Chapter 11: Celebration in the Loft
The sheets were still warm, tangled around their legs like river reeds. Abbie traced the scar on Milo’s shoulder, a pale comma against his skin, her fingers light. The city beyond the window was a silent tapestry of light, the only sound their slowing breaths and the distant wail of a siren three blocks over.
“I think I’m keeping you,” he’d murmured into the nape of her neck not ten minutes ago, his voice rough with sleep and satisfaction.
Now, she smiled against his chest, the words wrapping around her like the blankets. They felt solid. Real. A promise in the dark. He’d been different tonight, possessive, almost intense, his usual cynical edge softened. She replayed the moment in the study, the Curator’s hand on her, Milo’s tight jaw on the monitor feed. He was jealous, she thought with a thrill. He cared.
“You’re quiet,” Milo said, his hand stroking her bare back.
“Just thinking about the Dante,” she lied easily, nuzzling closer. “The way the gold leaf on the pages caught the light. You should have seen it.”
“I saw enough.” His voice lost its softness for a fraction of a second. Then he kissed her forehead. “We naild him. You did good, kid.”
Kid. The word needled her, but she let it go, focusing on the praise. She’d done it. She’d helped him. They were a team.
Eventually, her breathing evened out into the deep, trusting rhythm of sleep. Milo waited, counting the slow seconds between her exhalations. When he was certain, he slid his arm out from under her, the movement practiced and fluid.
The apartment was cool. He pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants, not glancing back at the bed. The laptop glowed on the steel kitchen island, a beacon in the dim room. He poured two fingers of scotch, the liquid catching the amber light from the screen, and sat down.
The Ship footage was already auto-uploaded and decrypting. A secondary window held his email, clogged with leads and tips and spam. One subject line, forwarded from a burner account he used for whistleblowers, stood out: FLORES CASE – URBAN RELIEF SOCIETY – THE NUMBERS DON’T CRY, THEY SCREAM.
He clicked it.
It was a messy data dump—scanned invoices, redacted internal memos, a few grainy photos. The accompanying text was frantic, misspelled: They’re moving it through the foster care subsidies. She knows. Camilla Flores. She tried to file a report and they buried it. They’ll bury her next.
Milo zoomed in on one photo. A woman in her mid-twenties stood outside a nondescript office building, hugging a folder to her chest. She had dark, worried eyes and a defiant set to her jaw. Even in the poor resolution, her beauty was arresting. The caption read: Flores, Social Work Supervisor, 24.
He took a slow sip of scotch, the burn familiar down his throat. His mind, always a split-screen, cataloged her. Compassionate face. Likely idealistic. Probably overwhelmed. Definitely in over her head. The perfect source—vulnerable, motivated, and with direct access. A story about laundered money filtering through a children’s charity had a certain savage poetry to it.
He closed the laptop, the ghost of Camilla Flores’s worried face lingering behind his eyes. The scotch glass was empty. From the bedroom, Abbie murmured something in her sleep, a soft, trusting sound. He knew the drill with the Curator’s evidence now; it was just mechanics, a few well-placed calls to his editor and a tipped note to the financial crimes unit in the morning.
The takedown was swift, clinical, and anticlimactic. The footage Abbie had risked so much for played on a loop across cable news for exactly thirty-six hours. It showed the Curator, his hand too low on the back of a stunning emerald dress, and then, more damningly, his fingerprints all over digital trails leading to offshore accounts. His arrest at the cliffside estate was a silent, predawn affair, no dramatic speeches. The story Milo wrote was a masterpiece of detached reporting, cool and factual, and it landed on the front page. He got a bonus. Abbie got a text that read: “Told you we’d get him.”
A week later, the morning sun cut a sharp line across the rumpled bed. Milo woke to the warm, slow press of Abbie’s lips moving down his chest, her hair fanning across his stomach. “Morning,” she whispered, her voice husky with sleep.
“Best alarm clock ever,” he grumbled, his hand sliding into her hair. He blinked against the light, his gaze drifting past her to the open laptop on the nightstand. His own face stared back from a news site sidebar, under the headline: “MY NIGHT WITH THE MANTIS: An Exclusive Account.”
Abbie followed his look and let out a soft, knowing laugh. She nipped at his skin playfully. “Reading your own press again? I can’t believe you actually called my… physical dedication ‘the defining athleticism of a modern urban legend.’”
“It’s descriptive,” he said, a smug grin pulling at his mouth. The article had been a strategic gamble, a lurid, first-person detour from his usual tone. It never mentioned a name, never showed a face, but it meticulously detailed the silhouette of the Mantis—her “impossible leverage,” the “cat-like grace,” the “formidable assets” kept hidden by leather. The comment sections were feral with envy. “It sells. And it keeps you safe.”
“By telling the whole world how you, quote, ‘bedded a superhero’?” She shook her head, a wry smile on her face, and pushed herself up. “You’re impossible.”
She padded toward the kitchen wearing nothing but his faded Columbia shirt and a pair of black cotton panties. The shirt just covered the curve of her ass. As she passed the bed, his hand shot out, connecting with a smart, playful slap.
The sound was a crisp crack in the quiet room. She yelped, half-laughing, and shot him a mock glare over her shoulder. “Hey!” A flush of heat spread through her, secret and pleasant, and she kept walking, the swing in her step a little more pronounced.
He watched her go, the thin cotton clinging, the memory of the article’s most viral line echoing in his head: …and the greatest treasure this city never knew it had. The coffee machine began to gurgle. She bent to get two mugs from the lower cabinet, and the shirt rode up. Milo let out a low, appreciative breath. He had the story, the credit, and her, all in his apartment. The jackpot wasn’t a metaphor.
The jackpot wasn’t a metaphor. It was the quiet hum of the laptop, the bonus already spent on next month’s rent, and the warm, willing body in his kitchen. He watched her move, the simple domesticity of it almost as satisfying as the sex. Almost.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand, a persistent insectile rattle. He ignored it, studying the line of Abbie’s thigh as she stretched for the sugar.It buzzed again.And again. A specific triple-buzz he’d assigned to a blocked number from a 702 area code. Las Vegas.Abbie turned, a mug in each hand. “You gonna get that?”
“Nah.” He smiled, the easy one that made her eyes soften. “Probably just my editor, already pissed about something else.Today is for us.”
He took the coffee, black, and sipped. The bitterness cut through the morning fog. The phone went silent, then immediately buzzed again with a voicemail alert.A tightness, fine as a wire, threaded up his neck.
“Seriously,” Abbie said, perching on the edge of the bed. She pushed his hair back from his forehead, a gesture that felt annoyingly maternal.“It might be important. After the whole Curator thing, you’re probably, like, the most famous reporter in the city right now.”
“Infamous,” he corrected, but he was already reaching for the device. He put the phone to his ear, his eyes on the skyline, away from her.
The voice on the recording was a hoarse, frightened whisper, layered over the sound of distant traffic.“Milo? It’s… it’s Denny.From the Flamingo? Listen, man, that social worker you asked about.Flores.She’s not just talking anymore. She’s got something.Hard copies.She’s scared.They made her roommate disappear.Just… gone. I’m next, I think. You need to—” A muffled sound, like a hand covering the receiver, then a sharp click.The call ended.The air in the room changed. The scent of coffee, the warmth of the sheets, Abbie’s questioning gaze—it all receded, tuned to a different frequency. His mind assembled the fragments: a scared source, hard evidence, a vanished roommate.This was no longer a sidebar story.This was a live wire.
“Who was it?” Abbie asked. She’d heard the silence, seen the shift in his shoulders.“Wrong number,” he said, the lie smooth and immediate. He set the phone down as if it were hot. Denny was a weasel, a part-time valet and full-time gossip, but he wasn’t an alarmist. If Denny was running scared, the temperature had skyrocketed.
He pulled Abbie to him, burying his face in the soft space between her neck and shoulder.He inhaled the scent of her skin and his own soap. The gesture felt like performing a remembered line from a play.“Just work stuff. It’s handled.”
She melted against him, believing the charade of intimacy. “So, today is for us,” she whispered, echoing his words back to him, a precious echo.
“Yeah.” He kissed her collarbone, his mind already miles away, in a desert city, picturing a woman named Camilla Flores hugging a folder to her chest.“I just need to make one quick call.To my editor. Secure the next assignment, you know? Keep the momentum.”
He disentangled himself, the loss of contact feeling like a physical relief. He walked to the window, phone in hand, the city sprawled below like a circuit board.He didn’t call his editor. He pulled up a flight aggregator, his fingers moving with brisk efficiency.
Behind him, Abbie sipped her coffee, watching the set of his back.She saw the tension there, the professional focus she admired. He was already chasing the next truth, the next big story. She felt a swell of pride, mixed with a vague, cold trickle of something else. He was so dedicated. It was inspiring.
“A quick call,” he said again, without turning around.
The sound was innocuous, but it severed the morning completely.The domestic scene was over. He was already gone, his thoughts full of vanished roommates and a social worker’s frightened eyes.
Abbie, in his shirt, holding her mug, remained in the warm pocket of the aftermath, unaware that the story had already left her behind. For Milo, the decision was a ledger entry, balanced and filed. Abbie was the solved Curator case, a closed loop of adrenaline and sex, her usefulness expired with the last headline. He watched her pour more coffee, the shirt stretching across her back, and thought, But not yet.
The next three weeks developed a rhythm of heat and whispered promises. He’d call her late, his voice a rough slide through the phone. “Can’t stop thinking about you. That thing you did with your…” And she’d be there, at his door or hers, within the hour. They fucked in his shower, steam fogging the glass, and against her cramped kitchen counter, knocking a box of cereal to the floor. He’d murmur into her skin, “You’re incredible,” and “I’ve never had this,” his lips tracing the shell of her ear. She collected these phrases like sacred stones, arranging them in her mind as proof.
She fell, hard and quietly, through the floor of casual into something terrifyingly whole. It was in the way she started buying the specific brand of bitter coffee grounds he preferred, the way she’d linger in his apartment on Sunday mornings, pretending to read but just watching him work. “You’re staring, Zhao,” he’d say without looking up from his laptop, a faint smile playing on his mouth. “Just admiring the view,” she’d shoot back, her heart doing a foolish, hopeful drumroll against her ribs.
He was careful, meticulous. He’d ask about her classes, memorizing the names of her professors just to ask a follow-up question days later. He remembered her favorite terrible reality TV show and would groan when she put it on, then watch it with her, his arm a heavy, welcome weight across her shoulders. It felt like partnership. It felt like the beginning of something.
All the while, the file on Camilla Flores grew. New emails piled up in a encrypted folder. Flight alerts for Las Vegas chimed softly on his phone, which he now silenced in Abbie’s presence. He compartmentalized it all behind a wall of focused affection when he was with her. His hands on her body were possessive, his attention absolute, making the eventual pivot believable.
The performance began on a Thursday. He was quieter during dinner, pushing spaghetti around his plate. “Everything okay?” Abbie asked, reaching for his hand. He turned his palm up to lace his fingers with hers, but his gaze was distant, fixated on the rain streaking the window. “Just a work thing. It’s getting… complicated.”
“The next Curator?” she asked, her eyes lighting with that same determined fire he’d seen in the cliffside estate.
“Different. Messier. It’s out of state.” He let a long, strained silence fill the space between them. He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, a gesture that felt like goodbye. “There’s a source. A woman. She’s in real danger, Abbie. The kind that gets people buried.”
He saw the conflict bloom on her face—concern for him, a flicker of something else at the word ‘woman’. He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay right here with you. This… us… it’s the only real thing in that whole goddamn circus out there.”
The lie was perfect, seasoned with just enough truth to be palpable. She swallowed, her green eyes shining. “You have to go.”
“I know,” he said, the reluctance in his voice a masterclass in modulation. He cupped her face, his gray eyes searching hers with an aching sincerity he’d practiced in mirror reflections. “It tears me up. But if I don’t… this source, she doesn’t have anyone else. She’s trusting me.”
The hero in her understood completely. The girl in her shattered. “When?”
“Sunday.” He kissed her, slow and deep, pouring every ounce of manufactured feeling into it. She kissed him back desperately, as if trying to imprint the sensation on his lips so he’d have to return for it.
Their last days were a curated montage of tenderness. He brought her tulips, their stems wrapped in brown paper. He made her breakfast, burning the toast. He held her so tightly in his sleep she woke with the impression of his arms still around her. It felt like love. It was the best script he’d ever written.
Sunday morning was all muted grays and the smell of last night’s rain. His suitcase, a compact black roller, stood by the door like a tombstone. Abbie leaned in the bedroom doorway, already feeling the hollowing-out ache, watching him zip a final charger into a side pocket. “You have everything?” she asked, her voice barely a scrape.
“Think so.” He straightened and looked at her, really looked, for what felt like the first time in weeks. She was wearing the sweatpants she’d stolen from him and one of his old band t-shirts. Her hair was a messy cascade from their last frantic early-morning coupling. She looked beautiful, and young, and utterly wrecked. The sight gave him no pause.
He crossed the room and took her face in both hands. “This isn’t an ending, Abigail Zhao. This is a pause.” He brushed a thumb under her eye, catching a tear that hadn’t quite fallen. “You hold down the fort here. Be smart. Keep your head down. I’ll be back before you even have time to miss me.”
She couldn’t speak, just nodded, her throat clenched tight. She wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in the familiar, fading scent of his cologne on his jacket. He held her, one hand on the back of her head, his expression over her shoulder blank, already checking the mental clock for his Uber to the airport.
They pulled apart. He smiled, a soft, wounded thing that made her chest physically hurt. He leaned in and kissed her, a final, tender pressure that tasted like coffee and goodbye. It was exquisite in its sorrow.
“Go get your story,” she whispered against his lips, forcing a brave smile of her own.
He nodded, picked up his suitcase, and walked out. The door clicked shut with a sound of profound finality. Abbie slid down the wall to the floor, the cold hardwood seeping through the sweatpants. She drew her knees up, wrapped her arms around them, and let the silent, hot tears come. She was happy for him, proud even. She would keep this broken heart to herself, a secret trophy of his dedication.
Downstairs, Milo slid into the back of the idling car. “Airport, terminal three,” he said, already pulling out his phone. He opened the encrypted folder, and the worried, beautiful face of Camilla Flores filled his screen. He felt the pleasant thrum of a new chase, a fresh puzzle. He did not look back at the apartment window.
Not once.
The car pulled away from the curb, the apartment building shrinking in the rearview until it was just another block in the grid. Milo exhaled, a long, clean breath that emptied his lungs of her perfume and the performative grief. He opened his notes app, thumb typing: Abbie - secure. Emotional investment high. Return asset if local angle needed. He saved it, tagged it, and closed the app. The city blurred into highway, then into the sterile geometry of the airport.
Over the coming weeks, Abbie moved through her life like a ghost in a borrowed shell. She went to class, took notes in neat, precise lettering, and understood nothing. The world had gone flat, muted. She’d touch the scar on her lip where he’d bitten her once, accidentally, and a wave of static would drown the professor’s voice. Her tiny apartment felt cavernous, every silence echoing with his laughter, his typing, his promises.
She was happy for him. Truly. He was doing important work, saving someone. She checked the news obsessively for his byline from Las Vegas, but there was nothing yet. The silence was part of the danger, she reasoned. He was undercover. She replayed his last kiss on a loop, the careful weight of his hands on her face. It was a precious thing to be missed by a man like that. But god, the loneliness was a physical weight, a cold stone seated just behind her sternum.
One Tuesday night, rain sheeting down her window, she sat on her floor dismantling a damaged thruster from her left gauntlet. A screwdriver slipped, gouging her thumb. She stared at the welling bead of blood, and a sob broke out of her, ugly and sudden. She cried for twenty minutes, her forehead against the cool laminate, missing the smell of his scotch, the feel of his stubble on her thigh, the way he said “Zhao” like it was a private joke. Then she wiped her face, got up, and made a cup of tea. The city’s skyline glimmered through the wet glass, indifferent.
She was adjusting the frequency dial on her compact comms unit, a device disguised as a vintage transistor radio, when the chatter crackled to life. It was usually just police bands and coded taxi dispatches. Tonight, it was a panicked, whispering voice cutting through the static. “…they have the security guard tied up in the office. They’re clearing the vault. Says there’s a kid. A night janitor. They haven’t seen him yet.”
Abbie froze, the ceramic mug halfway to her lips. The voice was female, trembling. A silent alarm callback from a jewelry exchange on 54th. The coordinates flashed in her mind’s eye. She saw the guard, the kid, the dark vault.
Her heart, a bruised and sluggish thing all week, gave one hard, professional thump. The pain in her chest didn’t vanish. It was just… compartmentalized. Shelved. Another panel in her mind lit up, cool and blue. Procedures, routes, threat assessments scrolled behind her eyes. She stood, and her movements were different. Efficient. Purposeful. The melancholy slouch was gone from her shoulders.
She walked to her closet, pushed aside a row of college sweatshirts, and pressed a hidden panel. The wall sighed open. Inside, the Mantis suit hung like a shadow, the matte black leather drinking the dim light. She touched it. It felt like coming home.
This city needed her. Even with a broken heart.
Across the country, the air in Milo’s Vegas hotel room was thick and used, smelling of sweat, spilled vodka, and Heather’s vanilla perfume. The sheets were a tangled wreck at the foot of the bed. Heather Norris lay on her stomach, her blonde hair fanning across a pillow, a contented hum vibrating in her throat as Milo’s mouth traveled the notches of her spine.
“Mmmm. God, I missed you,” she sighed, her voice slurry with pleasure and alcohol. “You just vanish. No calls for weeks. I was starting to think you’d found another… source.” She meant it as a joke.
“I’m a hard man to pin down, sweetheart,” Milo murmured against her skin, not stopping his progress. His lips were moving, but his brain was elsewhere, ticking through the logistics of tomorrow’s first contact with Flores. Heather’s skin was soft, pliant. She was enthusiastic, uncomplicated, and wonderfully gullible. A perfect reset after the intensity of Abbie’s younger, more probing attachment.
“You’re terrible,” she breathed, arching into his touch. “Stay this time. A few days. We could go to the pool. Get stupid.”
“I’d love that,” he lied, his voice a warm blanket. He kissed the dimple at the base of her spine. “But tomorrow’s chaos. An early breakfast with a contact. You know how it is.”
She did know. Or, she believed she knew. The narrative he’d given her was a simplified, sexy version of the truth—corporate corruption, a brave whistleblower, the noble reporter. He’d unloaded it over two martinis at the bar downstairs, his knee pressed against hers, his gaze making her feel like the only person in the world who understood him. It had worked flawlessly.
An hour later, she was dressed, her lipstick slightly smudged. She kissed him at the door, a deep, lingering kiss he expertly reciprocated. “Call me?” she asked, hope a fragile thing in her eyes.
“Absolutely.” He smiled, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He watched her walk down the garish hallway, her heels clicking a fading rhythm. The door clicked shut. The pleasant, vacant expression slid from his face like wiped condensation.
Silence. He walked to the minibar, poured the last miniature of bourbon into a glass, and carried it to the desk. He sat down, the chair groaning. The laptop screen flared to life, bleaching the dim room in sterile blue light.
He navigated past flight receipts, encrypted messages from Denny (who’d gone radio-silent, a fact that pricked at Milo’s professional curiosity), and preliminary financial traces. He opened the folder simply labeled ‘C.’
The photos populated the screen. Security camera stills. A grainy DMV photo. A few candid shots from what looked like a company picnic. Camilla Flores. 24. Social Work Supervisor, Urban Relief Society.
He zoomed in. The DMV photo showed wide, dark eyes that held a story even in the bureaucratic glare. He toggled to a candid. She was laughing, caught mid-gesture, a file folder in one hand. She wore a simple blouse and a pencil skirt. The fabric of the blouse strained subtly, convincingly, over a full chest. The skirt followed the generous, real curve of her hips and the swell of her ass as she turned.
Milo leaned back, sipping the bourbon. He studied the lines of her. The compassionate set of her mouth. The intelligent worry in her eyes. The palpable, physical warmth of her figure. A source. A victim. A story. A woman.
He felt the old, familiar thrill click into place, sharper than the bourbon burn. This wasn’t just a financial ledger hunt. This was human. Messy. Vulnerable. She was scared. She needed a protector, a confidant, a hero.
He could be all those things. For the story.
A slow, private smile touched his lips. He traced the outline of her hip on the glowing screen with a blunt fingertip. The complications were manifold. The dangers were real. The moral terrain was a minefield.
He took a final sip, his gray eyes reflecting the pixels of her image. This could be his most fun case yet.
The End.