Mickey decided she hated the word serenity before the gates even finished closing behind the limo. It looked like a boutique resort, trimmed hedges, white stone paths, windows that caught the late afternoon and turned it into something expensive. The kind of place where people paid extra to pretend they didn’t need anything.

A fountain trickled in the courtyard as it had never heard a siren in its life. Mickey pressed her forehead to the tinted glass and watched the landscaping slide to a halt. Her hands still felt like they were shaking even when they weren’t. Somewhere in her mouth, the sour ghost of last night’s tequila clung to her tongue like a punishment that wouldn’t finish.

“You sure you don’t want me to come in with you?” the driver asked. He wasn’t really a driver. He was a bouncer in a clean button-down, which somehow made the whole thing worse. Rodrigo from the Velvet Halo. Rodrigo, who’d carried her out of a bathroom stall more times than she could count, who’d once told a guy twice her size to stop grabbing dancers like they were souvenirs.

“If you come in,” Mickey said, “I’ll feel like I’m being dropped off at preschool.” Rodrigo snorted. “Preschool doesn’t do pat-downs.”