Page 19 of Howl Lotta Love

Milo arrived last, one glance at her wrist brace enough to produce a small chart with the flourish of a man presenting evidence in court. “Pain scale. One to ten. Don’t lie, I’ve heard every lie a patient can tell and yours won’t be original.”

“Four.”

“Liar. Six. Adjusting your meds.”

The doorbell saved her from arguing. Diesel—flipping a pancake one-handed—called out, “That’ll be Gerri,” matter-of-fact and certain. He’d stopped questioning how Gerri Wilder knew things years ago.

It was a delivery driver holding a box addressed, in looping cursive, to The Happy Couple, Care of the Nice Brownstone. No street number. No apartment. Only the phrase—and it had found the correct door anyway.

“How does she do that?”

“Nobody knows.” Roman took the box, already tearing in. “Stopped asking around year two. Better for everyone’s sanity.”

Croissants, still warm, a note tucked on top in the same looping hand: Eat well. You both look tired. Sapphires or diamonds? Answer by Thursday, or I choose for you, and you won’t like what I choose.

“We are not picking rings,” Emma announced to a room that had already moved on to the croissants without her.

Her phone rang before she’d finished the sentence. Gerri, predictably.

“Darling, quick question, unrelated to the jewelry.” No greeting. Gerri never bothered with one. “The Hendricks Family Trust. Ring any bells?”

Emma set down her croissant. “Am I supposed to recognize that name?”

“It’s one of mine. Small, quiet, funds a scholarship program nobody’s touched in three years, which is exactly the kind of charity a person hides money inside if they wanted it to stay hidden. I only remembered it exists because my accountant mentioned the paperwork looked odd, and then I remembered I fired that accountant two years ago for incompetence, and then I thought—well.” She let the silence do the rest, far too pleased with herself. “You’ll want to look at it.”

“Gerri, why do you have an accountant you fired still filing your paperwork?”

“I didn’t say I stopped receiving his emails. I said I fired him. Two different things.” Gerri didn’t miss a beat. “Also, still waiting on the ring answer. Thursday, darling. The clock is not slowing down for your feelings about it.”

She hung up before Emma could respond, which had stopped being surprising sometime around day two of knowing her.

“New lead,” Emma announced to the table, already reaching for a pen. “The Hendricks Family Trust. Tucker, can you⁠—”

“Got it here,” Tucker said, not looking up, fingers flying across the keys.

Nora arrived at noon, unannounced, and unsurprised to find an armed compound waiting for her instead of Emma’s apartment.

“Okay.” She planted herself in the doorway, scrubs still on from a shift she hadn’t bothered changing out of, and swept the kitchen once—Roman mid-argument with Diesel about syrup ratios, Tucker typing, Milo taking someone’s blood pressure for no medical reason whatsoever. Her eyes landed on Emma’s bandaged wrist, her cheek, then swept the room a second time before locking, finally and pointedly, on the very large man currently pouring Emma a second coffee without being asked. “I have several questions. None of them are about the fraud.”

“Nora—”

“Your texts have been unhinged for a week and a half now. I assumed embezzlement stress.” She gestured at the assembled team, the tactical gear draped over a chair, the entire fortress-that-also-serves-pancakes atmosphere of the place. “This is not embezzlement stress. This is a man who looks at you like you personally hung the moon, and I want the timeline. In order. Starting with why nobody told me you got engaged.”

“It’s fake.”

Milo, without looking up from his chart: “It’s extremely not fake.”

“Thank you.” Nora pointed at him, triumphant, a woman whose star witness had testified in her favor. “He gets it.”

That was apparently all it took. Nora and Milo fell into conversation in under four minutes, trading stories with the gleeful horror of two people whose jobs both involved someone else’s worst day and had developed matching senses of humor about it.

“Gunshot wound,” Nora said, flat and final, like the argument had already been settled and she saw no reason to relitigate it. “Better arc. Buildup, crisis, resolution. A severed finger’s a fact you deliver, then everyone stares at you.”

“Depends whose finger. Context is everything.”

“Context isn’t everything, Milo. Some stories are objectively better.”

“Had a finger walk itself into my ER in a lunch cooler once. Beat that.”