Page 127 of Lethal in Pink

Another message.

Kiho: You said Amiyah’s been distant. Acting weird. You said it yourself on the call.

I did say that, but also, what the fuck does any of this have to do with anything.

I shake my head and scroll a little further.

The gut-punch arrives in all caps:

Kiho: I HIRED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO YOUR LAW STUDENT GIRLFREIND.

The Chalupa shell collapses in my fist, cheese and beef spilling onto the wrapper. I don’t move.

Kiho: There’s nothing. No records that go back more than ten years. Her undergraduate degree checks out but the trail before that is—it’s not clean, it’s manufactured. Her digital footprint is hollow. Social media that starts in college, nothing before. No paper trail that connects. No family photos. She basically doesn’t exist. THIS IS NOT NORMAL.

My thumb finds the keyboard, grease smudging the glass.

Me: What the fuck, bro? You’re insane.

Kiho’s reply arrives like artillery.

Kiho: She tased you. You said yourself she’s been acting weird. The rooftop thing was not nothing. And I want to be very clear about this, I am almost fucking certain she is the person Baek hired to kill you.

I stare at the screen. The words sit in their blue bubbles, arranged with the breathless conviction of a man who watches too much true crime.

I look up.

Amiyah is uncapping a fresh highlighter. Pink, of course. The cap clicks off softly, and she sets it neatly beside her color-coded tabs, her fingers moving with the serene, unhurried precision of someone who has never once done anything worth hiding. A strand of blonde hair has come loose from her bun and curves along her jaw. She looks, in this exact moment, like the least suspicious person on earth.

I look back at my phone.

Me: You watch too much crime television. I really think you need to get your fucking brain checked, bro.

I put the phone face-down on the cushion. Screen against fabric. Messages buried. The apartment continues its gentle hum around us.

Amiyah glances up. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.” The word comes out smoother than it has any right to. “Kiho’s having a moment. Thinks he’s solved a cold case.”

“What case?”

“His own mental stability.”

She laughs, bright and easy, and returns to her notes. I watch her. The highlighter moves across the page in a clean yellow line. Her lips move slightly as she reads, forming each word with absolute focus.

I pick up my Chalupa. The cheese has congealed, but I eat it anyway because the alternative is sitting here with empty hands and loud thoughts.

The evening continues. Food dwindles. Notes accumulate.

My eyes drop to the phone, face-down on the cushion. Silent.

I reach for another cinnamon twist. Amiyah’s hand intercepts. The swat lands. The rhythm carries us forward, but beneath it, the floor has turned to glass.

Somewhere around eleven, my stomach registers a formal complaint about the volume and combination of industrial-grade fast food I’ve ingested.

I set my veterinary pharmacology text down with the measured calm of a man who is absolutely not about to have a panic attack.

“Bathroom. Be right back.”