Page 17 of Dominion's Guard
Every sarcastic deflection she throws at the Doms who approach her at Dominion is a wall built to standard specifications, functional and familiar, a defense that keeps most people at a comfortable distance. The deflections she throws at me are different. They are sharper, more specific, built to a higher standard because she knows, on some level she won't admit to, that the standard model won't hold.
I want past that wall. I've wanted past it since the night I watched her shut down a Dom who overstepped by using nothing but her voice and the angle of her chin, and I realized that the sharp-tongued act she gives the room is exactly that: an act.
What lives underneath it is smarter, more dangerous, and more controlled than anyone at Dominion gives her credit for. That woman is someone I want across a table with no bar between us, no badge, no script left to hide behind.
That want has been abstract for months, a slow-burning awareness I carried alongside my bourbon and my observation, patient and theoretical.
Lawrence Blanchard's murder changed the equation. The case brought us face to face in a room with no bar and no audience, and what I saw behind the bravado was fear, intelligence, and a fierce determination to protect something she values more than her own safety. The combination hit me harder than any scene at Dominion ever has.
I don't do relationships. The precinct knows that. Dominion knows it. I keep my personal life clean and my professional life cleaner, and the two never cross. Renata is about to make me break that rule, and the troubling part is that I've stopped caring.
Renata's building is a converted warehouse on a residential block that sits between gentrification and the older neighborhood that preceded it. The architecture mixes industrial bones with optimistic renovation: exposed brick, oversized windows, a facade that says someone with more taste than money made the best of structural bones that were never designed for residential use. I park across the street, behind the Rapier Strategic SUV that's been holding position since Saturday.
I walk to the vehicle and tap the passenger window. The operative inside rolls it down. He's clean-cut, with the posture and awareness of someone who spent time in uniform before going private sector.
"Detective Broussard. Remy Pascal should have called ahead."
"He did." The operative's tone is clipped and neutral. "She's supposed to be inside. She hasn't come out through the front entrance since we took over this shift."
"Supposed to be?"
The operative glances at his partner in the driver's seat. A look passes between them that I recognize from every police partnership I've ever had: the silent negotiation of how much to share with someone outside the unit.
"She slipped us," the driver says. "We confirmed she entered the building after her Dominion shift last night. She didn't leave through the front. We checked the building entrance camera and the street approaches. But when we did a welfare check in the early morning hours, the apartment was empty."
"And now?"
"She was back by the time we checked again mid-morning. We've confirmed eyes on her twice since then. But there's a window overnight we can't account for. She went somewhere and came back before dawn, and we never saw her leave or return."
I process that without letting anything show on my face. Renata St. Clair, a bartender with no security training and no law enforcement background, slipped a two-man Rapier Strategic protection detail run by former Special Forces operatives. She didn't leave through the front entrance, didn't trigger any of the surveillance checkpoints, and was gone long enough that two experienced operatives couldn't pinpoint when she left.
Bartenders don't do that. People who have spent years learning how to move through buildings without being detected do that.
The observation falls into place alongside every other anomaly I've cataloged about this woman: the spatial precision of her witness statement, the way she tracks exits in a room, the awareness that goes beyond trained attentiveness into something practiced and deeply embedded. Whatever Renata's past holds, it taught her things that pouring drinks didn't.
"I'll go talk to her," I say.
The operative gives me the unit number. I cross the street and let myself into the building. The entry hall is narrow and industrial, exposed ductwork overhead and concrete underfoot, softened by someone's attempt at warm lighting that only makes the shadows deeper. I take the stairs up, each landing marked by a fire door and the faint sounds of other lives behind closed doors. Television noise, music, the muffled rhythm of a conversation I can't make out.
Her door is at the end of the hall on the upper floor. I knock three times, firm and evenly spaced, and wait.
Footsteps inside, light and quick. A pause that tells me she's looking through the peephole. Another pause, longer, that tells me she's considering not opening it.
The door opens halfway. Renata stands in the gap with one hand on the frame and the other braced against the edge of the door, her body blocking entry with the casual precision of someone who's done it before. She's barefoot, in leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, her hair loose around her shoulders. The coiled tension from whatever she did last night is still written in the set of her jaw, the tight line of her mouth, the way her weight sits forward on the balls of her feet.
The hazel eyes go sharp. The chin comes up. The armor clicks into place so fast I can almost hear the locks engage.
"Detective. Interesting time for a house call."
"I called. You didn't answer."
"My phone was off. I was busy."
"You weren't sleeping last night. You weren't in your apartment." I keep my voice level and my posture open, hands at my sides, not crowding her doorway. "The detail checked on you in the early morning hours. Your apartment was empty. You slipped a two-man Rapier Strategic team without using the front door, which is an impressive trick for a bartender."
Her jaw tightens. The front holds, but the eyes behind it are calculating fast, running through cover stories and discarding them. I can see the process happening in real time, and the transparency under pressure tells me whatever she did last night scared her more than I do.
"Where were you, Renata?"
