Page 58 of How To Plot a Payback

Lavender Rhodes, mark my words.

I will plot a payback.

Chapter 12

Finn

Someone is banging on my door.

It’s Wednesday, 2:30 a.m., 153 hours after the Maggie Incident.

Waking up to knocking is a disorienting thing at this hour. My face is plastered to several sheets of paper, and the world is still dark and damp outside the window over my desk.

The moment I come to, I jerk my head up so quickly that Miles perks up. His ears pull back as his wide gray eyes look alertly first at me, then at our surroundings.

I glance at the door, then at Miles.

The flat is still. A silhouette of the lamp stretches across my gray couch. A streetlamp casts a vertical shadow through the blinds over the sliding glass door to the balcony. Papers are littered around me. Leftovers of a midnight snack sit on the counter. You know, this really looks like the scenes we stage when someone gets murdered at home.

But never in all my time at Higher Stakes did we introduce a burglar into a scene who knocked first.

Knocking is a move for angry lovers.

Of which I have none.

Knocking is a move for irate employers.

Of which I also have none, as I am so painfully aware.

So the only logical answer is . . . Mrs. Teaberry.

I push myself to standing, reaching for my phone as I do.

The screen is covered with alerts. Missed calls and messages, all from Paula.

Oh. Or Paula.

Paula.

News.

Her voice comes in a raspy hiss pressed to the door. “Finn, get up.”

I stride to the door. Unlock the double bolts. Open it.

“Well, you actually did it,” she says. “Get dressed.”

“What?” I say, as she blows past me into the living room and turns. She’s already tapping her feet as if annoyed at how slow I’m going. Slow. When I wasn’t even awake three minutes ago, and now here she is in my living room. At 2:30 a.m.

“You did it,” she repeats, throwing her arm out and then waving toward my bedroom as if to say, Now get going. “You had me send all those scripts you kept writing, and sure enough, he wants you back.”

“Goodwin wants me back?” I take a deep breath. “He liked them?”

“Yes, congratulations, Finn. You’ve officially become his favorite person. You’re the AI we’ve all feared was going to obliterate our jobs, except you’re real.”

I begin shaking my head. All the while, my heart is pumping. One hundred forty-three hours writing scripts nonstop, going at the speed of light while also making them as perfect as possible. Throwing together rough drafts, then polishing them so hard the silver began to wear off. The most chaotic six days of my life.

Lance doesn’t merely go looking for wedding venues with Ashley—he’s blackmailed by an old girlfriend to book their wedding at her failing, terrifying, old-mansion venue, where he and Ashley get locked in the cellar and have to work together to break free as they simultaneously face their fear of being together forever. Maya doesn’t merely throw Ashley a bachelorette party—she also receives the wrong ancestry report and falls into an existential crisis while connecting with a long-lost twin who has shown up only for the cheese spread. Lance doesn’t merely find the perfect birthday present for Ashley (the promise to show her the world)—he mistakenly takes them to Paris, Wisconsin, after six layovers, four hotels, and a ride in the back of a pickup truck, where he declares on a bouncing hay bale that this life is perfect, so long as they spend it together.