Page 128 of Lethal in Pink

Amiyah nods without looking up, highlighter still moving in its relentless yellow line. “Don’t die in there. I’m not explaining that to the coroner.”

“If I die, it’s Taco Bell’s fault, not mine.”

“Already drafting the complaint.”

I make it to the bathroom with my dignity mostly intact. What follows does not. Suffice to say that two Chalupas, fourteen fire sauce packets, and a reckless quantity of cinnamon twists produce chemical warfare.

When the worst has passed, I start rummaging through the cabinet under the sink for air freshener. Anything to transform this small, tiled room back into the pristine sanctuary it was when I walked in.

My hand brushes against the back of the cabinet. Behind a stack of folded pink towels, pushed slightly too far back to be casual, my fingers hit something that isn’t terrycloth.

It’s a panel. Smooth, finished, matching the cabinet interior. It gives under my fingertips with a soft, precise click—the kind of mechanism installed by someone who understood exactly what they were hiding.

I stare at it. Then I open it.

Inside: a matte handgun, clean and meticulously maintained, resting in a custom cutout. Beside it, several passports fanned out like playing cards, each bearing Amiyah’s face under different names—Amiyah Lane, yes, but others I don't stop to read. A birth certificate that matches none of them. A thick envelope of cash in at least four currencies, bound with rubber bands, organized by denomination with the exact same meticulous logic she applies to her law notes.

I close the panel. The click is softer this time, almost apologetic.

I sit back down on the bathroom floor, my knees pulled to my chest, staring at the clinical white ceiling. Certain things rearrange themselves with a clarity that feels violent.

Kiho’s texts. The taser—not a kink, but a weapon that failed because denim is thicker than she calculated. The rooftop figure I dismissed. The moment months ago when a text came through on her phone and her body locked completely still.

I wash my hands. I lather twice. Rinse. Dry my hands on a pink towel that smells like her shampoo.

The mirror shows a face I recognize but suddenly don’t trust. Dark eyes. Sharp jaw. I look at myself until a single drop of water falls from the faucet, breaking the silence.

Then I open the door and walk back out.

Amiyah is still on the couch. Casebook open. Highlighter uncapped. The apartment is exactly as I left it.

“Everything okay?” she asks, not looking up.

“Fine.” My voice is an effortless, practiced lie. “Taco Bell and I had a disagreement. I won, but it was close.”

She laughs, warm and genuine, and it hits my chest like a physical blow.

I sit back down. I pick up my textbook. I do not look at the hallway. I look at the page in front of me, where a diagram of a canine cardiovascular system stares back with blank indifference.

My eyes track to the hallway—just a fraction—when she gets up to refill her water glass. Small tells. The kind of cracks that only someone watching for them would notice, and Amiyah is not watching for them because Amiyah, I am suddenly certain, has never had to look for cracks in anyone. She makes them.

I steal another cinnamon twist. She swats my hand. The rhythm carries us forward, a dance we know by muscle memory, even as the floorboards beneath us turn to thin ice.

Somewhere past midnight, her responses slow down. The highlighter drifts. Mid-sentence—something about regulatory takings and public use—her voice trails off. Her head tips sideways against the armrest. Her fingers relax around the highlighter, the plastic cap still snug against the end.

I watch her. The steady rise and fall of her breathing. The strand of blonde hair curving across her cheek. The absolute, unguarded softness that takes over her face in sleep, all her meticulous precision momentarily surrendered.

I pull the heavy pink blanket from the back of the couch and tuck it carefully around her shoulders. My hands don't shake. They have no business being steady—not when I have a contract on my head and a hidden matte pistol sitting ten feet away in the hall bathroom—but they move with practiced gentleness anyway.

I lean down and press a kiss to her forehead. Soft. Unhurried. The way I always do.

Then I grab a throw pillow, drop it on the cold hardwood beside the couch, and settle down on the floor. My phone sits face-down on the cushion, silent and ignored. And as I close my eyes against the polished concrete floor, caught between a looming death warrant and the woman sleeping five feet above me who might be the shadow pulling the trigger, I realize the most dangerous part of it all isn't the weapons she hides in the walls or whatever lies might be framing her past.

It’s that even with the suspicion clawing at my ribs, even knowing what she might be, I’d still take her over any safety the world has to offer.

Chapter forty-seven

Amiyah