Page 103 of Lethal in Pink

“Okay?”

“Okay.” She picks up her energy drink, takes a sip, and sets it down. “So what’s the play?”

The pivot is so smooth I almost miss it.

“The play is clean. Untraceable. Completely disconnected from Amiyah Lane, law student,” I say, my voice falling back into the precise cadence I use for briefs. “If Jae—I mean Kai—whoever the hell he really is dies messily—if there’s any thread connecting his death to someone he’s been seen with all semester—my cover cracks. Everything I’ve built goes with it. The bar exam is at the end of this semester. My record is clean. This has to stay that way.”

I lean forward. “A rooftop sniper shot brings the whole damn world down on us. Ballistics, clean-up crews, an investigation that turns the campus inside out. And where am I going to be? Sitting right in Constitutional Law with my color-coded casebook tabs, trying to pretend I don't know the exact twist rate of a LaRue barrel while the feds tear through the quad.”

Penelope’s nail taps against the desk. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“So this isn’t hesitation,” she says. “This is professionalism.”

“Yes.”

“Planning.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re smart.”

“Because I’m smart.”

She studies me for a long moment, her eyes sharp and perceptive. I hold her gaze, breathing steady, every muscle committed to absolute certainty.

Penelope nods. Decisive.

“Alright,” she says. “Smart play. I’m in.” She flips her laptop open. “Keep me updated on the approach. I’ll handle the alibi architecture on my end.”

“Thanks, Pen.”

“Don’t mention it.” She’s already typing. “And Amiyah?”

I pause at the door. “Yeah?”

Her eyes stay on the monitor. “The next time you catch feelings for a target, maybe lead with that instead of making me drag it out of you like an impacted wisdom tooth.”

I don’t answer. I grab my bag, feeling the weight of the pink rollerball and the gold-accented stun compact nestled at the bottom among my lip gloss and casebook tabs, and step out into the hallway without looking back.

The morning light is starting to bleed through the windows at the far end of the corridor, turning the linoleum pale gold. My first class is in seventy-three minutes. I have a constitutional law reading I haven’t touched and a coffee order waiting at Beaned & Brew’d with my name misspelled on the cup.

I reach the private lift and press the button. The doors slide open with a soft hydraulic sigh.

“Smart” is carrying a lot of heavy lifting right now. It’s holding the space between the clean, calculated defense I just sold to Penelope and what I actually felt when I watched his sexy, and completely naked ass through my crosshairs.

And a very nice ass it was indeed.

Damn it, Amiyah. No. No dirty thoughts.

The lift ascends, carrying me back to the surface. I adjust the strap of my bag, feeling the subtle shift of the compact inside, and think about how easy it would be to believe my own lie if I just keep saying it long enough.

Chapter thirty-seven

Jae

Amiyah’s pen hovers over a dense paragraph of Constitutional Law. The library is quiet, the late afternoon sun cutting long, colored bars across the floor from the east windows.

She pushes back from the table with a sharp scrape of chair legs. “I need a reference. Be right back.”