Chapter 6: Suit Up
The shirt was wrong. It was just cotton, soft and worn, but it felt like a stranger’s skin. Sarah stood in front of the cloudy mirror in Milo’s bathroom, the one with the stubborn water stain shaped like Florida, and tried to see herself. Milo’s Pulitzer piece was framed on the wall out in the living room, a silent, gleaming monument. Her coffee-stained econ textbook was on the toilet tank.
She rubbed a clear spot on the glass with her palm. Her reflection was fractured through the streaks. Red hair, a little wild. Green eyes with shadows underneath from nights spent not sleeping, just lying still and listening to Milo breathe. A faint, yellowing bruise on her ribcage from the crate she’d slammed into during the fight at the plant. The only mark left.
The city had been quiet. Suspiciously quiet. Fisk was in custody, his operations crumbling under federal scrutiny. The news cycled through analysis, puff pieces on Milo’s “brave return to form,” and sanitized overviews of the “alleged criminal enterprise.” It was over. She’d won.
So why did she feel like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop?
She padded back into the bedroom, the hardwood cool under her feet. The bed was still a tangle of sheets from the morning. From him. A single black sock lay discarded by the door, a tiny piece of domestic evidence. Her eyes went to the closet. Not Milo’s walk-in, stuffed with expensive, indifferent tailoring, but the smaller one in the hall, where she kept her few things.
She opened the door. Jeans. Sweaters. A stack of leggings. And pushed to the back, in a plain black garment bag she’d bought from a thrift store, was the second suit.
It wasn’t the original. That one was probably in an evidence locker somewhere, or incinerated. This was her prototype, the one she’d built before she’d finalized the design. The seams were less refined, the protective plating lighter, just carbon fiber panels stitched into a reinforced base layer. The mask was simpler, without the built-in comms she’d added later. It was raw. A first draft.
Her fingers traced the zipper of the bag. She didn’t pull it down. She just stood there, feeling the weight of the silence in the apartment, the oppressive stillness of a city that supposedly didn’t need her anymore.
The door downstairs buzzed, harsh and electronic, shattering the quiet. Then her phone lit up on the nightstand, buzzing against the wood.
Chloe: We’re outside. Let us in or we start singing show tunes.
Jennifer: I have tequila and a deep need for gossip. Your window is three minutes.
A genuine smile touched her lips for the first time all day. She thumbed the intercom. “Come up, you menaces.”
She hurriedly shoved the garment bag back into the closet, closed the door, and was pulling on a fresh tank top when the knock came. The kind of knock that was really a punctuation mark.
She opened the door to a blast of cold air and perfume.
Chloe stood there, a blonde whirlwind in a faux-fur jacket that smelled like candy, holding a paper bag from the taco place down the street. Jennifer was behind her, sleek and calm in a leather moto jacket, raising a bottle of silver tequila like a trophy. They both surveyed her, their eyes missing nothing.
“You look like you’ve been thinking too hard,” Chloe announced, breezing past her into the apartment. “We’re here to stop that.”
“The place smells like ‘expensive journalist’ and ‘regret,’” Jennifer noted, setting the bottle on the kitchen counter with a definitive clink. She pulled three shot glasses from her bag. “We’re fixing both.”
Sarah laughed, the sound strange in her own ears. “Milo’s at some media luncheon. ‘The Future of Investigative Journalism.’ He said it would be boring.”
“He’s not wrong,” Chloe said, already unloading tacos onto plates. “But we’re not here for him. We’re here for you. It’s been weeks, Sar. You vanish into this apartment or into him and we get texts that just say ‘alive, sorry, busy.’ Not acceptable.”
Sarah felt a pang of guilt. They didn’t know. They couldn’t. They just saw their friend who’d gotten tangled up with an older, famous guy and seemed to be disappearing into his orbit. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just been… a lot.”
“A lot of what?” Jennifer poured three generous shots. The lime was already sliced, waiting on a napkin. “Because from our side, the story is: your sort-of boyfriend takes down a major crime lord, gets super famous, wins the biggest prize in his field, and presumably is having a lot of celebratory sex with my very hot friend. That’s not ‘a lot.’ That’s a plotline. Our plotline is organic chemistry midterms and whether the guy at the campus coffee cart is flirting or has a facial tic.”
Sarah took the shot glass. The tequila was sharp and clean, burning a path down her throat that felt like waking up. “It’s the ‘sort-of’ part that’s fuzzy.”
Chloe nodded, her mouth full of carnitas. “Ah. The undefined status. The classic ‘are we a headline or are we a byline?’ dilemma.”
“We haven’t talked about it,” Sarah admitted, picking at the label on the bottle. “It’s just… what it is. He’s there. I’m here.”
“Here in his apartment,” Jennifer pointed out gently. “With your toothbrush in his holder. Your textbooks on his tank. That’s not ‘just here,’ Sarah. That’s moved in.”
“It’s convenient,” Sarah protested, but it sounded weak, even to her.
“For who?” Chloe asked. “You commute across town for your eight a.m. literature class. He walks six blocks to the Gazette. The math isn’t mathing, baby girl.”
Sarah took another shot, not waiting for the lime. The warmth spread through her chest, loosening the tight coil that had been living there since the plant. “I just… I need my own air sometimes. You know?”
“We know,” Jennifer said. “Which is why we’re here. To give you air that doesn’t come filtered through his Pulitzer.” She leaned forward, her dark eyes serious. “There’s talk, you know. At the Gazette.”
Sarah’s spine went straight. “What kind of talk?”
“The kind they have when the legendary bad-boy reporter settles down with a mysterious, gorgeous college student half his age,” Chloe said, her voice dropping to a dramatic whisper. “They’re calling you his ‘muse.’ His ‘redemption arc.’ Anya Riley is apparently telling people you’re the best thing that ever happened to him.”
Despite herself, she smiled.
It felt good hearing that. For a second, the pressure in her chest loosened, letting her imagine a simpler version of this life where she was just a girl who inspired good work. Then the apartment’s front door rattled.
A key slid into the lock.
The metallic scrape was all wrong. Milo’s luncheon was a half-day affair downtown. The deadbolt turned with a heavy, familiar clunk. Sarah’s body went still, a different kind of awareness cutting through the tequila warmth. Chloe and Jennifer froze, mid-sentence, reading the sudden alertness in her posture.
The door swung open.
Milo stood in the threshold, his silhouette blocking the grey hallway light. He wasn’t in his luncheon suit. He wore dark jeans and a worn leather jacket, the collar turned up against a wet breeze she could now smell. A battered canvas satchel was slung over one shoulder, not his usual briefcase. He looked tired, older than he had that morning, and his eyes held a distracted, kinetic energy she recognized. It was the look he got when a story was moving.
“Hey,” he said, his voice flat. He registered Chloe and Jennifer, the bottle, the scattered tacos. A perfunctory smile touched his lips. “Party moved.”
“Luncheon end early?” Sarah asked. She kept her tone light, but her eyes were tracing the lines of tension in his shoulders.
“It was a cemetery.” He dropped his satchel by the door with a thud that felt intentional. “Full of vultures picking over the last bones of a career. Mine.” He walked to the kitchen, bypassing them to open the fridge. He pulled out a beer, twisted the cap off, and took a long swallow. “Riley pulled me out. Something’s up.”
Jennifer exchanged a glance with Chloe. The air in the room had solidified. “We should probably head out,” Jennifer said, already gathering her jacket.
“Don’t,” Milo said, not looking at them. “You just got here.” It wasn’t an invitation. It was a statement, leaving no room for argument. He finally looked at Sarah, his gaze intense, searching. “We need to talk.”
“We’re talking,” Sarah said, holding her ground. Her friends’ presence felt suddenly vital, a buffer.
“Alone.” The word was a soft command.
Chloe stood, her faux fur bristling. “Yeah, no, we’re definitely going. Sarah, call us later.” Her smile was tight, concerned. They moved toward the door in a hurried rustle of fabric and purpose, Jennifer giving Sarah’s arm a quick, reassuring squeeze as she passed.
The door clicked shut behind them, leaving a silence louder than their laughter had been.
Milo took another swig of beer. He studied her, his journalist’s eyes cataloging her bare feet, the old tank top, the way she stood poised near the hall closet. “What were you talking about?”
“You, mostly,” she said, crossing her arms. “My fan club is concerned about my life choices.”
“They should be.” He set the bottle down too hard on the counter. “Riley’s got whispers. From the courthouse. Fisk’s lawyers are moving, filing motions about contaminated evidence, police overreach. The usual rich asshole playbook.”
A cold thread wound through Sarah’s gut. “Will it work?”
“Maybe. That’s not the part that matters.” He ran a hand over his jaw, the sound of his whiskers rasping in the quiet room. “The whisper is that someone inside the DA’s office is listening. Maybe more than listening. That the case isn’t just leaking; it’s being prepared for a controlled demolition.”
“You think he’s getting out.” Her voice was quiet.
“I think the system he claims to despise is made of men he owns.” Milo pushed off the counter and stepped closer. His scent, leather and winter air, filled the space between them. “And I think if that happens, the first person he comes for is the one who put him there. The one who made him look weak. Not me. You.”
She didn’t flinch. “I can handle it.”
“Can you?” His question wasn’t doubting her ability. It was deeper, probing a wound. “You’ve been playing house, Sarah. You’ve been wearing my shirts and sleeping in my bed and pretending this is over. Is your suit even ready?”
The question was a needle. It went straight to the core of her own private dread, voiced here in his accusing tone. Her eyes flicked, involuntarily, toward the hall closet.
He followed her gaze. A slow, grim understanding settled on his face. “It’s in there, isn’t it? Your backup. You’ve been looking at it.”
“It’s none of your business.” The words came out sharp, defensive.
“It became my business the moment you saved my life in a warehouse,” he fired back, his voice rising. “It became my business when I wrote a thousand words about you that didn’t even scratch the surface. You think I don’t see you at night? Staring at the ceiling? You’re already back there, in the fight. You’re just lying next to me while you do it.”
“What do you want from me, Milo?” She unfolded her arms, her hands curling into loose fists at her sides. “To bake cookies and wait for you to come home with a byline? To forget what I can do?”
“I want you to be safe!” The outburst echoed in the spacious loft. He looked shocked he’d said it, that he’d felt it that strongly. He took a breath, struggling for control. “I want you to let the system we just fed work. I want you to be the college kid who inspired a Pulitzer, not the vigilante who dies in an alley because a billionaire with a grudge paid off a judge.”
“That college kid doesn’t exist.” The truth of it hung in the air, stark and unavoidable. “She’s a cover story you helped write. You liked her because she was safe for your narrative. A muse, not a martyr.”
He was right in front of her now. She could see the flecks of gold in his grey eyes, the pulse in his throat. “You think that’s what this is?” His voice dropped, rough with an emotion she couldn’t name. “A narrative?”
“Isn’t it?” She challenged him, lifting her chin. “The bad-boy reporter and his mysterious redemption? It’s a great follow-up piece. ‘How Love Tamed the Black Cat.’”
His hand came up, not to strike, but to cup the side of her face. His thumb brushed her cheekbone, a calloused, gentle stroke that contradicted everything in his tense posture. “You are the most infuriating person I have ever met.” He sounded almost admiring.
Then he kissed her.
It wasn’t like the morning’s kiss, lazy and saturated. This was all possession and desperation, a argument translated into physical need. She met it with equal force, biting his lip, her hands fisting in his jacket to pull him closer. It was a collision, a battle for dominance on familiar ground. He walked her back until her shoulders hit the wall beside the closet door, the impact shuddering through them both.
When he broke away, they were both breathing hard. His forehead rested against hers. “Stay out of it,” he whispered, a plea woven into the command. “Just for now. Let me dig. Let us use the tools we have.”
She looked past his shoulder, at the clean lines of his apartment, the framed article, the comfortable bed. It was a beautiful cage. Her gaze drifted to the closet door, inches from her head. Behind it, the raw, unfinished suit waited in the dark.
“You know I can't,” she whispered, the word a ghost on her lips.
He kissed her again, softer now. She closed her eyes, letting him, while her mind mapped the distance to the garment bag, the feel of the carbon fiber panels, the weight of the mask in her hands.
The kiss broke apart, leaving a silent vibration in the air between them. He didn't move back. His hands stayed against the wall, caging her in.
"You're not going to listen to me," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I never have before." Her voice was quiet but unwavering. "Why start now?"
A deep frustration tightened the skin around his eyes. He looked older suddenly, the triumph of the Pulitzer completely erased by this new, gnawing fear. He pushed off the wall and turned away, running a hand through his already-messy hair. The space he created felt colder.
"Because this isn't some two-bit enforcer or a dirty cop, Sarah. This is the machine itself. The one I've spent twenty years documenting. You can't punch a legal brief. You can't outrun a sealed indictment."
"Then I'll find the person typing the brief," she shot back, finally pushing away from the wall herself. She felt untethered, electric. "I'll follow the money you can't subpoena yet. You work the inside, the people who talk on the record. I'll work the shadows, the ones who only talk when they're scared."
He paced to the window, staring out at the grey afternoon. The weight of her words settled on him. He knew she was right. Their strengths were complementary, not overlapping. Together in the field, they would be chaos. Apart, they could cover twice the ground. The thought of her out there alone now, with Fisk's threat looming, made his blood run cold. But the thought of trying to restrain her, of the constant, grating fights it would cause, was its own kind of prison.
"God damn it," he muttered, the words hollow against the glass. He turned back to her, shoulders slumping in a surrender that was purely tactical. "Fine. Alright. You're right."
She blinked, caught off-guard by the sudden capitulation.
"We investigate separately," he said, the plan forming as he spoke, each word pragmatic and sharp. "You do your thing. I'll do mine. We share intel, but we don't… orbit each other. We keep a lane."
It was smart. It was what she wanted. So why did it feel like a door closing?
"Okay," she said.
"I'll reach out to my contacts at the courthouse, see who’s been spending too freely. I’ll start with Heather Norris in the clerk’s office. She always knows where the bodies are buried, and she likes talking to me."
Sarah’s eyes rolled so hard it was almost audible. "Heather. Right. The one with the 'great ass' and the hero worship. Of course."
A slow, genuine smile touched Milo’s lips for the first time since he’d walked in. It was a wicked, knowing thing. He crossed the room and stopped right in front of her, tilting her chin up with a finger. "Are you jealous, Black Cat?"
"Don't be ridiculous," she snapped, but a flush crept up her neck.
"I think you are." His thumb brushed her lower lip. "It’s cute. And a total waste of energy." He leaned in, his voice dropping to a rough whisper she felt in her bones. "There’s only one infuriating, fearless, impossible woman I’m stupid in love with. And she’s right here, glaring at me like she wants to stab me."
The world narrowed to the space between them. The air vanished from her lungs. All the clever retorts, the defensive quips, disintegrated.
"You’re… you’re what?" she managed, the words stumbling over each other.
He kissed her again, slow and deep, sealing the confession. It was different from every kiss before it—an end and a beginning. When he pulled back, her head was spinning.
"Don't let it go to your head," he murmured, but his eyes were serious. He reached into his jacket’s inner pocket and pulled out a simple, cream-colored business card. He pressed it into her palm, folding her fingers over it. "You need a guide through the machine. Someone who knows its gears but hasn't been corrupted by them."
She looked down. The card was worn at the edges. It read: Detective Scott Vickers, Major Crimes. A phone number was handwritten on the back in faded blue ink.
"Scott’s old school. Jaded, but honest. He was my first source on the police beat, a lifetime ago. Tell him I sent you. He doesn't know you are Black Cat. Tell him… tell him I owe him one, and this is it." He grabbed his satchel from the floor and slung it over his shoulder. He paused at the door, looking back at her standing alone in the middle of his apartment, clutching the card. "Be smarter than you are brave, Sarah."
Then he was gone.
The lock clicked into place with a sound of finality. The silence rushed back in, thicker now. She looked from the card in her hand to the hall closet door. The suit waited. Scott Vickers waited. Somewhere, Heather Norris was waiting for Milo’s call.
She unfolded her fingers and stared at the detective’s name. It was a tether to the world Milo moved in, a world of procedure and paperwork where her kind of justice had no place.
But it was also a thread, thin and strong, that she could pull. She waited until the scent of his leather jacket had fully dissolved into the apartment’s stale air. The business card’s edges were soft against her thumb. She found the burner phone, a cheap plastic thing, buried in her backpack under a rumpled sweatshirt.
The number rang three times before a graveled voice answered. “Vickers.”
She activated the small, pitch-altering module she’d salvaged from her old mask, holding it close to her lips. The sound was a neutral, digital rasp. “Detective. A mutual friend suggested I call. He says he owes you one.”
A long pause. The sound of a chair creaking. “Davidson.” Scott Vickers stated the name like a fact, not a question. “He only says that when he’s neck-deep in something that’s going to ruin my week. Or get me fired.”
“It’s about the Fisk case. The corrosion from the inside.”
Another silence, heavier this time. She heard the distant echo of a precinct in the background—a muffled shout, a ringing phone. “You’re the one they’re all whispering about,” he said, his voice dropping. “The cat.”
“I need a perspective that isn’t in a file. Someone who knows which whispers are just noise and which ones mean a knife in the dark.”
Vickers let out a breath that was half sigh, half chuckle. “Christ. Meet me. Midnight. The roof of the Fourth Precinct. Northeast corner. Come alone, and come quiet.”
“I’ll be there.” She ended the call.
The garment bag zipper sounded like a gasp in the silent apartment. The second suit unfolded in her hands, cool and smelling faintly of ozone and her own laundry detergent. It was simpler, a matte black base layer with strategic panels that felt familiar and alien all at once. She stepped into it, the material hugging her skin with a whispered promise of anonymity.
I’m stupid in love with you. His words replayed as she secured the clasps at her sides. A hot, bright flutter sparked behind her ribs. She pressed her palm flat against her sternum, as if to contain it. The smile that came was small, private, and utterly real. It lasted for three full heartbeats.
Then she pulled the mask over her head. The world narrowed, sharpened. The flutter was sealed away. Milo’s girl stayed in the apartment with the Pulitzer on the wall. Black Cat turned towards the window, calculating the path across the rooftops to the Fourth Precinct. The city’s safety, his safety, demanded the separation.
Milo found Heather Norris at her usual spot in the courthouse annex bar, a place that smelled of pine-scented cleaner and low-grade whiskey. She was halfway through a martini, her blonde hair a careful cascade over the shoulders of a silk blouse that did nothing to hide a spectacular figure. She saw him and lit up, a practiced, dazzling thing.
“Milo Davidson! The man of the hour.” She patted the stool next to her. “I figured you’d be sipping champagne with network anchors.”
“Champagne gives me migraines,” he said, sliding onto the stool. He ordered a bourbon, neat. His eyes, almost of their own volition, tracked the elegant line of her spine as she turned to flag the bartender, the way her skirt hugged a genuinely world-class ass. A familiar, hollow pang hit him—not attraction, exactly, but the recognition of a pleasant distraction, a temporary escape from the constant, gnawing worry that was Sarah.
“I need a guide,” he said, turning his focus to his drink when it arrived. “The Fisk case is being prepped for surgery. I need to know which hands are holding the scalpels.”
Heather’s blue eyes sparkled with intrigue. “That’s messy territory. The kind that gets access revoked.”
“That’s why I came to you. You know every clerk, every paralegal, every assistant DA with a gambling debt or a secret boyfriend.” He offered a smile, the one that usually worked. “I need to see the motion drafts before they’re filed. I need to see the financial disclosures for the judges on the panel.”
She swirled her olive around the glass. “That’s not a guide. That’s a co-conspirator.”
“It’s a source helping uphold the public interest,” he countered, his tone easy. “And it’s a story with your name in the ‘special thanks’ footnote. The one that comes right before the Pulitzer.”
He watched the temptation war with caution on her face. The jealousy was there, too, a subtle tightening around her mouth when he’d said “Pulitzer.” She was thinking of the young, red-haired girl in the photos beside him at the awards ceremony, the one the papers called his muse. Heather had always been his occasional sounding board, his flirtatious inside source. She’d likely imagined a different outcome from his newfound fame.
“The archives,” she said finally, finishing her drink. “Everything’s digital, but the backup logs, the edit histories—the truly sensitive stuff is sometimes kept on isolated servers. Physical access only. In the basement of the law library.”
He was already standing, throwing cash on the bar. “Then let’s go read some history.”
The law library basement was a tomb of dead trees and humming servers. The air was cold and carried the ghost scent of crumbling paper and dust. Heather’s heels clicked decisively on the linoleum as she led him past rows of darkened study carrels towards a sealed server room door.
“My keycard shouldn’t work here,” she whispered, swiping it anyway. The light flashed green. “My ex-husband was the systems admin. He never revoked my privileges.”
Milo filed that away—a useful bit of carelessness. As she bent over the terminal, inputting codes, his gaze drifted again. The tailored skirt pulled tight. A distraction, indeed. Simple, uncomplicated. The exact opposite of the complicated, dangerous love currently tying his stomach in knots. He forcibly redirected his thoughts to the lines of code scrolling on the screen.
“Here,” Heather murmured, her voice hushed. “Draft motions from Fisk’s legal team. Filed under provisional seals.” She pointed to a string of case numbers. “And here… disbursement logs from a firm retainer. Look at the recipients.”
Milo leaned in, his reporter’s brain lighting up. The numbers were routing to shell companies, but one name—a sitting judge’s “consulting firm”—was plain as day. It was a thread. As he began photographing the screen with his phone, he chuckled at the way Heather looked at his profile, the longing and sharp resentment in her eyes as she thought of the girl who got to keep him.