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Chapter 45:

– John Welles –

It was around six in the evening. We’d crossed back into Night City about an hour earlier, and Panam had just pulled her bullet-riddled Thorton into the lot behind El Coyote Cojo. A few minutes later I was in a booth on the first floor. 

Panam was at the bar getting our drinks.

The Coyote was filling up the way it always did around then. Day-shift workers were coming off the line, a couple of Valentinos were nursing beers in the corner, and old men who’d been sitting on the same stools since before I was born were arguing over a game on the screen above the register. 

It was home. And a woman like Panam stood out in it.

She had one boot up on the brass rail and both elbows on the counter, leaning across to make herself heard over the music while Pepe made a show of not noticing how close she’d gotten. 

The cropped nomad jacket rode up when she leaned, and her jeans had obviously been through the Badlands and fit her like it. She laughed at something Pepe said and I watched three separate conversations at the bar die in the middle of a sentence.

Half the guys in the place had found a reason to look at her ass. One of the line workers had turned all the way around on his stool and wasn’t even pretending otherwise.

“You’re one of them, you know.” Cortana was sitting on the bench beside me, visible to nobody but me. 

I’m not staring, I thought. I’m assessing the room.

“You’re assessing her room. Eyes on the actual room, please.”

I made a point of looking around the bar instead, and what I saw almost made me laugh. The guy on the stool had a friend now, an older man with a mustache who’d leaned over and muttered something in his ear. Whatever he said, the kid’s eyes cut to me in the booth. He went a little pale, spun back around to face his beer, and stayed that way.

Nobody was going to bother her. They’d all seen her walk in with me, and in Mama Welles’s bar that made her off-limits. 

A month ago I’d been the quiet Welles boy in an Arasaka uniform, the one everybody assumed would end up a desk-jockey corpo. Now people in Heywood said my name the way they said Jackie’s, only a little more quietly. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

“You should feel fine about it,” Cortana said, softer now. “You earned it.” 

The front doors swung open and David walked in, still in his mom’s yellow jacket. He was moving a little stiffly, like the Sandevistan hangover hadn’t completely let go of him yet. I waved. His face split into a grin, and he crossed the room and slid into the booth across from me.

“Sup, choom? What’s going on?”

I felt a twinge of guilt looking at him, with his mother’s jacket on his shoulders and his mother in my bed the night before. I pushed it down. “Nothing big. Just wanted to hang out for a bit and see how you’re doing. And I want to introduce you to someone new.”

“I’m fine.” He shook his head, and his grin slipped. “I just wish I’d done more on that gig. I ran, John. You got blown through a window and I just...”

“Hey.” I shook my head. “Don’t do that.”

David’s eyes stayed down on the table. He was picking at a scratch in the varnish with his thumbnail, the same scratch Jackie had made with a bottle opener when he was twelve. Mama never let anyone sand it out.

“I mean it,” I said. “Jackie told me what happened at that corner. Four Voodoo Boys came out of nowhere, and their netrunner had him on the ground screaming before anybody could draw. You know what he said about you?”

David shrugged, but his thumb stopped moving.

“He said one second he was trying to remember his own name, and the next there were two dead Voodoo Boys on the pavement and you were standing over them with my shotgun.” I leaned in. “V was there. Lucy was there. If that netrunner had finished with Jackie, who do you think he’d have gone for next? You saved my brother’s life back there, David. Probably V’s and Lucy’s too.”

“I still ran.” His voice came out low and rough. “You went through a window, and I just let Jackie drag me off like...”

“Like a guy who’d just burned his Sandevistan twice in five minutes and was about to get shot if he stood still,” I said. “Jackie pulled you out because you were spent, and he was right. If you’d come charging across that street after me, you’d have died in the middle of it, and then I’d have had to explain that to your mom.” I let that sit for a second. “Running isn’t the same as quitting. You ran, you got your legs back, and then you stood in front of my family when it counted. That’s not nothing. That’s plenty.”

“Good,” Cortana murmured beside me. She’d unfolded her arms. “That was very good.”

David finally looked up. Under the cocky grin he’d been wearing when he walked in, he looked tired. He was seventeen and had seen too much in one night, and he was trying very hard not to show either.

I held his eyes so he’d know I meant it. “Thank you, choom. Seriously.”

For a second he didn’t seem to know what to do with that. His mouth opened, then closed. Then he sat up straighter, rolled his shoulders back in his mother’s yellow jacket, and tried to look casual about it. He failed completely. The pride was all over his face, spreading from ear to ear.

“Yeah, well,” he said, his voice cracking a little, and he cleared his throat. “Somebody’s gotta keep the Welles boys alive, right, boss?”

“Don’t call me boss.”

“Sure thing, boss.” He sat up straighter and tried to look casual, but the pride was all over his face. After that, it didn’t take long after that for David’s eyes to drift back toward the bar. He went quiet for a moment, then asked the obvious question. “So... who’s she?”

I followed his gaze to Panam, still leaning over the counter, and bit back a grin.

I’d seen that look before, at the Afterlife, about a week ago. First Claire, now Panam. I was starting to notice a pattern with David and older women.

“You’re one to talk.” Cortana vanished and settled into the bench across from me, right next to David, who had no idea she was there. She’d propped her chin on one hand, and she was giving me the look she saved for moments when she’d already won an argument I hadn’t started yet.

That’s different, I thought.

“Is it? Let’s count your girlfriends’ ages together. Out loud. I’ll wait.” She held up one finger. “V. Older than you.” A second finger. “Lucy. Older than you.” A third, and her smile sharpened. “And as of last night, a woman whose son is currently sitting across from you, drooling over a nomad in your mother’s bar. Who, by the way, you were also staring at the first time you saw her.” She leaned toward me across the table, blue light catching the edge of David’s sleeve without him noticing. “Face it, John. You two have exactly the same type. The only difference is that yours keeps saying yes.”

I wanted to argue, realized I didn’t have a single point on my side, and gave up.

Across from me, David let out a long breath and murmured, “Damn,” to nobody in particular.

“See?” Cortana said. “Same type. It’s adorable.”

Panam pushed off the bar and turned around with two beers in her hands, then started toward us. She hesitated for half a step when she saw David in the booth, then her face cleared. I’d told her on the drive in that I was meeting a choom. She slid onto the bench beside me, set one bottle in front of me, and kept the other.

“David, this is Panam,” I said. “Panam, this is David, my choom. He’s on my crew.”

“Hmm. Your crew, huh?” Panam took a slow pull of her beer and studied him over the bottle the way she’d probably size up a used car. Then she put her elbows on the table and leaned in, close enough that David had to choose between holding her eyes and looking anywhere else. “So what do you do on this crew, David?”

“I, uh... I’m... I go fast,” David managed. His ears had turned bright red. “Like, really fast. I have a... there’s a thing in my spine.”

Panam’s mouth curved. “Fast, huh? Good to know.”

David made a small, strangled sound and grabbed for the drink menu like it might save him.

The menu didn’t save David. After a few seconds of staring blankly at the laminated page, he gave up and looked at me instead, wide-eyed and pleading. He might as well have sent up a flare.

I didn’t help him. I picked up the beer Panam had set in front of me and took a long, slow sip, holding his gaze the whole time.

David’s expression went from pleading to betrayed.

“That’s mean,” Cortana said but didn't disprove. She was enjoying herself. 

David finally cleared his throat, and tried to sound casual. “So what are you doing in Night City?”

It was a perfectly normal question. 

Panam reacted as though he’d asked about her ex. She picked up her bottle, tipped her head back, and drained the rest of her beer in one long swallow. I watched her throat work through every swallow. I could tell because Cortana kicked my shin under the table.

Panam set the empty bottle down a little too hard. The thunk turned a couple of heads at the bar before they remembered whose booth this was and turned back around. She wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist and stared at the bottle for a second, as if it had personally let her down.

“Work,” she said finally. “Or I’m supposed to be here for work. My clan rolled into California a year early. Contracts back east dried up, and some other clan started pushing into our territory, looking for a fight we couldn’t afford. So Saul packed everybody up and brought us out here, and now we’re parked in the Badlands with no eddies and no contacts.” She spun the empty bottle slowly on the table. “So I came into the city to find work...”

“That’s...” David hesitated. “That’s actually really cool. Like, for your family.”

Panam’s mouth softened a fraction. “Yeah, well. It would be.” The softness vanished. “Except that bitch Rogue at the Afterlife is trying to screw me over.”

David choked on nothing. Someone was calling the Queen of the Afterlife a bitch out loud in Night City, and the ceiling hadn’t fallen in.

“She won’t give me a real contract,” Panam went on, oblivious to the fact that she’d just insulted my grandmother to my face. She held up a finger. “Not one solo gig. Doesn’t matter that I’ve been driving since I could reach the pedals, or that I’ve run convoys through territory that’d make your city gangs cry for their mamas.” A second finger came up. “She looks me up and down like I’m some kid who wandered in off the highway and tells me I’ve got to audition.”

She put a sneer on the word that would have stripped paint.

“Ride along as wheelwoman for some random merc crew I’ve never met,” she went on, getting louder. “Some new outfit she won’t even name. And if they don’t like me? I’m out. No more gigs, no more Afterlife, go find another fixer, sweetie.” She snorted and slumped back against the booth, arms crossed under her chest. “Like I’m a used car on a lot. Test drive with no obligation.”

“She has no idea,” Cortana said, practically vibrating with glee beside David. “She’s been sitting next to the test-drive committee for an hour.”

I kept my face very still and drank my beer.

Then Panam turned her head toward me, and the scowl melted. She shifted on the bench so her knee bumped mine, just once, and gave me a slow, playful smirk. “Honestly?” she said. “I’d much rather work with your crew. If that’s on the table.”

I let the question hang a moment longer than I needed to. I gave Panam a long, teasing look over the rim of my bottle, watched her eyebrows climb, and then turned to David as if she weren’t there at all.

“She’s a decent driver,” I told him.

“Decent?” Panam came off the backrest like I’d slapped her. She scoffed so hard her elbow clipped the empty bottle, and she snatched it out of the air on reflex before it could topple. “I outran three Wraith cars this afternoon in a Thorton that weighs more than this building,” she said. “With a busted rear axle, and I nearly took out some idiot who was riding in the middle of the road.”

“That was me,” I said. “I was the idiot.”

“And I drove you all the way into the city with half the windows shot out and the steering pulling left the whole way.” She jabbed a finger at my chest. “I’m the best damn driver in my clan, choom.”

“So,” Cortana said, drawing the word out. “Are you going to tell her, or should I start a timer?”

Something apologetic and a little sheepish must have crept into my expression, because Panam’s smirk faltered. She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “What’s with the face?”

…A couple of minutes later, I had finished telling Panam that I was the guy who would be giving her the test drive. 

She stared at me for a solid three seconds without blinking. Her mouth fell open a little, and then a little more. I could practically watch her rewinding the last ten minutes.  “You!” she said finally. “You’re the random merc crew!?”

“I prefer ‘up-and-coming,’” I said. “But yeah.”

“Look at her face,” Cortana said, leaning across the table. She was glowing with delight. “I’m saving this picture. I’m saving this forever.”

Panam’s jaw worked. A dozen expressions crossed her face one after another—disbelief, embarrassment, suspicion, and something calculating. Then she landed on—indignant—and I knew what was coming about half a second too late.

She punched me in the shoulder.

Of course it was the left one that wasn’t 100% yet. “Ow. Why does everybody go for that one?”

“You let me sit here,” Panam said, jabbing a finger at me. “You let me sit here and run my mouth for an hour. You drove into the city with me, you bought me a beer...”

“You bought the beer,” I told her.

“...and you didn’t say one word.” She pressed her lips together hard. Her cheeks were going pink, and I was pretty sure she’d kill me if I pointed it out. “Real cute, Welles. Real cute.”

“I told you I led a crew,” I pointed out.

“You didn’t tell me you were the crew Rogue was dumping me on!” she hissed.

“I didn’t know until we got back to Night City and I could get text messages again.”

She narrowed her eyes as if she couldn’t decide whether to believe me. Then she grabbed her empty bottle, slid out of the booth, and stood up with her long legs and wounded pride. “I’m gonna wait outside,” she announced with as much dignity as she could gather. “We still gotta take my ride to this Miguel guy before the frame rusts out from all the bullet holes.” She pointed at me one more time. “And you and me? We’re gonna have a talk about this test drive.” She turned on her heel and stalked off toward the door. She didn’t look back.

David’s eyes followed Panam all the way to the door.

He wasn’t subtle about it. He turned his whole head, the way Jackie did when a nice car rolled past the Coyote, and his gaze dropped and stayed there until she pushed through the doors and out into the evening. Then he realized his mouth was hanging open, shut it, turned back to the table, and found me watching him.

I smirked.

“What?” David said, much too fast. “I wasn’t...”

I kept smirking. “...Didn’t say you were.”

“I was looking at the door.” he tried to say.

“It’s a great door,” I agreed. “Mama had it custom painted.”

David scowled and rubbed the back of his neck, the tips of his ears still red. To recover, he twisted around in the booth and peered through the grimy front window toward the lot. Through the neon haze, Panam’s Thorton sat under a buzzing streetlight like something that had crawled out of a war. The bodywork was so pocked with bullet holes it looked like someone had gone at it with a giant cheese grater, and the roof turret’s barrel was still pointed sideways at a drunken angle.

“Hey, is that her ride?” David asked. “The Thorton Warhorse that looks shot to shit?”

I nodded. “That’s the one.”

“Damn.” He leaned closer to the glass. “What happened to it?”

“She and I had a run-in with some Wraiths out in the Badlands.” I took another pull from my beer and shrugged. “They won’t be a problem anymore.”

David turned back slowly and gave me the look he’d been giving me more and more lately. It was half hero worship and half honest concern for my sanity. “You went out of the city to do... what, exactly?”

Visit my secret mountain lab where my AI girlfriend is reverse-engineering a Blackwall-proof cyberdeck, then go hiking and find tiger tracks. “Errands…”

“Errands,” David repeated flatly. “You ran errands and ended up in a shootout with the Wraiths, and then you rescued a hot nomad.” He shook his head and let out a laugh that was mostly disbelief. “Your life is crazy, choom. Like, seriously crazy.”

I couldn’t argue with him there. And it kept getting weirder. “Yeah,” I admitted. “It kind of is.”

“Kind of?” Cortana scoffed.

I set the bottle down. “Speaking of which, you coming over for dinner tonight?”

David’s face lit up for half a second, then dimmed. “I gotta ask my mom first. She’s been weird about me going out since Pacifica. Like, watching me sleep weird.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I waved him off and was already sliding out of the booth before I’d fully thought it through. “I’ll talk to her for you. She’s probably in the back.”

Cortana gave me a look of annoyance that I ignored. 

David went outside, wanting to see Panam’s ride up close. 

I headed past Pepe and entered the storerooms. 

I found Gloria in the back, in the narrow aisle between the dry goods and the walk-in cooler. She was up on her toes with a case of Mama’s dried guajillos balanced on one hip, trying to wedge it onto a shelf that was clearly a few inches too high for her. 

She hadn’t heard me come in. I took the case off her hip before she could drop it, slid it onto the shelf one-handed, and wrapped my arms around her waist from behind.

She went rigid. For half a second I felt eight years of MeatWagon reflexes kick in, and her elbow started back toward my ribs. Then she caught my reflection in the cooler’s steel door and let out a breath, half a laugh and half a gasp. 

Her whole body relaxed back into mine. “Dios, John,” she breathed. “You scared me half to death.”

“Sorry.” I wasn’t, really. I held her closer.

She fit against me perfectly. The Coyote’s work uniform was a black skirt and a fitted top that Mama swore was practical, and I was beginning to suspect Gloria had continued to wear the size down on purpose. Maybe it was for better tips, or maybe for me? 

The skirt rode snug over her hips, and her ass settled right against my crotch. She had to feel exactly what that did to me, because she drew in a sharp little breath and pressed back for one slow, deliberate second before she caught herself.

“John.” She glanced at the swinging door, and her hands came up to cover mine where they rested on her stomach. She didn’t push them away. She just held them there. “We can’t. Not here. David’s right out there. I just saw him.”

“He’s not out there,” I said, though I felt the same guilt prick at me. I’d sat across from her son minutes ago, thanking him for saving my brother’s life and teasing him about checking out women. Now I had my arms around his mother in a storeroom. “He went outside to look at a car.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s the part of this situation that’s bothering her,” Cortana said dryly from somewhere behind my eyes. She hadn’t bothered to project. I could feel her there anyway, arms crossed, radiating annoyance. “Permission was granted. Supervision was not waived.”

I ignored her.

“What car?” Gloria asked.

“That’s actually why I came back here.” I rested my chin on her shoulder, and she leaned her cheek without seeming to realize she’d done it. “I made a new friend today. She’s a nomad, and Rogue thinks she might be a good fit for the crew as our driver. So maybe a new member.” I turned my head slightly, my lips close to her ear. “I wanted to know if you and David want to come over to our place for dinner tonight. Mama’s cooking. Everybody’s going to be there. I’d like you to meet her.”

I bent my head and kissed the back of her neck, just below where her dark hair was pinned up for work. Her skin was warm and tasted faintly of salt and whatever floral lotion she’d put on that morning.

Gloria moaned and her fingers tightened on my hands. For a second she tilted her head to give me more room, and I took it, trailing another slow kiss along the side of her neck.

Then she exhaled shakily and made herself straighten. “No,” she said, and she sounded genuinely sorry. “I can’t tonight. I... actually have plans.”

There was something careful in how she said it. It was a little too light, like a detail she’d decided not to share. When I drew back far enough to look at her face in the steel door’s reflection, she was smiling to herself, a small, private smile that she was trying to hide.

“Plans?” I repeated.

“Mm-hm.” She didn’t elaborate. She patted my hand like she was soothing a patient. “But maybe tomorrow?”

“She’s hiding something,” Cortana said, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t like it when people hide things in our general vicinity. That’s my job.”

I didn’t push. Whatever she was hiding, she’d tell me when she was ready, or she wouldn’t. Either way, she didn’t owe me an explanation. 

I eased my arms loose around her waist to show I’d let it go.

Gloria noticed. Something in her face softened in the steel reflection, as if my letting it go meant more to her than the hug had.

She turned in my arms. It was slow and careful. She was very aware of the swinging door and the bar beyond it, and of the fact that her son was somewhere outside admiring a bullet-riddled Thorton. Her hands slid up my chest to my shoulders. She rose onto her toes, and her eyes searched mine for a moment.

Then she kissed me.

She took her time with it, her lips soft and warm, tasting faintly of the coffee she must have had on her break. Her fingers curled into the back of my shirt. I slid one hand to the small of her back and the other up into her hair, pulling a few dark strands loose from her pins. She sighed into my mouth in a contented sound that I felt more than heard.

She pulled back first, but not far. Her forehead rested against my chin, and her breath was a little uneven.

She stepped back, smoothed her skirt over her hips, and tried to tuck the loose strands of hair back into place with mixed success. Her cheeks were flushed. She took a breath, put on the brisk, professional face she probably used to wear in the back of an ambulance, and pointed at the door.

“Go. Before Guadalupe comes in here and finds me with you instead of the guajillos.” Then, quieter, almost shy, “And tell David he’s home by ten. I mean it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She swatted my arm and I grinned as I pushed back through the swinging door into the noise of the bar.

– Panam –

Panam could admit she was paranoid. Out on the road, you had to be. Paranoia was the reason the Aldecaldos still had all their trucks, why Mitch still had both his hands, and why Panam herself had made it to twenty-something without ending up a Wraith’s hood ornament. You checked your mirrors, you counted the exits, and you never trusted something that looked too good. 

That went double for something that looked too good and showed up exactly when you needed it.

So as she nursed the battered Thorton through the Heywood streets, glancing at the faint pull in the steering every few blocks, Panam took the last six hours apart piece by piece, the same way she’d take apart a rattle in an engine.

There was John Welles, riding in the middle of an abandoned town at the exact moment three Wraith cars came screaming in behind her. He’d killed a netrunner from fifty meters with a pistol, ripped a car door off its hinges like it was wet cardboard, and thrown it hard enough to fold a man in half. 

Then he’d turned out to be the leader of the “random merc crew” Rogue had been so smug about dumping her on.

If anyone had told her that story around a campfire, she’d have called bullshit and thrown a beer can at them.

She cut her eyes sideways. He was slouched in the passenger seat with his arm propped on the window frame, watching the neon go by as though nothing in the world was wrong. 

Was it a setup? Had Rogue planted him out at Rocky Ridge to see how she handled herself? It would also have meant Rogue had somehow arranged the Wraith ambush, and that seemed like a lot of effort for a job interview, even for the Queen of the Afterlife. 

And the look on his face when he’d confessed in the Coyote hadn’t been a performance. 

At the same time, coincidences did happen. Panam knew that too. You could drive a thousand miles of empty highway, blow a tire in the one spot where an old friend happened to be parked, and spend the next hour laughing about it.

Still. The thing with John being that crew, the timing, the way they’d met, all of it felt very weird.

That was like some fate shit right there. 

Panam scowled at the windshield and tried not to think about it.

The problem was that she liked him.

He was a very nice young man, especially for a city boy. Most city boys she’d met were all mouth and chrome. They wanted to tell you about their implants or their gangs or the deal they were about to close, and they looked at a nomad woman like she was either a curiosity or an easy lay. 

John hadn’t done either. He offered her a place to stay with no strings attached, and gone red when he’d told her she was sexy. Then he’d gone even redder explaining that he wasn’t trying anything because he already had girlfriends, plural, like he was confessing to a minor parking violation.

He was very handsome, too. He had good shoulders and a strong jaw she’d caught herself looking at more than once, and those blue eyes. And he was charming and kind in a way that seemed to come out of him before he’d decided whether it was a good idea.

Ugh! That was the worst part. Younger, reliable men were a big turn-on for her. Panam had a type. The men in the clan were either family, too old, or exes she’d already outgrown. Out here, a man you could count on was rarer than clean water.

And he’d already mentioned he was taken. Multiple times over.

Panam let out a long breath through her nose and flexed her hands on the wheel.

The good ones always were.

…In her abused car, they finally pulled up to a small auto shop in Heywood.

David and John climbed out of the Thorton with her. David practically fell out of the back seat, where he’d spent the whole drive pressed against a door that no longer had a working window. 

The shop wasn’t much to look at from the outside. It was a squat, two-bay garage tucked between a laundromat and a taco stand, with a hand-painted sign above the roll-up door that read MIGUEL’S in faded red and gold. 

But the inside told a different story. 

Panam’s eyes went straight past the grime to what mattered. There was a hydraulic lift in good repair and a wall of tools hung on pegboard and outlined in marker, so you’d know if one went missing. In the second bay sat a half-finished lowrider, gleaming candy-apple red, its engine bay laid open like a surgical patient. A votive candle to the Virgin of Guadalupe flickered on the workbench beside a coffee can full of bolts.

It was a real shop, then. The kind where someone actually cared.

David was already wandering, turning in a slow circle as though he’d walked into a cathedral. He stopped in front of the lowrider and stared. His hand drifted toward the fender like it wanted to touch it and only barely remembered not to.

Boys and cars, Panam thought, fighting a smile. They were all the same, every one of them.

Then she caught herself leaning toward the open engine bay to see what kind of manifold the guy was running, and she snorted at herself. Who was she kidding? She loved fixing cars too. She’d learned to change oil before she learned to read. Some of her happiest memories were of lying on a creeper under her father’s truck in the desert heat, handing up wrenches, covered in grease and sweat.

A man came out of the back, wiping his hands on a rag. He was Latino with a gray-streaked mustache and forearms covered in old burn scars. His face lit up when he saw John.

“John Welles? Don’t tell me you already crashed that Cthulhu I just fixed—”

Then his eyes landed on the Thorton behind them, and he stopped dead.

He actually gasped. He walked over to it slowly, taking in the bullet holes stitched across the side panels, the shattered windows and the dented, crooked turret on the roof. He reached out and laid a hand gently on the hood.

“Ay, Dios mío,” he whispered. “What did they do to you, hermosa?”

Panam’s chest warmed despite herself. Any mechanic who talked to a car like that was all right in her book.

“Miguel,” John said, stepping up beside him. “This is Panam. It’s her ride. I need it taken care of, the whole thing, and I’ll pay extra if you can get it done fast.”

Panam’s head snapped toward him. He’d said it on the drive. She’d heard him. But part of her had filed it under things city boys say to impress girls. And now he was just doing it, without fuss or any kind of look in her direction asking for gratitude, as if paying for a stranger’s repairs was the same as picking up a check for coffee.

Her face went hot. Her pride rose up first. Don’t let him. You’re not a charity case. You don’t owe some city kid a thing, and you’re not about to start. The Aldecaldos didn’t take handouts. They earned what they had, and when they couldn’t earn it, they took it, but they never begged for it.

Then the practical part of her quietly pointed out that the clan’s war chest was down to fumes. The Thorton was her only way to get any real work. She had exactly four hundred and twelve eddies to her name, and fixing a turret mount alone would eat three times that.

She’d be a damned fool to turn this down.

Panam crossed her arms, and said nothing. That would have to count as accepting.

Miguel was still circling the Thorton, muttering under his breath in Spanish about armor plating and alignment and pinche Wraiths. 

John hesitated. Then he leaned in toward Miguel and lowered his voice. “Also, um... I’m gonna need some help fixing Jackie’s Arch.”

Miguel straightened up so fast his back cracked. “The Arch?” He stared at John. “Jackie’s Arch? Mijo, I just fixed that bike yesterday. What happened to it?”

Panam watched John’s face go through about four different stages of mortification, one after the other. He looked at the floor, the ceiling and the lowrider, anywhere but at Miguel.  “...Wraiths?” he offered weakly.

Miguel covered his face with both hands.

Panam bit her lip hard to keep from laughing. It didn’t work. The laugh came out of her as an undignified snort. 

David turned around from the lowrider at the sound, grinning, and that only made it worse.

– V –

V, Lucy, and Rebecca had all completed ‘their gig’. 

Well, it wasn’t really a gig from a fixer, considering they were just stealing chemicals so Cortana could turn them into more amazing badasses like the love of her life, John, but close enough. 

All of the stolen chemicals were in the trunk of their also-stolen car, which they’d be ditching soon enough. 

The van rolled to a stop in front of the crumbling Watson apartment block that Rebecca shared with her brother. Somebody had spray-painted a lopsided smiley face with X’s for eyes on the front door, which V decided was probably Rebecca’s work.

Rebecca kicked the door open before the van had fully stopped and hopped out onto the sidewalk with a grin. She looked like she’d crawled out of a chimney. Soot streaked her cheeks and forearms, and her green hair had gone gray at the tips. 

She’d started yet another fire. 

V had specifically asked her not to poison another district, and to Rebecca’s credit, the fire had been mostly nonlethal and only moderately toxic. By Rebecca’s standards, that was restraint.

V and Lucy weren’t any cleaner. 

Blood had dried in a tacky spray across V’s sleeve and the front of her jacket, and Lucy had a line of it flecked across her white jacket collar. 

Those gonk guards should have just walked away. V had given them the chance. She’d smiled, flirted and lied. All they’d had to do was believe a pretty woman and go have a smoke somewhere. Instead they’d pulled batons on a woman with mantis blades and a woman with a monowire, and that hadn’t ended well for anyone holding a baton.

Rebecca came around the side of the van and hugged Lucy through the open window before Lucy could dodge.

Then she turned and ran around the other side and threw her arms around V too!

V went still. Rebecca was small and wiry and smelled like smoke and gun oil, and she squeezed hard, like she meant it. 

For a second V didn’t know what to do with her hands. Arasaka hadn’t been big on hugs. The only person she’s ever really sincerely hugged to this point was John.

Huh. She hadn’t been expecting that. She awkwardly patted Rebecca between the shoulder blades, and Rebecca let go with a grin, entirely unbothered.

“Later, chooms!” Rebecca hopped backward toward the building and pointed at them both with finger guns. “I can’t wait till we all have superpowers together! We’re gonna be unstoppable!”

Then she was gone, banging through the door and hollering for Pilar.

V turned to Lucy.

Lucy was still watching the door where Rebecca had disappeared. She didn’t know anyone was looking, and her face had gone soft. It was the kind of look you gave someone who’d snuck up on you and become important when you weren’t paying attention.

It seemed Rebecca was growing on Lucy. She was a real friend now, maybe even a best friend, if Lucy ever allowed herself something that vulnerable.

V wasn’t jealous, of course. That would be absurd. She was a grown woman and a former Counterintelligence operative. She’d seen men tortured in rooms with no windows. She didn’t get jealous over who someone else chose to braid friendship bracelets with.

Okay. Maybe she was slightly jealous.

Not of Rebecca, exactly. More of what Lucy had found. V had Jackie, and Jackie was everything. He was her best friend, her brother in every way that mattered, and the one person who’d never asked her for anything she didn’t want to give. But Jackie was Jackie. She had never really had a girlfriend, in the old sense of the word. She’d never had a woman to sit with on a couch at two in the morning, complaining about men and stealing each other’s clothes and fries!

She glanced sideways again at Lucy.

Lucy was maybe more like a sister to her now. Or a sister-wife? V’s mouth twitched. Or a woman she wouldn’t mind tangling in the sheets with, while John pumped them both full of cum.

Her stomach gave a hot pulse at the mental image. She let herself enjoy it for a full two seconds.

Yeah. Something like that…

“What?” Lucy said, catching her looking. She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you smiling like that?”

“No reason.” V put the van in gear, still smiling. “We should probably get home and shower up too. If Mama Welles sees us tracking blood across her new floors, she’ll put us both in the ground.”

Lucy didn’t look convinced, but she settled back in her seat. “Separate showers,” she said pointedly.

…V kept driving the van through traffic, weaving between a sputtering oldsmobile and a delivery truck. She was humming under her breath. It wasn’t a song exactly, just the restless, satisfied sound she made after a job went well. 

They had the chemicals and nobody had died who mattered. Somewhere in the near future, if Cortana could be believed, V would be stronger and faster than she’d ever been, and she could start on Jenkins’s whole department if she ever felt nostalgic.

Her optics pinged.

A small notification bloomed in the corner of her vision, and when she saw the name she smiled: JOHN.

He’d been out of contact since morning. He’d left early on Jackie’s bike to go do something mysterious at the mountain lab with Cortana. V had told herself she wasn’t worried, the same way she’d told herself a hundred other things since she met him. 

It was a lie she’d gotten very good at.

She opened it.

Her smile slipped.

The message wasn’t in John’s voice. This one was crisp and formatted, and it radiated the particular kind of smug irritation that only one entity in Night City could produce.

“V. This is Cortana. Yes, I’m using his account. No, he doesn’t know. Status report follows.”

V’s eyes narrowed as the text kept scrolling.

“Item one: John is fine. Jackie’s bike is not fine. Do not ask.

Item two: Rogue decided that our crew needed a professional driver. The mystery driver has turned out to be a nomad. Her name is Panam Palmer, from the Aldecaldos. She nearly ran him over in Rocky Ridge, then got ambushed by Wraiths, and then John rescued her because of course he did. She is attractive. I have attached a picture for threat-assessment purposes.

Item three: He has paid for her vehicle repairs. He has also invited her to spend the night at the penthouse. Tonight. Because she ‘has nowhere to stay.’ I objected. I was overruled.

I’m informing you because you two can actually do something about it, and I can’t elbow anyone.”

A photo was attached. V opened it. Cortana had obviously snapped it through John’s optics in the Coyote: a woman with long dark hair in a stylish updo, leaning over the bar, with an hourglass body, better legs and an extremely nice ass. 

V let out a slow breath through her nose.

“What?” Lucy asked from the passenger seat. She’d been picking at the dried blood on her collar, but now she was watching V with a frown. “You were smiling. Now you’re doing the face.”

V rolled her eyes. “I don’t have a face.”

Lucy rolled her eyes right back. “You have a face. It’s your ‘about to kill a man in a parking garage’ face.”

Huh? I guess I do have a face…

V flicked the photo over to Lucy’s optics without a word.

Lucy looked at it. Her eyebrows climbed slowly.

“Cortana,” V grumbled, gripping the wheel a little harder than necessary, “says our boyfriend has picked up another stray.” She swerved around a slow-moving cab and accelerated through the gap. “And he’s inviting her to spend the night tonight.”

– Panam –

Panam had no idea that Night City mercs, or edgerunners as they called themselves, made so much freaking money! 

The elevator doors slid open, and Panam forgot how to talk for a second.

Out on the road you heard the stories. But stories were one thing. Standing in the entryway of John Welles’s penthouse was something else entirely.

It was huge. 

Everything was black and gold, in that rich, quiet way that made you want to wipe your boots before you walked on it. She caught herself doing exactly that.

Then her nomad instincts kicked in, and she started noticing the other things. The front door was reinforced, with a biometric lock and a backup keypad. A security camera sat discreetly in the corner, its lens tracking her as she stepped inside. When she leaned close to the window, the glass had the faint warp of serious ballistic laminate, the kind that would stop anything short of a rocket. Through an archway she glimpsed a kitchen gleaming with brushed steel and more burners than a restaurant.

It wasn’t just fancy. It was a fortress that happened to be fancy, and for some reason that made her like it more.

Panam loved life on the road. She did. She loved open sky and campfires, a hundred miles of empty highway with nothing in front of you but heat shimmer. She loved that her home moved when her family moved. She’d never needed walls.

But any girl would take one look at a place like this and maybe waver. Just a little. Just for a second. She thought about hot water that never ran out, a bed that didn’t rock in a desert windstorm, and a lock on the door she didn’t have to sleep with a pistol next to.

Don’t get soft, Palmer.

“Mama!” John called out, sounding like a kid coming home from school. “We’re back! I brought people!”

“People?” A woman’s voice drifted out of the kitchen. “John Welles, if you brought home another stray covered in blood...”

The woman who came around the corner was short, with gray streaks in her dark hair. She was wiping her hands on a dish towel. She had the kind of face that had laughed a lot and worried more, and her eyes went straight to Panam and narrowed, assessing her in a single sweep.

Panam straightened on instinct. She knew that look. Every auntie in the Aldecaldos had that look. It was the look of a woman who had decided long ago that every child in the camp was partly hers, whether they liked it or not.

Then the woman’s face broke into a smile, and before Panam could say a word, she found herself pulled into a hug.

Panam stood frozen with her arms half-raised, not sure what to do with them, until her body remembered on its own and hugged her back.

“Welcome, mija,” the woman said, pulling back to pat her cheek. “You must be the nomad girl John texted me about. You call me Mama Welles. Everybody does.” She waved her dish towel at the room. “Welcome to our home. Take off your boots, wash your hands, and stay out of my kitchen. Dinner will be ready soon.”

Panam blinked. “Th-thank you, ma’am...”

John’s mother pouted at her. “Call me Mama Welles.”

“...Mama Welles,” Panam corrected, a little dazed.

A heavy footstep sounded behind Panam, and she turned around.

The man coming down the hallway was big.

John was tall and lean with the kind of quiet strength you didn’t notice until he was throwing car doors at people. 

This man was built like a cargo truck. He was broad through the chest and shoulders, his arms as thick as her thighs, and he had to duck slightly under the archway. A thin scar ran through one eyebrow. He had a gold chain around his neck and a gold pistol grip sticking out of the waistband of his jeans, and every inch of him said street fighter. If she’d passed him in a dark alley, she’d have crossed the street…

Panam’s hand drifted toward the pistol at her hip before she could stop it.

Then he grinned at her which turned him from intimidating to happy in a second. “Hey, you must be Panam! I’m Jackie, John’s big brother.” He stuck out a hand the size of a hubcap. “Any friend of my hermanito is welcome here, chica. Heard you saved his ass from some Wraiths.”

“He saved mine,” Panam said, shaking his hand. His grip was firm but careful, the way strong men held things they didn’t want to break.

“Mutual,” John called from the kitchen.

Jackie laughed, a deep, rolling sound. “That’s my brother. Always gotta be humble.” He winked at her. “Make yourself at home, yeah?” Then his eyes slid past her, and his whole face changed. It went soft and goofy and a little stupid, the way a man looks at the one person in the room he actually cares about.

Panam followed his gaze.

A woman was curled up on the grey couch. She was beautiful in a strange, ethereal way, like she’d stepped out of an old movie about witches. A sexy goth baddie, if Panam had ever seen one.

“Misty,” Jackie said, as though the name was a prayer. He crossed the room in about three steps, dropped onto the couch beside her, and leaned in close to murmur something that made her laugh and swat his chest. He caught her hand and kissed her knuckles, and she rolled her eyes and let him. He leaned in for a kiss and she turned her cheek, teasing, and he nuzzled her neck instead until she squirmed and giggled.

It was so obvious and so sweet that Panam felt her own cheeks go a little warm just watching.

Okay, she thought, so the whole family is like this…

But at that moment, two women came down a hallway, but they didn’t have the same welcoming looks on their faces as everyone else so far. 

These two women came down the hallway from the bedrooms, and the temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees.

They weren’t wearing the warm smiles everyone else had. They walked side by side, close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed, moving with the same loose, unhurried confidence. 

It was the walk of women who had never once in their lives wondered whether they belonged in a room. Both of them had damp hair, as if they’d just come out of the shower, and both of them were looking straight at Panam.

Panam stared back and held in a whistle. Were these John’s girlfriends? Because damn. They were both sexy as fuck.

The one in front was tall, with black hair with red highlights swept to one side, and a face that could have sold cars or ended wars. She wore tight black leather pants that fit like they’d been painted on, and a black tank top that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Her optics glowed a seductive red.

The one beside her was paler in an almost ethereal way. She wore a black netrunner bodysuit that hugged every curve, and her short white hair fell past her cheeks, with the tips fading into pink and blue and purple at the ends. She was beautiful in a way that was almost unreal, but her violet eyes were intense. 

Panam had seen that same look in feral dogs on the edges of Badlands towns, the kind that would bite your hand clean off if you reached too fast.

They were both radiating the same vibe Panam had always felt like she gave off. I’m the most dangerous person in this room, and I’m being nice by not proving it.

They were alpha bitches, if she was using nomad lingo. Two of them, side by side.

And she’d thought she was going to be the trouble at dinner.

The first one stopped in front of her and looked her up and down, slowly. She made no effort to hide it, and her expression suggested she was mentally filing everything she saw. Then she held out her hand. “V,” she said. And that was it.

Panam took it. V’s grip was firm—a test—just a fraction too tight. 

Panam squeezed back exactly as hard and didn’t blink. 

Something flickered in those red optics that might have been approval.

“Lucy,” said the white-haired one beside her. She didn’t offer her hand. She just tilted her head, studying Panam with an unnerving stillness. “I’m John’s girlfriend.”

“Also John’s output,” V added smoothly, without looking away from Panam.

So this was what taken multiple times over looked like in person. Panam had half assumed he’d been exaggerating to let her down easy. Some city boys had a girlfriend and a half and called it a harem. But looking at these two, she had the distinct impression that if she so much as breathed in John’s direction wrong, they’d be peeling her skin off in strips.

Panam lifted her chin, held both of their stares, and let a slow smirk spread across her face. “Panam,” she said. “Panam Palmer. Of the Aldecaldos.” She let go of V’s hand and hooked her thumbs in her belt loops. “Rogue’s got me working as a member of John’s crew for a while.”

There was a short, loaded silence. Somewhere behind her, Panam heard Jackie’s low whistle, and something that sounded like Misty smacking him.

V held her smirk for one long second. Then her mouth curved into a slow smile that showed a lot of teeth. “Well, You didn’t flinch at our stares…” V said. “You’ve got balls, at least.” She paused and wrinkled her nose. “Not really. But you know what I mean.”

Lucy’s mouth twitched. It was almost a smile.

“Hey,” V said, already turning and putting one hand lightly on the small of Panam’s back to steer her toward the hallway. It was friendly, absolutely firm, and not at all optional. “We’ve got a little time before dinner. Why don’t the three of us go have a chat? Girl talk. Get to know each other.”

Lucy fell into step on Panam’s other side, close enough that Panam could feel the faint static hum of her cyberdeck.

Panam glanced back over her shoulder. John was standing in the kitchen doorway holding a dish towel, his face caught somewhere between alarm and resignation. 

Panam got the distinct feeling she didn’t really have a choice…

– John Welles –

I watched V and Lucy drag Panam off and wondered if maybe they were making friends?

Cortana made a scoffing noise in the back of my head—which confused me. 

“It’s nothing,” Cortana said. She’d projected in beside me while I was still staring down the hallway after Panam. She rose onto her toes and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to my cheek, and I felt the warmth of it spread through my face and down my neck. It was tender. Too tender.

I narrowed my eyes at her. That was a “nothing” scoff?

“That was an ‘I know something you don’t’ scoff, but it’s a nothing that doesn’t concern you yet.” She straightened the collar of my shirt with prim little tugs, which was something she only did when she was hiding something. “Don’t worry about the girls. They’re going to have a nice, civilized conversation about boundaries and seating charts.”

Seating charts…?

She patted my chest and turned me firmly by the shoulders toward the living room. “Now. You have a much more urgent problem to deal with, and it’s sitting on that couch. I think it’s probably time to break the news to Jackie.”

My stomach dropped. 

I walked over to the couch with my feet feeling heavier with every step. 

Jackie was sprawled across one end of it with Misty curled up against his side, her legs draped over his lap and his big arm around her shoulders. Her tarot cards were still fanned across the coffee table. Jackie had the dopey, glazed look of a man who’d had a very good date and wanted the whole world to know.

Misty looked up as I got closer, and her face lit up. “John!” she said. “Thank you so much for lending us your car today. It was so comfortable.” She sighed happily and snuggled closer to Jackie. “And the doors. The way they open upward like that? I felt like a movie star getting out of it. Everybody on the street was—staring.”

“Anything for my big sis,” I said, and I meant it.

Misty’s grin widened. It was sweet and a little shy, the way it always got when I called her that, and Jackie looked between the two of us with mock suspicion.

“You two gotta stop doin’ that. It’s creepy,” he grumbled, but he was smiling too.

Misty’s gaze drifted over my shoulder, and her smile faltered just slightly. Her head tilted. “Your aura’s gone all murky,” she said slowly. “Like you’re feeling guilty about something.”

“She’s very perceptive, I will give her that,” Cortana muttered.

I cleared my throat. Then I looked at Jackie. He was content and happy and completely oblivious, with his arm around the woman he loved and not a care in the world, and I felt like the worst brother alive. “So—uh,” I said. “Jackie...”

“Sí, hermanito?”

“Tomorrow morning...” I rubbed the back of my neck. “The two of us are gonna need to rent a tow truck.”

Jackie blinked at me. Slowly, the dopey look faded. He sat up a little straighter, and Misty’s legs slid off his lap. “A tow truck,” he repeated. “Why would we need a tow truck?” His eyes narrowed. “What’s the problem?”

Beside me, Cortana hummed, folded her arms and settled in to watch.

…I didn’t know if Jackie was actually crying or just being dramatic as I walked away while Misty made gentle cooing noises at him. 

But Jackie’s mourning didn’t last long thankfully. 

Mama Welles’s voice cut through the penthouse. “¡A comer! Everybody to the table. Now. If I have to come get you, nobody gets dessert.”

Grown mercenaries scrambled. Jackie peeled himself off the couch with a wounded sniff, still clutching Misty’s hand like a lifeline. 

And from the hallway came V, Lucy and Panam.

V sat on my left. Lucy sat on my right. Panam ended up across from me, and I noticed that neither V nor Lucy had even glanced at the other before claiming their spots. 

Mama had covered every inch of the table with food. There were enchiladas swimming in red sauce and a huge pot of pozole with all the fixings lined up in little bowls. There was a stack of handmade tortillas wrapped in a towel, carne asada, rice, beans, fresh salsa, and a bowl of guacamole the size of a hubcap.

Panam stared at it like she’d never seen this much food in one place. “Wow,” she breathed.

“Sit, sit. Eat.” Mama waved a ladle at her. Then she paused, set the ladle down, and folded her hands. “But first, we pray…”

…Following dinner, I noticed that Panam was looking pretty tired and had probably had a long day. 

So I offered to show her to one of the empty bedrooms, telling her she could take as hot and as long a shower as she wanted. We didn’t have water restrictions. 

She almost seemed to have stars in her eyes when I told her that…

Then I headed back into the living room, where V and Lucy were sitting on the couch, waiting for me. 

I didn’t see Mama, Jackie, or Misty and figured they’d all retired to their own rooms for the night. 

In Jackie and Misty’s case, it was a good thing all the bedrooms were soundproof. 

Somebody had dimmed the lights to a low and the city glowed through the wall of glass beyond the terrace. The only sounds were the low hum of the building’s climate system and the faint, distant wail of a siren somewhere far below.

V and Lucy were waiting for me on the big black sectional.

They’d changed again since dinner. V wore one of my old T-shirts, the gray one she’d more or less claimed as hers. It hung off one shoulder and barely reached the tops of her thighs, and it was pretty obvious she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Lucy had on a thin black camisole and a pair of sleep shorts with her legs tucked up beside her. They were sitting with a single, very deliberate person-sized gap between them.

They both looked up as I came in. Neither of them said anything. Lucy just patted the cushion in the gap.

“Subtle,” Cortana said dryly.

I sat down right between them.

The moment I did, they both moved. V curled into my left side, sliding her arm across my stomach. Lucy tucked herself under my right arm and pulled my hand down to rest on her bare hip. She hooked one leg over my knee as if staking a claim.

For a moment, nobody said anything. I just sat there with the two of them pressed against me, breathing, feeling the steady rise and fall of their chests and the warm weight of their bodies. 

My heartbeat slowed.

It had been a long day. I’d been to the mountain lab and found new tiger tracks. I’d crashed Jackie’s bike, been in a Wraith shootout, and met a nomad who wasn’t supposed to be here for another year. 

And now this. Just this.

I let my head fall back against the cushion and closed my eyes.

“Long day?” Lucy murmured against my chest.

I smiled without opening my eyes. “You have no idea.”

“Mm.” V traced a slow circle over my stomach with one fingertip. “We have some idea.”

Something in her tone made me open one eye.

Cortana had projected in on the arm of the couch beside Lucy, perched there with her legs crossed and her chin on her hand, looking extremely pleased with herself. She caught my eye and gave me an innocent little wave.

I looked down at V. Then at Lucy. Then back at Cortana.

What did you do?

“Me?” Cortana pressed a hand to her chest. “I simply kept the people who love you well informed. That’s all. It’s called communication. Misty said it was important.”

V’s lips curved against my shoulder. “So,” she said lightly. “Let’s talk about the nomad…”

For some reason, I could sense her tone was almost dangerous. 

Were the two of them jealous? I wondered.

I glanced between them. V's finger had stopped tracing circles on my stomach. Lucy's hand had tightened around mine, just slightly, the way it did when she was bracing for bad news. 

Neither of them was looking at me. They were looking at each other over my chest, communicating something in a silent language I hadn't learned yet.

They're definitely jealous.

"Very perceptive," Cortana said. "You get a gold star."

I turned my head and kissed V on the cheek, slow and soft, then turned the other way and did the same for Lucy. They both went still under my lips.

"Hey," I said quietly. "Panam's a beautiful girl. I'm not gonna pretend she isn't. But seriously, she and I are just friends. She needed help and somewhere to crash, and Rogue wants her on the crew. That's it. I'm not trying to start anything."

V and Lucy exchanged another glance. Something passed between them. 

Then Lucy let out a long breath and rested her forehead against my shoulder. "Sorry," she mumbled into my shirt. "That was stupid. We're the ones who told you it was okay to be with other women, and now we're acting like..."

"Like possessive psychos," V finished. She didn't sound particularly sorry about it, but she pressed a kiss to the side of my neck that felt like an apology anyway. "Sorry, babe. Old habits. Arasaka trained me to assume everybody who walks through the door is a threat until proven otherwise."

"And Arasaka trained me to assume they're a threat even after they've been proven otherwise," Lucy muttered.

I squeezed them both.

"You don't have to apologize," I said. "That offer was something you made. I never asked for it. If you're not comfortable with it anymore, you can take it back, anytime. I mean it. I'd rather have you all happy than have—" I trailed off, searching for words. I looked at Cortana, too, perched on the arm of the couch, and made sure she knew I was talking to her as well. "Besides," I added, "I already have more than I ever thought I'd have in either life." 

There was also Gloria. And there was maybe Rebecca too...

Maybe? I thought. Who was I kidding when it came to the word ‘maybe’?

"Nobody," Cortana said. "You weren't kidding anybody. Least of all me..."

Then she moved. She slid off the arm of the couch and settled right in my lap, as easily as if she'd always belonged there. She straddled my thighs in her netrunner bodysuit, she wound her arms around my neck, and kissed me.

It was slow, deep and thorough, and she deliberately made it last. Her simulated weight pressed down on me and I felt her fingers slide into my hair. Through our link I felt her satisfaction, and her awareness that she had an audience. 

She was enjoying it.

V and Lucy could see every second of it. Cortana had made sure of that.

V's lips pressed together in a pout. Lucy's eyes narrowed.

Cortana pulled back at last, only an inch, her forehead still resting against mine. Then she turned her head and looked at the two women curled against my sides.

"Maybe," she said thoughtfully, "his mainlines need to be more assertive." Her gaze slid past V and—settled on Lucy.

V’s own smirk spread slowly across her face and she turned it on Lucy. She didn’t say a word. She just raised one eyebrow and looked at Lucy across my chest, a lazy, wordless challenge. Well?

Lucy’s face went pink, starting at her cheeks and spreading down her neck. She glared at V, then at Cortana. “Bloody peer pressure,” Lucy muttered under her breath. “From a corpo and a computer.”

“I prefer ‘digital goddess,’” Cortana said serenely.

Lucy ignored her and sat up. She drew herself up with as much dignity as a woman in sleep shorts could manage. “Fine,” she said. “You can watch.” She pointed a finger at V, then at Cortana. “But you’re not joining in. Understood?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” V said, lounging back against the cushions like she’d bought front-row tickets.

I sat there still blinking. My brain took a long, embarrassing moment to understand what the women were even talking about. I’d spent the last ten seconds watching some kind of negotiation unfold over my head, and I’d assumed it was about Panam, or about the rules of sharing, or something to do with sleeping arrangements.

Then it clicked. Oh…

“There it is,” Cortana purred playfully. 

“Lucy,” I managed, my voice coming out rough. “You don’t have to... if you’re not comfortable with...”

“Shut up, John.” She said it softly, almost fondly. Her eyes met mine, and under the blush there was something steady and certain. She wanted this. She just wasn’t going to say so in front of an audience. 

Then she grabbed the hem of her camisole, pulled it up over her head in one smooth motion, and tossed it over her shoulder onto the floor.

Her breasts were pale, perky, and gorgeous—the nipples a soft pink that tightened in the cool air of the room. She sat there for a second, letting me look at her, and her blush deepened, but she didn’t cover herself.

Cortana slid off to the side of the couch without being asked, making room.

Lucy settled right onto my lap. She straddled my thighs where Cortana had been only moments ago, her knees sinking into the cushions on either side of my hips. She leaned forward until her bare breasts pressed against my chest through my shirt. Her arms slid around my neck, and her fingers curled into the hair at my nape.

She looked down at me from under her pale lashes, and her smile was slow and very, very possessive. “Mine,” she said quietly.

– Panam –

Panam stepped out of the shower in a cloud of steam, wrapped in the softest towel she'd ever felt.

It was thick and plush and enormous, the kind of towel that probably cost more than her boots. It was so warm from the heated rack that it felt like being hugged. She pressed her face into the corner of it for a second and let out a low, embarrassing groan of pure contentment.

She'd really needed that. It was one of the best showers of her life.

Out on the road, a shower meant two minutes under a sun-warmed bag of recycled water if you were lucky. More often it was a wet rag and a bucket, while Mitch hollered at you about water rations. 

Tonight she'd stood under a rainfall showerhead the size of a hubcap for forty-five minutes straight. The water had been scalding and endless, and she'd watched the Badlands dust and Wraith blood swirl down the drain until her skin turned pink and her muscles finally unknotted. She'd used three different kinds of soap. She didn't even know what one of them was for.

Don't get soft, Palmer, she reminded herself. But the warning didn't have much bite this time.

She tucked the towel snugly under her arms. It barely covered the tops of her thighs, which she figured was a design choice. 

She padded barefoot toward the bedroom door.

Maybe she should go thank John again for everything. He'd paid for her repairs, given her a room and fed her the best dinner she'd had in months. And if she happened to give him a little tease in the towel while she was at it, well. Where was the harm?

Those girlfriends of his were a bit scary. She'd spent twenty minutes in that "girl talk" being very politely, very thoroughly interrogated by an obvious fucking former corpo agent and a netrunner who blinked about once a minute. 

But Panam didn't mind poking a hornet's nest if it was for a good cause. She wasn't going to do anything. She just liked the idea of watching that sweet, blushing city boy go red one more time before bed.

She was sexy, and she knew it. That was half the fun.

She opened the door.

The hallway lights had been turned down low, and the whole penthouse had gone quiet and dim. For a second she thought everyone had gone to bed. Then she heard muffled voices from the living room.

Panam frowned and padded down the hall to the corner. She leaned out just enough to peek.

She froze.

Heat flooded her face! And low in her belly, something else answered that left her suddenly very aware of how little the towel was covering. She'd just gotten out of the shower, and she was getting wet all over again, but this time between her thighs.

John was sitting on the big couch, and wow.

He'd lost his shirt somewhere. His body looked like it had been carved. His shoulders were broad, his chest was hard and defined, and his stomach was ridged with muscle. It was the kind of body you saw on billboards for gym implants, except on him it looked real. 

She'd seen him throw a car door, but she hadn't really understood how until right now.

His girlfriend Lucy was in his lap.

She was naked, every pale inch of her, straddling him with her knees sunk into the cushions on either side of his hips. She was riding him in slow, deep rolls of her hips, bouncing on his cock. Her hands were braced on his shoulders. She was moaning softly with every movement. She'd bitten down on her lower lip to keep quiet, and it wasn't working. 

John had his hands on her hips, guiding her, his head tipped back against the cushions and his eyes fixed on her face as though nothing else in the world existed.

And on the other end of the couch sat his other girlfriend, V.

She was lounging back against the cushions in an oversized gray shirt that had ridden up to her hips. One leg was draped over the armrest. Her red optics glowed as they fixed hungrily on the two of them. Her hand had slipped between her own thighs, and it was moving in slow, lazy circles as she watched. She was touching herself right there on the couch, as casually as if she were watching a braindance.

Panam's mouth fell open. She stood there for one second too long, then two, staring. Her heart was hammering, and her fingers were clenched in the towel. She absolutely should not be watching this, and she couldn't quite make her feet move.

Then Lucy let out a stifled cry and arched her back, and John said her name in a low, wrecked voice that went straight through Panam like electricity. 

She realized she just watched them both orgasm…

That got her feet moving.

Freaking city people are shameless! she thought. Her face was on fire as she spun around and fled back down the hall.

– John Welles –

…The next morning, Jackie and I were standing in the middle of Rocky Ridge, outside the abandoned garage where I'd hidden his shot-up bike.

The town looked even deader than it had yesterday. The only signs of life were a vulture circling lazily overhead and the rented pickup parked a block away, a big, ugly Chevillon with a flatbed long enough to fit a motorcycle. 

It had cost me more for one day than the Unity I'd lost in Pacifica.

Jackie hauled the garage door up with a rusty shriek of metal and stepped inside.

Then he stopped.

His Arch lay on its side in the shadows where I'd left it, coated in a fine layer of Badlands dust. Even from the doorway I could see the bullet holes stitched across the fuel tank and the dark stain where gasoline had soaked into the concrete. One mirror was cracked. The paint Miguel had polished to a mirror shine two days ago was scraped raw down one whole side.

Jackie made a sound like a man who'd just found his dog in a ditch.

"Ay, mi corazón," he whispered. He sank to his knees beside it and laid a trembling hand on the scarred tank. "Look at what they did to you, baby." His voice actually cracked. I was pretty sure he was about thirty seconds from crying again, the way he had last night on the couch with his face buried in Misty's shoulder while she patted his back and made soothing noises.

I sighed.

Behind me, gravel crunched under heavy tires.

I turned around. A familiar Thorton was rolling to a stop at the edge of the lot. The engine rumbled healthy. The bullet holes were gone, every last one, the panels hammered smooth and primed in fresh gray. All the windows were back. The roof turret sat level on a new mount, its barrel pointed properly forward. 

The whole thing gleamed in the sun as though it had just rolled off a showroom floor in a war zone.

Panam was in the driver's seat with one arm hanging out the open window.

Miguel had done good work. He must have been up all night.

"Morning," I called, walking over.

"Morning," Panam said.

Except she didn't look at me when she said it.

Her eyes went to the steering wheel, then to the dashboard, then to some fascinating point on the horizon over my left shoulder. 

Anywhere but my face. 

Her cheeks had gone pink, the same way they'd been doing on and off all morning. She'd sat at breakfast staring very hard at her eggs, and when Lucy had come in wearing one of my shirts, Panam had choked on her coffee so badly Mama had to pound her on the back.

I'd figured she just wasn't a morning person…

Beside me, Cortana made a noise. It was a muffled snort, like she was trying very hard not to laugh and failing.

What? I thought.

"Nothing," Cortana said, much too innocently. Her shoulders were shaking. "Absolutely nothing. Just enjoying the morning. Lovely morning. Very... revealing morning…"

Cortana.

"I'll tell you later. Maybe. If you're good…"

Panam cleared her throat and patted the Thorton's door with obvious affection. "Wanted to come say thanks before I head out," she said, still talking to the side mirror. "For getting her fixed up. Miguel's a miracle worker. I'll pay you back, Welles. Every eddie. Might take a while, but I'm good for it."

"Don't worry about it," I said.

That got her to finally look at me, if only to roll her eyes as hard as she physically could. "Don't worry about it," she mimicked. She shook her head, and a reluctant smile tugged at her mouth. "Unbelievable. I come into Night City expecting a bunch of snakes in chrome, and on my first real day here I meet a genuine hero who throws car doors at Wraiths and then won't let a girl pay him back." 

My face went hot at how she called me a hero. Like she genuinely meant it.

Cortana cooed. 

Panam cleared her throat again, and the smile faded into something more serious. "Look, though," she said. "I really could use some work. The sooner the better. The clan's running on fumes. Saul's not gonna say it, but we need eddies coming in, and I'm not about to sit around waiting for Rogue to decide I passed her little test."

"Yeah, of course." I nodded. "I'll make some calls. Right after I help Jackie get his bike in the truck."

From inside the garage, Jackie let out a long, mournful wail.

Panam leaned out the window and peered past me into the shadows, where Jackie was now cradling the Arch's cracked mirror like a newborn. She looked back at me and raised an eyebrow. "He okay?"

"He'll live," I said. 

She snorted, actually laughing this time, and threw the Thorton into gear. "Call me, Welles."

She pulled out of the lot in a spray of gravel and dust and roared off down the empty highway toward wherever the Aldecaldo camp was hidden.  

XXX

John’s crew officially has another member. Panam’s reaction to finding out Rogue is John’s grandmother will be pretty funny…

Written: 10/23/2026