Page 4 of Dirty Daria

“I don’t need to. Tremblay confessed.”

“Which you apparently coerced.”

“Not on tape.”

“You can’t do shit like that, Mack. You know better.”

“We got the guy, Reed. Once we have his phone records, the backup files from the dating sites, and his emails in hand, we’ll have the proof we need. In the meantime, let it go.”

“I hate it when you do this,” I tell him.

“What? Secure a confession?”

“When you go about it ass-backward.”

“Well, I hate that you always want to follow the rules and proceed in an orderly manner,” he returns.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to rein in my anger and see this from a different perspective. One that will allow me to be more accepting of Mack’s wild card ways.

“Will it stick?” I ask.

“What? The confession or the evidence?”

“Both.”

“Yeah. It’ll stick.”

“Okay.”

We stay silent the rest of the trip. Neither of us mentioning the fact tomorrow is Christmas or how we plan to continue working on the case during the days leading up to the wedding. It’s not until I’m back in my own car and on my way home that I realize he still didn’t tell me why Daria was there as his driver. Or exactly what sort of distraction Quinn was supposed to be making.

This is turning into a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

2

Quinn

“I’m pretty sure it means he likes me too. A guy doesn’t get a hard on for just any old reason, right?”

I phrase it like a rhetorical question, but I actually really want to know what Daria thinks. She’s got a lot more experience with men than I do.

“Of course he likes you too,” she says, glancing at me as she slows the car at a red light.

“Are you just saying that because you’re my best friend which makes you required to say that? Or do you really mean it?”

“I really mean it. Plus, you look so beautiful tonight, what man wouldn’t want you?”

“Ha, I was going to say the same thing about you. Do you think I can wear a wig next time?”

“There won’t be a next time,” she says firmly.

“Why not? You said I did a good job.”

“Quinn, you were there as a distraction, not an operative. To get you up to speed—to the point where my girls and I are—would take years of training.” She pats me on the knee, as though that’s supposed to make me feel better about the badass, alter ego vigilante side of her that is totally rejecting me. And it doesn’t.

I pat her on the knee back. “I’ll just continue to be the distraction person. No big deal. I didn’t really like firing the gun anyway, plus I wasn’t very good at it, so I’ll just be the person who doesn’t use any kind of physical exertion or skill to get things done.”

She glances my way, then back at the road, and quickly back at me again. “That might actually work.”