Page 23

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SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Nemo

Ninety minutes later, the conference room was clear of all garbage and as clear of barbecue sauce as it was going to be until the special cleaning crew came in the next day to scour the carpeting, furniture, and walls. During that time, he had watched the others interact with Haskell, and he took mental notes on her reactions to them.

It didn’t take long for her to be won over by Kubrick. He snorted. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. Kubrick begged Haskell for trade secrets about her past heists and how things were done. Haskell traded information with her, one heist secret for one filming secret. She even weaseled an invitation onto a movie set in the future. Not that she’d had to work Kubrick very hard.

Coming up on her from behind, he wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. “Kitty cat, you smell divine, but if I take you to the beach smelling like braai sauce, you’re going to get mauled.”

“Huh? What’s braai sauce?”

“Barbecue. It’s all over your shirt.”

She looked down at her shirt and saw the long-set-in stain on her T-shirt. “Bollocks! I love this shirt.”

“C’mon.” He gestured. “We’ll go upstairs; you can change, and the laundry service can get that out of there for you.”

“It’s barbecue sauce. It’s not coming out.”

“Trust me. It’ll come out. I had a guy bleed out on a white T-shirt I wore one time. You’d never know.”

Slowly, she turned around on him.

He noticed her appalled stare.

“What?” he asked.

“You had a guy bleed out on you.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re just going to drop that there like it happens every day.”

He was nonplussed. “How am I supposed to say it?”

“That’s horrific! That doesn’t happen to people on a regular day! What the hell is it you people actually do?”

“I told you about Flame being taken. You work with Loki, Gilgamesh, and Medusa. You think no one has ever bled out on one of them? Christ, I’ve got the highest body count number on Medusa for the betting pool.”

“Huh?”

“Sweetheart, the people you work with don’t make appointments with the bad guys and sign negotiations after a seven-course meal.”

“I know, but… It’s just… They’ve never said…”

“No, they probably wouldn’t. Why do you think they’re so upset about you running into the Kaders? Why do you think they were in a panic trying to find you when you went up in smoke on them? Breaking into that mine was dangerous, but when you stumbled into that clusterfuck, that ramped things up to a whole new level. Your jobs for them, I’m guessing, have been like…”—he searched for a comparison—“like Cherry going on a stakeout. They’re jobs they could do, but they’re low-level enough that the danger is minimal in the grand scheme of things, and they farm it out to you.” He could tell that comment hurt her pride, but she clearly was unaware of what she was involved in.

He waved goodbye to Waters and Kubrick, then led Haskell out of the room toward the elevators. Scheherazade trotted alongside.

“Look,” he continued. “You’re clearly capable of more, or Cherry never would have approached you for Tribe. Let me ask you this. Why did you turn her down?”

They stepped into the elevator, and the door closed behind them. He leaned his ass against the railing that ran around the three walls of the elevator, his arms locked as he gripped the bar on either side of him.

He watched her consider her response. “Something felt off.”

“With the offer?” he asked.

“No, the offer itself felt genuine. It was the condition, maybe. That if I opened the folder and I changed my mind, I’d be either dead or on the run for the rest of my life, trying not to be dead.”

He nodded. “So there was a reason you couldn’t risk it.”

She sucked in her lower lip. “My da,” she confirmed.

The elevator door opened. He gestured her out before him, and they walked to his apartment door in silence. Nemo keyed in the alarm code to unlock the door, and as per usual, as it opened, Scheherazade pushed her way through, leaped over the couch, and went ass over head for her manatee .

Haskell smiled. “She’s got a short-term memory problem on that couch issue.”

He chuckled at the goofy face looking over the back of the sofa at him, ear perked for the magic word loop .

“Damn dumb for a dog so smart, but it’s kind of funny and cute, in a way. I’m guessing she never had a chance to be a puppy. She had her own before she was really out of the puppy stage.” He shook his head. “Go on and change. I’ll meet you back here, and we’ll go.”