Page 16 of Fatal Pattern

“ATF motto, Crew. Burn it. Test it. File it. Coffee’s just field research.” Harlee Bay leaned back just far enough to cut Tori a look, mouth tilting in that near-smile she rarely let out. The black hoodie she wore had the Kingdom MMA crest printed in red along one sleeve. Strands of blond had slipped free of a half-knot on her head.

Blade propped a shoulder against the doorframe, glancing at Harlee’s ultrawide monitor setup. Data crawled across one screen like ants after sugar. “You still even work for the ATF, Bay? Or they just pay you to haunt that keyboard?”

Harlee’s head turned half an inch, enough for the warning in her eyes to hit him straight on. “Keep talking. I’ll enter your social into the national forfeiture database. Let’s see how long your condo stays yours.”

Before he could fire back, Jett Nu rose from the desk beside her. The tech billionaire was dressed in his usual. Slacks, vest, French cuffs rolled to the forearms. His dark curls pushed past where a collar would’ve been, and Blade couldn’t tell if he needed a haircut or if he’d shelled out two hundred bucks for that look.

“She does work,” Jett said, voice calm as ever. “Intelligence Research Specialists operate anywhere they have a secure system. And she’s got the best one here. ATF headquarters can’t touch our encryption.”

Harlee arched an eyebrow, pleased but pretending not to be. “Translation, I’ve got better toys here.”

Blade grinned. “You’re too smart to be in the field anyway. Let the rest of us catch shrapnel.”

“Yeah,” Corbin added as he crossed the room. “Why waste a mind like hers dismantling bombs when she can save the world from here?”

Luna spread her arms, gesturing to the stack of color-coded binders containing the Warrior kids’ case notes. “What am I then, chopped liver?”

Corbin stopped in front of her. “Of course not,” he said quietly. “You’re saving the world too.” He bent and kissed her. Slow, certain, like a man who’d finally learned what love was.

Blade watched them and let his breath settle. Same two kids who used to sneak outside after sparring, leaning into each other like nothing else existed. Married now, but the same them. They’d come so close to losing everything. Blade’s attention cut to Tori perched on the table before returning to Corbin’s hand tracing along Luna’s dark hair. Maybe love like that belonged in real life after all.

Blade cleared his throat. “Hey, Jett. You get Tori’s text this morning? About checking the exterior cameras for the guy who jumped her?”

“Sure did.” Jett gestured toward Harlee with a flick of his pen. “We’ve got something.”

Harlee’s tattooed hands worked the mouse and keyboard simultaneously. One monitor flashed through feeds of the front lot, side entrance, and a dark sliver of alley beyond the dumpsters. “He parked two blocks east,” she said. “Walked in like he owned the place. Hoodie up. Kept his head tilted down every time he passed a camera.”

“He knew where the blind angles were,” Jett said. “Never let his face hit full frame.”

Blade stepped nearer and braced a palm against the desk to study the loop. “So, he did his homework. Never let us see his face.”

“Fact.” Harlee toggled to a magnified frame. The man crossed under a parking light. “But here’s his mistake.” She jabbed a finger at the image. “My baby doesn’t need a face.”

Tori watched Harlee’s screen from the table. “Your baby?”

Jett chuckled. “She’s talking about our motion-based biometric capture. Every frame pulls a signature. Stride rhythm, skeletal alignment, limb rotation. Within 87 percent confidence, we can ID a person walking through a fog bank at midnight.”

Blade buried a hand in his pocket and raked the loose change. “Translation?”

“It reads how you move,” Harlee said. “Like a fingerprint in motion. Might take a while to scour through local surveillance footage, but we’ll get him.”

“Still can’t get over the fact we’ve got CIA-level tech sitting in a gym office,” Luna said.

Jett’s grin widened. “Who do you think the government licensed it from?”

“You nerds and your tech toys,” Tori said. “Don’t waste too much time on it, okay? We’ve got bigger fish.”

Like Sullivan’s stunt at the prison.

Blade nodded, coins and keys clinking in his pocket. The motion helped him think, same as the rhythm of writing in his notebook. Little cadence loops kept his brain wired in usable lanes.

“Work it anyway,” he said, dropping into the worn leather armchair.

Harlee yanked a drawer open and tossed something across the room. “Here.”

Blade caught it one-handed. A green rubber ball, covered in soft spikes. He squeezed. The thing gave under pressure and expanded again like memory foam. Small, firm, almost satisfying. “What’s this?”

“Sanity,” Harlee said. “Yours and mine. You keep rattling change, tapping desks, and clicking pens like you’re sending some secret code. I’m one minute away from hurling your keys out the window.” She pointed at him with her pen.