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They started with our feet, then our wrists, and we both immediately shook out our arms and rubbed at our skin.
As for me, I took this opportunity to do the body scan I hadn’t been able to accomplish earlier. With some shifting and flexing, I found being thrown over a guy’s shoulder onto the tarmac hurt like a mother at the time, but even if my body shared that it was still coping with the fact that had happened, I was okay.
“Watch them, I’ll get the phone,” Mahoney relayed another order.
The goons kept an eye on us while Mahoney slipped into the house.
Willow and I both decided to stay silent as he did.
When he returned, I said, “One additional thing.”
Mahoney looked suspicious.
“When this is all said and done,” I went on, “you owe the Angels a favor.”
“Good one,” Willow said under her breath.
I fought my smile and assured the congressman, “Just one and done. It might be big. It might be small. But you can’t deny it, whatever it is.”
Mahoney didn’t even hesitate. “Agreed.”
Yay!
I would have high-fived Willow, but I didn’t think that would be good for the Angels’ rep, so I played it cool.
Mahoney brought the phone to Willow and I. We counted the videos as we deleted them from Trev’s phone. Mahoney didn’t tell us which one was his daughter’s, but obviously, he didn’t mind us deleting it, whichever one it was. NDAs were magically produced (not exactly magically, a non-goon-esque dude I assumed was some sort of aide shoved them through the door). We read and signed them.
“I can expect the laptop delivered…?” Mahoney asked leadingly.
“You tell us. It doesn’t matter,” Willow replied.
“We’re just ships passing in the night,” I asserted.
“Until the Angels need that marker paid,” Willow added.
“You haven’t copied those videos anywhere?” Mahoney asked dubiously.
We had, just not anywhere dangerous.
“We’re in the midst of determining who the other women are so we can locate them and assure them those videos no longer exist,” Willow said. “We have the images we need for that, those images are of faces, so they’re not compromising, and once this is done, it’s over. And no,” she lied, “we haven’t copied them anywhere.”
Mahoney looked to me.
I tried to appear innocent, and I knew I nailed it just simply because I was girlie Harlow O’Neill, wearing a cute, flirty dress.
“You can deliver that laptop to me before the end of business hours at my offices on Camelback,” Mahoney said.
“Gotcha,” Willow said. “Now, are you gonna order us an Uber, or what?”
In the end, the goons took us to a Mexican restaurant and dropped us off outside.
But Mahoney did order who was waiting for us there, even if I had my phone in my server apron, and they hadn’t taken it from me (Willow told me hers was on the floor of the staff room at SC).
And Mahoney might have chosen poorly with his henchmen, but he was still a sort of class act.
We knew this because the Uber was a black car SUV, fancy and roomy.
So it was nice to be delivered back to SC after Willow’s and my first kidnappings in luxury.