Page 85 of The Final Cut

That should make me smile, but it’s like my mouth doesn’t remember how.

I pull back and look her over. No burns. No soot except a smear near her jaw. No blood.

“What happened?”

Her face crumples a little before she gets control of it. “Alarm company called. I’m still on the emergency contact list from the last time I helped Shiloh with vendor invoices, because apparently none of you criminals understand paperwork. I got here before the trucks.” She looks at the building, throat working. “There was smoke coming from the back. Not a lot at first. Then a lot.”

Shiloh’s eyes close. Just once. When they open, whatever was in them is gone.

“Staff?” he asks.

“Gone before it started,” Sonny says. “There were no customers, no…clients. No one inside.”

The relief that moves through the men is silent and violent.

Nash nods toward the building. “Source?”

Ever answers from the curb. “Back hallway. Storage area outside the old VIP corridor. Sprinklers caught it fast. Fire department says mostly smoke damage, some heat damage along the rear wall.”

“Accidental?” I ask, though the answer is already standing in the smoke with us, draped in pearls.

A muscle jumps in Ever’s jaw. “No.”

Deacon’s gaze moves to the blackened edge of the rear alley door visible through the narrow gap between buildings. “Isabel.”

The name falls flat on the sidewalk. No drama. No surprise. Just another fact we have to survive.

Nash releases Shiloh’s arm. “We need to get inside.”

The firefighter objects for about eight seconds.

Nash handles it with his wallet, his name, and the cold authority of a man who makes people abandon policies they believed in moments before. We are allowed through the front door in a small group, masks pressed into our hands, warnings delivered and ignored with varying levels of politeness.

Inside, Noir looks bruised.

That’s the word my mind chooses, and it sticks.

The bar looks relatively untouched…just wet and faintly dirty. The bar still gleams beneath streaks of dirty water. Tables stand where they belong, chairs stacked on top from closing, leather seating dark and damp.

Everything smells wrong.

The air is wet and charred, thick enough to taste. I pull the mask higher over my nose and still cough.

Shiloh looks around the room like he’s counting wounds.

His fingers brush the back of a chair as he passes it, then the edge of the bar, then a leather booth. Small touches. Quiet ones. I remember him here with music low and wicked, smile bright, body loose, making the whole room feel like a secret he was letting me in on.

Tonight he looks like the secret got kicked in the ribs.

Ever heads for the hall with Deacon. Nash follows. I go too because nobody tells me not to fast enough.

The damage worsens past the main bar.

The back corridor is blackened near the baseboards, smoke crawling up the walls in ugly fingers. Water drips from the ceiling in steady little ticks. A storage room door hangs open, its frame blistered, boxes inside soaked and collapsed. The smell is sharper back here. Accelerant, maybe. I know that from television and bad nights and the way Deacon’s mouth flattens when he crouches near a scorched patch of floor.

Shiloh stops beside me.

“Could’ve been worse,” he says.