Page 75 of Gatsby's Starlet
“Ruby’s reaction at the bar wasn’t right,” he said. “And Evie was watchin’ her too close.”
My jaw tightened, the instinct to push back coming up fast, automatic. “That doesn’t mean—”
“They’re spies.” Final. Not speculation, not a theory, but something he’d already decided.
I held onto the version where there was another explanation, where this didn’t line up the way it sounded, held onto it just long enough to feel it start to slip through my fingers.
“Why do you think that,” I said, slower now, more deliberate.
“They both got picked up.”
The room shifted, the quiet turning heavier, tighter, like everything in it had just been pulled a notch closer.
“By who.”
A pause.
“Fire Dragons.”
It didn’t land clean, just settled wrong—heavy and uneven—because it didn’t make sense, not all the way, and I let myself stay there for half a second, in the version where it didn’t look like this.
“I watched Evie myself,” Mystic said. “And a prospect saw Ruby.”
And that should’ve been enough, and it usually was, but something caught anyway.
“Where,” I asked, the word slipping out before I could stop it, even though the kid had confirmed what Mystic said.
“From their houses,” he said without hesitation.
That word lodged somewhere it didn’t belong, not with the way she’d looked the night before, not with the quiet tension that had sat in her like she was waiting for something she didn’t want, not like someone setting anything up.
“She didn’t fight it,” I said, keeping my voice level even as something underneath it shifted, “not even a little?”
Mystic held my gaze. “Not that I could see.”
That was it. Small. Easy to miss. But it didn’t sit right, not with what I’d seen, not with the way she carried herself likeshe was always watching, always paranoid, like she was already halfway out the door before anything even started.
I shut it down anyway.
Hard.
Because everything else lined up too clean, her not answering, Ruby not answering, the way she’d gone quiet at the bar, the way she’d looked at me like she was already somewhere else, and that was louder than a feeling I couldn’t prove.
“There was no mistake,” Mystic repeated, quieter this time, closing it, and leaving no room left to argue.
I exhaled slow, my mind already moving whether I wanted it to or not. Something settled behind my ribs, not sharp, not explosive, just there, steady and digging in. I didn’t move.
“I can’t believe I never suspected Ruby,” Chain muttered. “Damn good actress.”
“She wasn’t the only one,” I said, quieter than I meant to.
Mystic didn’t look away. “Not good enough.”
“We’ve got prospects watching their places in case they come back,” Devil added, his voice steady, controlled. “Mystic followed as far as he could without getting made. Wherever they are, it’s out in the boonies, hit dirt and kept going.”
I nodded once, slow, more to keep myself grounded than anything else. “She said she had something going on,” I said, the words coming out more to myself than anyone else. “Wouldn’t tell me what.”
Chain exhaled. “Gats—”
