Page 2 of Lethal in Pink

I exhale half a breath. The kind of exhale that empties your lungs just enough to still your diaphragm without leaving you light-headed. My finger moves, finding the trigger. The pressure builds in increments so small they’re almost theoretical, and then—

Pop.

The suppressor turns the report into something domestic.

A staple gun in a library.

A heavy book dropped on carpet.

It’s the kind of sound that belongs in a world where violence is small and contained and nobody screams.

The penthouse window spiderwebs.

A delicate fracture pattern blooming outward from a hole no bigger than a dime. Bathrobe man drops, his scotch splashing across the carpet in a sticky wet arc. Crimson spreads on the designer rug where he fell, his brains looking awfully close to lasagna soup, probably—warm and messy and not my problem anymore.

The twins can have fun cleaning this one up.

I give it one second. One full Mississippi through the scope. The man does not move. The rest of the liquor from his unbroken glass has joined the darker pool of blood, and the whole tableau has the stillness of a painting that knows it’s finished.

I roll back from the bipod, pull the bolt, and the spent casing ejects with a soft metallic kiss against the rooftop. I snag it up because I’m not a messy gremlin and I actually kind of like my freedom.

The rifle comes apart in my hands with ease of someone who has performed the very same task a gross amount of times.

The barrel unscrews. The bolt assembly slides free. The stock folds. Each component finds its foam-lined slot in the matte black case with the satisfying click of things returning to where they belong. The case itself is unremarkable—the kind of hard-shell Pelican that every aspiring filmmaker in LA carries, stuffed with lenses they can’t afford and dreams they’re still paying off.

Nobody looks twice at camera equipment, and even better, nobody wonders why the petite blonde girl with the pink phone case is hauling it up a service stair at 4:OO in the morning.

I strip my gloves last and check my watch.

4:51.

Still doable.

I close the case, stand up, and my knees complain after forty-something minutes on concrete. I’m twenty-six, and my joints have the ambient dissatisfaction of a middle manager who didn’t get the promotion. I shoulder the case and make my way back across the rooftop.

The service door groans on hinges that haven’t seen oil since the Clinton administration. As my sneakers find each step, the case gently bumps against my hip in a steady rhythm.

The parking structure is three levels down. My car waits in the corner of P2, a sensible and sleek black Tesla Model S Plaid with a custom pink interior.

The driver’s seat welcomes me back like an old friend who knows all my worst secrets and has judiciously decided not to mention them. The engine turns over with a purr that cost the underground an astronomical amount of money, but was worth every penny in my opinion.

Not that they asked.

I back out of the space, navigate the spiral ramp down to street level, and pull onto a downtown avenue so empty it feels like the set of a movie about the end of the world.

Los Angeles at this time in the morning is a different city. The streetlights hold their ground against a sky that’s still black but thinking about blue. Storefronts dark. Traffic lights cycling through their colors for an audience of no one. A homeless man sleeps in the bus shelter on the corner, curled around a shopping cart filled with what might be his entire life or might be things he found. I don’t slow down to look.

I am not a good person.

I am a person with an 8 AM lecture.

My phone sits in the cup holder. I tap the screen awake, open the coffee app, and queue a brown sugar vanilla latte for pickup for when I arrive at the university. The Bean & Brew’d app confirms with a cheerful chime that feels obscenely out of place in the pre-dawn gloom. I set the phone down and merge onto the 110 South, because even at this hour, surface streets are for the amateurs.

The freeway is a cathedral of concrete and emptiness. Three lanes in each direction, and I have my pick. I take the middle, set the FSD at seventy-two mph, and let my brain switch tracks fully. The kill is already filed. Somewhere behind my eyes, in the cabinet labeled DONE. The drawer slides shut without a sound.

What remains now is the rest of my morning schedule: Penelope debrief, shower, hair, outfit, face, caffeine, campus smile.

Easy.