Tracker sits in everything.
Lawrence is alive somewhere while good men are dead.
Luke’s face shows everything he’s keeping inside it.
What’s coming and how much longer we still have to wait.
Cable’s unknown figure stays with me. Something that doesn’t fit the picture always means something. The answer just isn’t there yet.
Standing, I push my chair in and find Luke.
Chapter Fifteen
SOPHIA
Remy is already outside when I pull the front door shut behind me.
He is leaning against the SUV with his arms crossed and his sunglasses on, looking out at the desert the way he does when he is waiting, not impatiently, just present, like waiting is simply another thing he is good at. He straightens when he hears the door and looks me over once, not the way he’d looked at me that first day at the clubhouse, nothing like that, just the assessment of someone whose job it is to make sure I am ready to go.
Trevor had called yesterday with the details of a client he wanted me to see in person—the Ember Hotel. He’d sent across the brief, and I’d spent the afternoon pulling my portfolio together, building three concept directions with what little I could find online about the place. The client’s name is Victoria Chen. When I told Tate, he reminded me that Remy would take me there. I didn’t argue. What’s the point?
“You look good,” Remy says. Then immediately, “I mean, professional. You look professional.”
“Professional.” Looking down at my dress and back at him. “That’s the best you’ve got?”
He grins. “I was told not to say anything else.”
And the fact that Tate had apparently felt the need to have that conversation with Remy before we’d even left the house does all kinds of things to my insides that I am not going to examine too closely at eight thirty in the morning.
Laughing, I climb in, smoothing my fitted, cream-colored dress, the most professional thing in my wardrobe that still works in the Vegas heat, and settle my laptop bag on my lap.
The Ember Hotel is my first proper client meeting since everything fell apart. Drawing in a slow breath, I tell myself the nerves are normal.
Remy knows the city the way you only know a place when you’ve grown up in it, the real version, not the tourist one. He moves through it as if it is second nature, and as the streets go past the window, I think about the concept boards in my laptop bag with three directions, each different and built around the name and what it promises. The Ember—to me means warm, intimate, and the kind of place that feels like a secret worth keeping.
“So, what exactly do you do?” Remy asks after a while.
“Graphic design. Brand identity mostly.”
“Like logos and stuff?”
“Logos, yes. But more than that, the whole visual language of a brand. How it looks, how it feels, how it speaks to people before a single word is said.” I pause, finding the version that will make sense to him. “Think about the Sinners’ patch.”
He glances over at me.
“That patch tells you everything about the club before you know anything about the men who wear it,” I say. “The skull, the flames, the colors, all of it says something. That’s brand identity. Someone designed that. Someone made those choices deliberately.”
Remy is quiet for a moment.
“Never thought about it like that,” he says.
“Most people don’t. That’s why it works.”
He nods, turning that over. Then, “And this hotel. You’re doing that for them?”
“If the meeting goes well. Full rebrand, logo, signage, digital presence, print materials, everything.” I look back out the window, the city still moving past. “It’s the biggest project I’ve ever been assigned.”
“You nervous?”
