Chapter 30: LISTENING IN

Chapter 30: LISTENING IN
i’d like to say finding a bug in my coat pocket didn’t make me immediately check every seam of my jeans for the same thing, but… yeah, no. I tore through my stuff like a raccoon in a dumpster, muttering words Aaron would’ve applauded if he hadn’t been banned from using them in front of our mom.

Dante didn’t waste time. He turned the bug over in his palm like it was a pebble from some murder beach and pulled out his phone. “Queens,” he said.

“That’s vague,” I replied.

“Supplier’s in Queens,” he clarified, already heading for the elevator.

“Hold on, you’re going now?”

“Yes.”

“I’m coming with you.”

He didn’t even look back. “You’re not.”

I caught up anyway, stepping into the elevator beside him. “Here’s the thing... you could physically stop me, but that would involve a fight, which would involve time, which would involve you losing the element of surprise. So…” I gestured grandly at the descending numbers. “I win.”

Dante exhaled through his nose. Which is Dante-speak for you’re a problem I can’t legally solve right now.

By the time we hit the garage, he’d stopped arguing. Rolls this time, but not the cushy “Steve’s pretending to be civilized” one... this one was leaner, darker, like it had opinions about your tax bracket.

Queens at night is its own brand of neon decay. Streetlights buzzing like they were running on dying batteries, storefronts with steel shutters half-rolled down, sidewalks littered with evidence that humans exist but don’t necessarily clean up after themselves.

The supplier’s shop looked like every secondhand electronics place I’d ever seen... crammed shelves, cables like spaghetti nests, a bell over the door that probably hadn’t worked since the Obama administration. Except the bell wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the front window was cracked and the lock on the door was hanging by a single screw.

Dante’s hand went up... silent signal. I stepped in behind him, scanning corners while he pushed the door open with the gentleness of someone who expected it to blow.

It didn’t.

The smell hit first. Not rot, not yet — but that heavy, metallic tang that says something in here is very, very wrong.

We found him behind the counter. Mid-fifties maybe, if you ignored the part where his face was slack and his body had the kind of stillness you don’t come back from.

The cash register was open, a few bills scattered on the floor. Shelves were knocked over. It screamed robbery… if you were deaf, blind, and new to crime scenes.

“This isn’t fresh,” I said quietly.

“No,” Dante replied, already glancing at the back door. “Hours old.”

I crouched down, not touching anything, just… looking. His shirt was wrinkled in a way that didn’t match the “fell here and stayed here” narrative. Like he’d been moved. Which, by the way, is not how robberies work unless the thief’s also an amateur set designer.

Dante’s phone buzzed once. He read the screen, his jaw tightening. “Cops are en route.”

“How?”

“Noise complaint. Someone called it in.”

We didn’t have time to discuss whether the caller was a helpful citizen or the guy who staged this mess. Sirens were already winding closer, the doppler whine threading through the hum of the city.

We stepped outside just as the first cruiser screeched to the curb. And because the universe has a sense of humor, guess who got out?

Mark O’Brien.

Same easy stride, same “I’ve got this” shoulders. Except this time, his gaze skipped past Dante and landed on me like he’d been expecting me to be here.

“Laura.”

“Mark.”

He glanced at Dante, then back at me. “What are you doing in Queens at eleven at night?”

“Shopping,” I said.

His eyebrows lifted.

“For listening devices.”

Mark’s mouth twitched like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or write me a ticket. “Inside.”

We followed him back into the shop. The uniforms were already fanning out, snapping photos, bagging things. The body was covered now.

“Recognize him?” Mark asked me.

“No.”

He turned to Dante. “You?”

Dante’s expression didn’t change. “No.”

Mark didn’t buy it, I could tell. Years of watching him work a room in high school told me when he thought someone was lying... the way his head tilted just slightly, like he was giving you the chance to hang yourself with your next sentence.

“This guy’s in our database,” Mark went on. “Small-time tech broker. Not clean, but not messy enough to make a list. He moved specialized hardware... listening equipment, cameras, jammers.”

My stomach tightened.

Mark looked at me again. “Sound familiar?”

I didn’t answer. He didn’t need me to.

One of the uniforms waved him over, murmuring something low. Mark’s eyes flicked to me, then to Dante, then back to me. “Step outside with me for a second.”

The night air felt colder now. Mark leaned against the hood of his cruiser, arms crossed. “I’ll make this quick because I know he’s...” he nodded toward the shop “...probably reporting my every word to Freeman.”

“Dante doesn’t...” I started, then stopped. Yeah, he probably did.

Mark went on. “I need to know if Steve knew this man.”

“Why?”

“Because your bug supplier here didn’t get hit at random. This wasn’t a robbery. Someone wanted him gone. And that someone knew exactly what his connection was… to you.”

I crossed my arms. “Which is through the bug. Which you’re implying connects back to Steve.”

“I’m not implying,” Mark said, and now his voice was that low, deliberate cop tone. “I’m asking. Did Steve know him?”

“I don’t...”

Mark cut me off by pulling out his phone, tapping the screen, and holding it so I could see.

Surveillance footage. Grainy, black-and-white, date stamp from a year ago.

Steve Freeman. Standing in the very same shop. Shaking hands with the man now lying under a police tarp.

The image froze there between us, and for the first time in a long while, I didn’t have a single sarcastic thing to say.