautyDock—a gossip aggregator that scrapes Ledger and adds emojis. They’ll amplify your ‘rule’ about not repeating mistakes. Dock workers will cheer, biotech elites will text each other their NDAs, and security teams will relax.”
“Security teams don’t relax,” I say, but I can feel the city’s appetite shifting already, a tide I can ride if I stay on the rail. “They just change shoes.”
June chuckles. “Speaking of shoes, you’ll need flats Thursday. Running in heels makes for terrific photos, but I’d prefer you alive.”
“I can run in anything,” I say, and my hand betrays me by touching my mouth where last night wrote its heat. The coffee cools in the thermos lid; I drink anyway because cold wakes different muscles.
The van’s small window shows the marina beyond the arches. The tide clock faces the weather with its three-minute promise, daring anyone to plan their life around a lie. A couple walks past under matching umbrellas, their laughter bouncing off concrete like pennies in a fountain. The city loves romance when it’s not a threat.
June’s inbox pings in a tone she keeps for public poison. She clicks, and a splash page fills the screen: PALMETTO POWER COUPLE ON THE ROCKS? A grainy rooftop shot, our bodies angled by attack and apology, the kind of photo that sells both. The copy is efficient cruelty.
“They work fast,” she says.
“They work hungry,” I say. I skim the paragraphs, checking for landmines. No patients named, no river windows mentioned, only a dinner I might skip and a mystery reason readers are asked to imagine. The comments pulse with emojis and predictions about rebounds. I feel the strategic glee hit—cover blooming like an umbrella we didn’t pay for.
Then I fold it down.
“We ride this for exactly thirty hours,” I say. “No more. If their investors want a new toy, they’ll pivot from romance to betrayal. We become villains the second the weather needs a story.”
June nods like she’s already writing the kill switch. “I’ll prep a counter-cycle,” she says. “If they try to torch you, I can pivot receipts about their investor’s army contracts. Nothing that gets us sued. Just enough to make them moderate their appetite.”
“Do it,” I say. “But keep our patient list out of every sentence.”
“Always,” she says, and her face softens for the length of an inhale. “You okay?”
I flex my hands until the tendons pop. “I’m a lock in a doorframe,” I say. “Straight, true, and waiting.”
“And a little sprung,” she says, because she’s earned the right to aim a joke at me.
I let it land. The van’s fan rattles; a gust gusts a wet smell through the arches—storm’s first draft. Far off, the drone chorus shifts a note. We listen, both of us, not speaking until the pitch returns to normal.
June taps the screen to a weather radar seeded with bruised color. “Storm landfall window still holds for Thursday,” she says. “Nineteen hundred to twenty-one hundred. The barrier park will be a circus by afternoon—resilience banners, children with glow sticks, couples taking selfies under the arches because the feeds told them to be brave.”
“Blind CCTV zones under those banners,” I say. “Public courage makes the best cover.”
“You’ll be a villain if anyone catches you slipping away from a party,” she says.
“I’m fine being a villain to a camera,” I say. “I just can’t be one to the people we’re pulling out.”
She nods and closes her laptop with the reverence of someone ending a ritual. “Ledger bought us a weather window for the soul,” she says. “You want to tell Elias you orchestrated his heartbreak?”
“He knew this cost,” I say, feeling the echo of last night in my throat. “He offered to burn things. I’m lighting the small ones first.”
The van door rattles when I shove it open. I step into the wet air and let the iodine wind clean the tabloid’s sticky fingerprints off my skin. Above me, the arches bend like ribs a city borrowed from a whale and never returned. Dock workers argue cheerfully about a pallet; I catch the cadence of barter, favors traded like cards. Lovers pass, whispering things you can only say in places cameras forget.
My phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number in clean punctuation: We ran your side, Ms. Quill. You’re welcome. —H.L.
I stare at it long enough to taste iron. Then I type one sentence: You didn’t run my side. You ran a plan.
I don’t hit send.
I pocket the phone and watch the tide clock blink its three-minute lie. The storm is on rails; the board vote is on rails; my heart is off them. The break-up rumor buys our cover; the same rumor can pivot and cut me at the knees if someone decides I make a better villain than victim.
I close the van door and ask the arches the only question I trust to keep me honest: when the drones change key and the feeds turn, will I still be the one holding the story—or will the story hold me by the throat?