Page 12 of The Hard Way (The Kinky Bank Robbers #5)

Chapter Nine

Back at the B it wasn’t like us to be at odds.

Thor turned to me with a grave look. “No more mystical butt- fucking for you two.”

“Oh my god.” I laughed and whipped a tiny ruffled pillow at him.

He caught it and whipped it right back.

I caught it and hit him with it. He flopped back on the bed, laughing, taking me with him. Zeus hit me with a different fussy pillow.

I grabbed a pillow and whipped it into his face.

“Oh no you don’t,” Thor said.

“Oh my god, pillow fight!” I hit Zeus back. Suddenly Odin was in on it, grunting.

Just then there were steps outside the hall. We all froze. Then the steps receded. We followed them down the stairs.

“Please, God, let that have been the Texas people,” I said. “Because you know the words ‘pillow fight’ were way loud. And all of us were making noise.”

Thor snickered and tickled me. “The insurance investigations business has been very good to you, Ms. Jackie Trent.”

“Fuck off!” I laughed. “Come on!” I pushed him away. “I have to redo my nose now thanks to your shenanigans.” I went to the bathroom and pulled it off and washed and itched my face.

“We’re going to follow the trail,” Zeus announced when I came back out. “We think Andy Miller’s telling the truth, and we’ll assume your sisters are. What if they are both telling the truth? Is there another way for the cheese to have gotten from the dumpster to the store?”

“Thank you,” I said.

We finished our cookies and headed out. Margie was downstairs at her desk when we came through. She smiled uncertainly. “How’s the investigation going?”

“Okay,” I said. “We hit a snag, but we’re regrouping.”

She was looking at me really strangely. So she’d heard the pillow fight. I was officially the sexually voracious boss. I smiled back wanly.

“Um…” She glanced over at the cookie station.

Was she mad about us eating cookies in the room? How would she know?

“Did…um…” she began.

“What is it?” Thor asked sweetly.

“Did one of you leave your clipboard by the guest snack station?”

Gulp ! The dirty cupid activities clipboard!

Had she looked at it? Of course she fucking looked at it! I didn’t need a mirror to know my face was utterly beet red.

“Oh, that would be me.” Zeus breezed over and grabbed it, like it was nothing. “We’re heading out to the Piggly Wiggly,” he said.

I wanted to say we didn’t really do those cupid things, but would that just make it worse? Why would she even believe me?

Zeus grabbed my hand. I smiled and walked. One foot and then another. Just get out.

“This is the worst,” I said once we were all buckled up in the rental car. “You know she read it.”

Zeus backed out of the driveway and headed west.

Odin grabbed the clipboard and read it. “Well,” he said after a while. “She’ll never look at those cupids the same way again.”

“It’s not funny!” I turned to Zeus. “You need to tell her that we did not do any of those things! Tell her you were just fucking around. Like you were bored and just writing stuff.”

“She won’t believe me.”

“Tell her!”

“You look beautiful when you’re desperate.”

“You’re going to tell her,” I said. “What the fuck must she think? And you know she heard ‘pillow fight.’”

“Insurance investigation is a boring business,” Thor said.

Odin gazed out the window. “I still feel like people are watching us.”

“It’s the cupids. The deer. And now Margie,” I said.

“No. It’s more,” Odin said. “The car back there. The black Saturn. Have we seen it before?”

“It’s new to me,” Zeus said. “There was one like it before, but it had an air freshener hanging from its windshield.”

“I think it’s the same car.”

The jovial atmosphere in the car turned chilly.

“Nobody could know,” Zeus said.

“We talked to her sisters, we’ve talked to Andy…”

Just then the car turned off.

“Pull over,” Odin said.

Zeus pulled over. This was some sort of anti-following maneuver, no doubt. We sat there for a while, watching the street.

“Probably nothing,” Odin said. “Maybe. It’s a feeling.”

I leaned up and put my chin on his seat back. He looked tired. “You should take a nap later.”

“I don’t need a fucking-g nap.”

“I don’t mean that this following thing was bullshit. I mean, we count on your spidey sense, and did you get any sleep under that giant cupid face in your room?”

He said nothing, which meant no . No sleep.

“I could sit with you and read.”

“It’s not happening,” he said. “I won’t sleep with you there. I won’t hurt you again.”

“You can’t hurt me if I’m awake and sitting in the chair by the bed.”

He shook his head. It was frustrating.

“I’m really glad we have somebody answering the phone for us,” Thor said, changing the subject. “Margie might really might call.”

“She’s not going to fucking-g call,” Odin said.

“Her first thought would not be, ‘These people aren’t who they say they are.’ Her first thought would be, ‘I can’t wait to tell my friends about this.

Who knew insurance investigators were such sexual heathens?

A female boss using her underlings for her every dark pleasure. ’”

I groaned.