Page 25 of Dominion's Guard
"So now you have everything I know," she says. "The blackmail, the photographs, the connection to the old surveillance footage, the two members still at risk. You have their names, their habits, their schedules." She lets the weight of it sit between us. "So what happens now? Because you can work that club as a member all you want, but you're only there a few nights a week. I'm there every shift. I know who orders what, who's been coming in less, who changed their routine, who looks over their shoulder more than they used to. You don't get that from a barstool, Detective. You get that from behind the bar."
"You're a witness in a homicide investigation." I keep my voice level. "You share what you know because two people are dead and two more are at risk. That's cooperation, not negotiation."
"Cooperation." She repeats the word like it tastes bad. "That's a nice way of saying you take what I give you and I get nothing back. No information, no updates, no say in how this plays out. Just hand it over and trust the system that already failed once when those patrol officers wrote me off."
She's right, and the fact that she's right makes this worse.
"You're a civilian. I don't put civilians in active homicide investigations."
"You planning to lock me up?" The chin lifts. The hazel eyes go sharp. She folds her arms across the academy shirt and the posture is pure defiance, every line of her body daring me to try.
"If that's what it takes."
The words come out harder than I intend, and the silence that follows has a density that tells me she heard exactly what I meant. Her breath catches by a fraction, a reaction she can't quite suppress, and the awareness that I just made a threat sound like a promise settles into my bones alongside theknowledge that I'd do it. I would lock this woman in my guest room for the duration of the investigation if it meant keeping her alive and out of a parking garage with a bullet waiting.
"Here's what happens," I say, before the silence can become something neither of us is ready for. "You stay here. You share what you know. You work your shifts at Dominion because canceling them changes your routine and signals the wrong things to the wrong people. You do not investigate on your own. You do not break into anything. You do not slip security. When you're at the club, I'm there. When you're here, Rapier Strategic has overwatch. In exchange, I keep you informed on the case and I don't arrest you for the Blanchard B&E."
"So I get a leash and you get a free informant. Generous."
"Call it whatever you want. Those are the terms."
She holds my gaze for a count that runs long enough to feel deliberate, then picks up her coffee and drinks. The capitulation, when it comes, arrives without drama.
"Fine," she says. "But I need clothes. Things from my apartment."
"Once I file the request for the warrant with the judge, I can take you by your place. But I drive. From now on, I want you under either my protection or Rapier Strategic's."
She takes her coffee back to the guest room without another word, and the hallway holds her absence the same way it held her presence, like something in my house has shifted to accommodate her and won't shift back.
I sit with the notebook and the affidavit and the cold clarity of what I'm building here. The lines I'm crossing stack up like charges: the Blanchard connection my captain shut down, now reopened through the back door of the Landry warrant; membership in a club I don't want NOPD to know about at the center of a case I'm running; a witness sleeping in my guest room; an informant with a criminal history I'm choosing notto report. If Hebert traces the warrant back to its real source, the reprimand will be the least of my concerns. Internal Affairs would have material for a career-ending investigation, and Fontenot would shake his head and say he told me so.
I'm doing it anyway. Susan Landry is dead. Lawrence Blanchard is dead. Two more names are sitting in my notebook, and the man who wrote that warrant affidavit with probable cause that looks clean on paper is the same man who got the information from a burglar he's protecting because his badge couldn't do the job on its own.
The contradiction should bother me more than it does. What bothers me instead is her bare thigh below the hem of my shirt, and the fact that she caught me looking, and how deliberately she chose not to fix it.
We file the warrant before noon. The execution will have to wait for a judge's signature and coordination with the forensic unit, which buys me time to build the Landry case around it. I drive Renata to her apartment and wait just inside the doorway while she packs, moving through the space and taking what matters with the speed of someone who's done it before. She's back at my side with a duffel and a garment bag in a matter of minutes.
The afternoon is logistics. I call Remy, confirm the overwatch schedule. I review Renata's identification of the remaining targets and cross-reference it against Dominion's membership records that Margot provided. I make calls to Susan Landry's employer, her friends, the security company that manages the garage where she died. I build the case the way I build every case, one verified fact at a time.
Renata watches me work from the living room couch with her laptop open and her legs tucked under her, and the domesticity of it is strange enough to register but not strange enough to stop.
She has a shift at Dominion tonight. Canceling it would break the pattern and raise questions from the wrong people, which means she works, and I go with her. The badge stays in the glovebox. The leather and linen come out of my locker. Tonight I'm a Dominion member who happens to be keeping a very close eye on the bartender.
The transition to club mode happens in the men's locker room the way it always does. I trade the suit for leather and fold the detective away with the tie. The holster stays on my body tonight, concealed under the loose linen shirt where the fabric falls away from my hip. Margot's policy on weapons is clear, but Margot also has two dead members and a bartender with a target on her, and when I told her I was carrying she didn't argue.
Renata opens the bar the way she always does, bottles arranged and garnishes prepped and register keyed, the controlled choreography of someone who runs her station the way I run a case and never misses a count. She's wearing fitted black pants and a top that shows the lean definition in her arms. Her hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail, and the overhead light catches the auburn the same way it does every night.
I take my usual seat at the far end of the bar and order a Woodford Reserve on the rocks. The seat gives me sight lines on both exits, the hallway to the private rooms, and Renata. She pours my bourbon without comment, sets it on a napkin, and turns to serve a member at the opposite end without so much as a glance back.
The evening moves at Dominion's pace. Members filter in, settle into the rhythms that Margot has built into the architecture and the atmosphere. The bar fills. Renata works it with her usual efficiency, tracking orders and conversations and room dynamics with the multi-layered awareness that made her useful to the investigation and dangerous to my concentration.
Later in the evening, Arnold Voss approaches her during a lull. I've seen him scene before. He's mid-forties, well built, a regular who favors impact play and carries himself with the confidence of someone who knows his way around a negotiation. He's a competent Dom, experienced, respected on the floor.
He and Renata have scened before. I've watched it happen, watched the way she steps onto the platform and puts on the show and comes back to her station afterward with her composure intact, and I've cataloged that observation with all the other Doms.
They talk at the bar for several minutes. Arnold leans in. Renata's body language stays professional but shifts by degrees into something more attentive. I watch them negotiate, the quiet pre-scene conversation where limits are confirmed and signals are established. She nods once. He straightens. They have an agreement.
Renata catches Terrence's attention and hands off the bar. She walks with Arnold toward the east wall, and her stride is confident, measured, the walk of someone who already knows how this ends.
