Thirty Seconds Ago

The photo arrives at 11:42 p.m., and the worst part is the angle.

It's you. Right now. Behind the DJ booth on the roof of Low Tide, shirt open at the collar, one hand on the mixer, the other lifting a glass of something pink that Simone swore was mostly fruit. The skyline of Brickell glows behind you like a jewelry case. You're laughing at something. You don't remember what.

You do remember the moment. It was thirty seconds ago.

Under the photo, a single line:

Tell Celia to stay quiet.

The bass drops. Three hundred people scream in delight. You stand in the middle of the noise with your phone in your hand and the hair rising on your arms, and you turn around very slowly to look at the dark water of Biscayne Bay, because the photo was taken from behind you, and behind you there's nothing but the railing and thirty-one floors of air.

No. Not nothing. The tower across the street. Forty floors of balconies, half of them lit.

"Ethan!" Simone shoves through the crowd with two bottles of champagne held over her head like trophies. Gold hoops, gold eyeshadow, the patience of a woman who has carried this bar on her back for three years. "The Quintero party wants sparklers. I told them if they set my awning on fire, I'm setting them on fire. Why do you look like that?"

You turn the phone toward her.

Her face does a thing you've never seen it do. "Okay," she says. "Okay. That's not funny."

"It's not a joke."

"Who's Celia to them? Your mom?"

"Everyone knows who Celia is to them." Your mother's name is on four cranes at the Port of Miami. It's on the side of the hospital wing where you were born. It is, technically, on the lease for this bar, which is the only reason you and Simone could afford the roof.

"Call the police," Simone says.

"And say what? Someone took a picture of me at my own party?"

"Someone took a picture of you from over there." She points at the tower. "In the dark. And sent it to your private number."

You don't have an answer for that. You're scanning balconies, counting lit windows, feeling stupid and exposed, when the crowd near the elevators changes shape.

It parts. Not because anyone is pushing. Because people are turning to look.

A woman is walking through your bar.

She's in black from her collar to her boots, a plain jacket over a plain shirt, nothing that should work at a party where everyone is wearing sequins and money. It works anyway. It works so well that a man at the high-tops stops talking mid-sentence and forgets to start again. She has dark hair pulled into a low knot, a face that belongs on the side of a building in Paris, all cheekbone and serious mouth, and a thin pale scar cutting through her left eyebrow like someone tried to edit her and gave up.

She isn't looking at anyone staring at her. She's looking at the exits. Then the tower across the street. Then you.

She walks straight to the DJ booth.

"Ethan Prado," she says. Not a question. Her voice is low and even, a Miami voice with the edges filed off.

"Depends who's asking."

"Morgan Reyes. Halyard Executive Protection." She holds out a card without breaking eye contact. You don't take it. She doesn't seem bothered. "You got a text two minutes ago."

Your stomach drops. "How do you know that?"

"Because your mother got one too. Same photo." Her eyes flick to the tower again, cool and measuring. "We're leaving. Now."

"We're not doing anything. I don't know you. This is my bar."

"I know it's your bar."

"It's our season opener."

"I know that too."

"So you can go tell my mother, wherever she is, that I'm not getting into a car with a stranger because she panicked about a text." You say it louder than you mean to. A few people look over. Simone is making the face she makes when a customer is about to get cut off. It's not clear which of you it's aimed at.

Morgan Reyes considers you the way you'd consider a wet floor sign.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay?"

"Then I'll stay." She steps behind the booth, into the narrow space between you and the railing, so that she's standing with her back to the bay and her body between you and the open dark. She doesn't touch you. She doesn't need to. "Play your music."

"You can't just stand there."

"Watch me."

You hate her. It's immediate and clean, like stepping on glass. You've had nannies who reported to your mother and drivers who reported to your mother and a college roommate who, it turned out, also reported to your mother, and you know the look of someone who has been paid to manage you. You know it in your bones.

You put on your headphones and turn your back on her.

You last ninety seconds.

Then the lights go out.

Not the music. The music dies with them, a wet electric gulp, and the whole roof drops into the dark. The skyline is still lit. The tower across the street is still lit. Only Low Tide has gone black, three hundred people suddenly blind and laughing nervously, someone shouting phones, phones, little white flashlights blooming everywhere like a field of jumpy stars.

A hand closes on your upper arm. Firm. Not hard.

"It's me," Morgan says, right at your ear. "Stairwell. Walk with me. Don't run."

"The generator should kick in, it's just..."

"It's not just. Walk."

Something in her voice gets past your pride before your pride can stop it. You walk. She steers you through the crowd with her body angled half in front of yours, though you've got a few inches on her, moving people out of the way with a hand on a shoulder, a murmured excuse me, a calm that makes everyone part for her without knowing why. The stairwell door is propped open with a fire extinguisher, and the stairs are lit green by emergency bulbs.

She lets go of your arm on the landing. Checks above. Checks below.

"Down," she says. "I'm behind you. If I say stop, you stop."

Thirty-one floors. Your legs burn by twenty. She doesn't breathe hard once. At the twelfth floor a door bangs somewhere above you and she goes still, one hand lifting, and you stop without being told, because the hush in her body is louder than any order.

Footsteps. Then a man's voice yelling about the breaker panel. Maintenance.

She lowers her hand. "Keep going."

At the lobby she takes you out the side door to a black SUV idling in the loading bay. She opens the back door. You stand on the curb in the hot wet night, breathing hard, music still ringing in your ears.

"Get in, or don't," she says. "But if you don't, I'm sleeping on that curb."

You get in.

She drives like she breathes: no wasted motion. Brickell Avenue slides past, wet and neon. You find your voice somewhere around the bridge.

"How long has my mother been paying you?"

"She signed the contract three days ago." Her eyes meet yours in the rearview mirror. Brown, you think, then a streetlight catches them and they're gold. "You were supposed to be told yesterday."

"By who?"

"By her." A pause. "She said you'd take it better coming from her. I said you wouldn't take it well from anyone."

"You don't know me."

"I read your file."

"I have a file?"

"Everyone has a file." She signals, changes lanes. "Yours is longer than most."

You open your mouth to tell her exactly what she can do with your file, and your phone buzzes in your lap.

Unknown number.

A new photo. Taken from across the loading bay, grainy and green with night. A black SUV. Your face in the back window. Morgan's profile at the wheel.

Nice bodyguard.