Page 1 of Lethal in Pink

Chapter one

Amiyah

The rooftop grit digs into my forearms through the willowy fabric of my hoodie, which is actually dark gray and not pink because I do have some situational awareness, thank you very much. About four hundred and twelve meters across the gap, the target’s penthouse glows like a terrarium somebody forgot to turn off before bed. Floor-to-ceiling windows, all that money buying you nothing but exposure.

Lucky me.

The city below us is a circuit board of orange streetlights and dead pixels, downtown Los Angeles holding its breath in the hour before dawn, which is one of my favorite times to work because absolutely no one is looking up.

My cheek presses against the rifle’s cold stock. The bolt-action is suppressed, mounted on a carbon-fiber bipod that cost more than my first semester’s textbooks, and the whole setup looks, to anyone who might accidentally stumble onto this roof, like something a very serious landscape photographer would use.

Granted, I’m not a photographer. I’m a law student with a 4.0 GPA and a fucking body count that would get me disbarred before I’m even barred.

The digital reticle in my scope glows amber, a little halo of light that floats over the penthouse interior where a man in a bathrobe is doing his fourth lap around the living room in the last twenty minutes.

Same path every time too.

It’s the bar cart to window, the window to the bookshelf, then the bookshelf to bar cart. Suddenly, he stops and pours himself something the color of honey.

Scotch I think.

The amber in my scope, the amber in his glass. Poetry, almost, if I were the type to notice.

I’m not.

The wind flag I zip-tied to a nearby antenna flutters a couple of times before it settles. Two miles per hour from the northwest.

Negligible.

I adjust for it anyway because my father taught me that the difference between a perfect shot and a fuck-up is measured in millimeters, and millimeters are measured in habits.

There is fourteen inches of drop at this distance. The man weighs approximately one-eighty, give or take. I note the glass is tempered rather than laminated. The suppressor will eat the report down. Whatever sound survives won’t make it past the roofline.

The math is clean.

The other math…less clean.

It is now 4:47 in the morning. My Evidence Law lecture starts at 8:00 AM sharp, and Professor Halsey has a zero-tolerance policy for tardiness. She announced that on the first day of the semester with the type of satisfaction that gives a room full of future prosecutors a collective stress rash.

Which, frankly, feels targeted.

I exhale slowly through my nose and watch Bathrobe Man take another sip of scotch like he has not personally inconvenienced my morning routine by being alive at an ungodly hour.

Fortunately, I only live twenty minutes from campus without traffic, which is the one thing about 5 AM that actually goes hard.

The problem is the checklist.

I need a shower. I need to change. I need to swap out the dark gray hoodie for something pink and forgettable because that’s the uniform, that’s the camouflage, that’s the girl who sits in the front row and raises her hand too much and nobody looks at twice.

Also, I need this bastard to stop pacing.

He stops.

“Oh, thank fuck.” I mumble to myself.

He then lifts his glass, toasting his own reflection in the window, or maybe the city, or maybe nothing at all. It gives me the ick, but I’ve also come to learn in my field of work that these particular types of men, with penthouses and the lack of decent human morals, develop these little rituals, these performances for an audience of no one.

I try my hardest not to roll my eyes.