Page 15 of The Hard Way (The Kinky Bank Robbers #5)

“God, no. I didn’t buy it once the doctor sent him home with that list of forbidden foods.” She pulled a sheet of paper off the refrigerator door. I thought it was actually the list until she handed it to Odin and I peered over his shoulder: Fundraiser for St. Guadalupe’s.

“Every year I make the baked brie balls for this fundraiser. It’s an exotic appetizer party for our sister church in Central America. It’s what I always bring, and I was on the list to bring them this year. I deep-fry them, actually, but…” She waved her hand mysteriously at the list.

“Did you buy the cheese yourself? ”

She fixed Thor with a haunted look. “I’ve been all over this with the FDA.”

“We have to go over the same ground,” Thor said sympathetically. He looked innocent, very nearly cherubic. Thor and my guys were like Venus flytraps. So pretty and deadly. “I know it’s a pain.”

“I bought it myself along with the other ingredients for the brie balls.”

“Do you have the receipt?” Odin asked.

“No. But I paid cash. And the FDA took the package. I gave them the package and what cheese was left.”

“What else was he not supposed to eat?” Thor asked.

She looked interested. “Do you think it might not have been the cheese?”

“Just getting a lay of the land.”

“He had this whole list.” She took another list down and handed it over. “He stuck to mostly stews and breads. Oatmeal. That sort of thing. I can send you what I sent the FDA. They made us do the food diary. I can send you that.”

“That would be helpful.”

“Is there some question it wasn’t the cheese? Or…some other question?”

“Just doing verification.”

Thor regarded her with a pleasant expression, but I knew he was looking at her hard. “What did you think about Rhonda? His business partner?”

Nancy shrugged. “We never quite got along. She’s a bit… better than everyone. Not exactly very nice. Why? Is there some…question about Rhonda?”

Thor gave a small French shrug. “Oh, just getting a sense of things.”

We had her email us her food diary, and we headed out.

“Interesting,” Zeus said as we swung into the car.

“Very fucking-g interesting.”

I shut my door and buckled up. “What? ”

Zeus pulled out and smiled at me in the rearview mirror. Taunting. “You want to know what we found interesting?”

“Fuck you,” I said. “Don’t tell me, fine. How about if I tell you what I found interesting? What I noticed that you didn’t notice?”

“You think you noticed something we didn’t notice?”

“I do.”

Thor grinned at me. It was rare that I noticed things they didn’t. “Tell us.”

“I don’t want to bruise your elite spy egos.”

He tickled me, and I screamed. “Hey! Stop it!”

“Tell us!”

“She lied,” I said proudly, pushing Thor off me.

Zeus turned back, impressed. “How so?”

“I think she knew we were coming. I believe she was expecting us.”

“How do you know, goddess?”

“Did you know?” I asked. “That she was expecting somebody?”

“I wondered,” Zeus said.

“I knew for sure.” Thor snaked a hand around my belly at my most ticklish part, and I screamed.

“Okay! She was wearing a bra under that turtleneck. If you’re at home in hibernation mode not expecting visitors, you’re not wearing a bra, and you’re not wearing that turtleneck, either.

Especially if you have small boobs like her.

No fucking way. And she came to the door too fast to have changed clothes when we knocked. ”

Thor smiled at me, impressed. “That’s good, Ice.”

“Very good,” Zeus said. “I agree, I had the distinct sense she was expecting us. But I didn’t have that physical clue. A bra?”

“Most women don’t wear bras when they’re alone.”

“You don’t wear a bra when you’re hanging around with us.”

I swung my legs onto his lap. “Half the time I don’t wear a shirt.”

“I told you somebody was following us,” Odin said. “ Somebody’s watching us, and it’s not dead deers and fucking-g cupids. Somebody warned her.”

Zeus nodded, way more open to the idea now.

Were we being followed?

“Look, not that I’m not agreeing with you, Odin, that maybe somebody is following us and tipped her off,” I said, “but you guys have to know something about a small town—there are eyes everywhere. We’re strangers, so we are being watched.

And people call each other. We’re making the rounds that the FDA made.

Warren told everyone at the grocery store all about our conversation after we left—I guarantee it.

Anybody there could’ve called Nancy and let her know.

People probably know where we’re staying now.

” Along with tales of our sexual proclivities, no doubt.

“Here’s what else I know,” Zeus said. “She felt really open to the idea of foul play. It’s guilty party 101 that you’re overly interested in tracking the thinking of people like us.

Did you notice how she asked about it twice?

If she was one hundred percent convinced it was the cheese, she wouldn’t have gone there so eagerly with her questions.

She wouldn’t have made that leap so quickly and so often.

She asked too many of the wrong kinds of questions. ” He turned onto the highway.

I sat up, feeling excited and happy. W hat if she was having an affair? What if it was a murder? Probably not the best attitude about the possibility that an accidental death was really murder. But if that was the case, it got my sisters off the hook.

“If it’s a murder, it’s a sophisticated one,” Thor said.

“Too sophisticated for Nancy Zietlow?” Zeus asked.

“She did wear the telltale bra,” I said.

“Good job on that,” Zeus said.

I swelled with pride. I used to love Nancy Drew, and I was feeling a little like Nancy Drew, to tell the truth, though my guys were definitely a far cry from Ned. They were more like Ned 2.0. Or maybe more like Ned 900.5.

“I’d like to hear more about this affair rumor,” Thor said. “I’d like to find out who the guy was that Nancy was supposedly seeing, and I’d like to talk to Rhonda’s husband, too. He benefitted from Tim’s death. He got rid of his competition.”

“Fuck,” I said. “So you’re looking at Nancy in cahoots with whoever she was having an affair with. Or Rhonda’s husband. Or the Millers.”

“Tell me, Ice, would all these people know about this church potluck thing?” Thor asked. “Would they all know who brings what to it?”

“Very likely,” I said. “People get known for their hors d’oeuvres, and they’re expected to bring them around. My mom had this stuffed mushroom hors d’oeuvre she always made, and it would be weird if she didn’t bring it to a specific event. And the potluck thing was a big event.”

“So. Four theories,” Odin said.

“Wait. Four?” I said.

“Where are you getting four?” Zeus said. “I only see three.”

“Somebody else benefitted from this poisoning incident,” Odin growled. “You’re not looking at the bigger picture.”

“Besides Nancy Zietlow and her lover, the Millers, and whoever Rhonda married?” I asked. “You’re not back to the rival cheesemaker, are you?”

Odin stared out the window. He seemed so hard all the time, but he was so sensitive. He picked up on things others didn’t.

Finally he spoke. One word. “Denko.”

A chill shot through me.

I caught Zeus’s expression in the rearview mirror. He looked thoughtful. Was he actually considering this?

Denko had made it his life’s mission to pursue us, to kill us.

He was part of ZOX, the covert organization Zeus and Odin used to work for as agents.

Way back when, Odin and Zeus had been sent to kill Thor for nothing more than being a witness to atrocities overseas and trying to blow the whistle.

When Zeus and Odin met Thor and came to see what had happened, they decided Thor was right to blow the whistle, and that ZOX was wrong for wanting him dead.

So ZOX put a price on all three of their heads.

They’d been fugitives ever since. Denko was the one carrying out that mission to kill my guys. Unlike Zeus and Odin, Denko didn’t have scruples about the people he was ordered to kill.

Robbing banks was a kind of fuck-you to ZOX. Reckless but effective, and definitely one of the more lucrative career paths for fugitives with undercover operative skills.

It was professional with Denko, but it was also personal these days. Tying up a guy and having sex in front of him will definitely make things personal.

Nobody was saying anything for way too long.

“That would be kind of elaborate,” I said. “To set this whole thing up. Right?”

“Not too elaborate,” Zeus said. “We’re really exposed here. We’ve exposed ourselves, made ourselves vulnerable. That benefits Denko.”

“Let’s assume Denko knows who I am…” It was a scary thought, but that’s where this was going. “How would he find out about anything in Baylortown? Not to mention the thrown-out cheese?”

“Maybe he triggered it,” Zeus said. “We still don’t know how that cooler got unplugged. The assumption is that somebody kicked it out. What if the plug was pulled to trigger the disposal of the cheese?”

“Fuck,” I whisper. “But here’s the thing I keep going back to—it’s not a sure thing that cheese makes people ill, just from it warming up. It’s a lot to go through for no guarantee of success, unless the person doesn’t know about food safety.”

“Denko would’ve covered his bases,” Odin said. “It’s just a theory.”

“Still! God!” I hugged my arms around myself. “It’s almost a good plan. ”

Odin looked grim. Could this be why he felt watched?

“Say something, you guys. What if it’s Denko? He figures out who I am and my connection to my sisters. He engineers a suspicious incident, knowing we’ll come.”

After a silence, Thor said, “Our fear was always that he could arrest your sisters or illegally detain them, threaten to hurt them if we don’t turn ourselves in.

This would be better, actually. If this is Denko, he could snap us up without your sisters ever knowing you’re not dead.

All he’d do is ruin them and cause the death of Tim Zietlow.

With this plan, he doesn’t have to detain and threaten your sisters.

He doesn’t wind up with three civilians to deal with.

Causing a suspicious salmonella outbreak is effective and efficient.

And he knows we started doing detective work… ”

“Oh my god. What if you’re right?”

“Just a theory,” Odin said.

“Oh, just a theory,” I said. “That our greatest enemy has us in the palm of his hand. But it’s just a theory, so…”

“No, it really is just a theory,” Zeus said, pulling to the side of the road. The conversation had turned dead serious. “I don’t think it’s the likeliest of the possibilities. Nancy Zietlow really did seem cagey.”

Yet he’d pulled over. It was decision time.

“I’m inclined to stay and deal with this situation,” Zeus continued. “I’m not seeing that we have a choice now.”

“I’m so sorry I got us into this.”

“You didn’t get us into anything.” Thor pulled me into a bear hug, spoke close to my ear. “If it’s Denko, he hasn’t made his move yet.”

“I don’t care who it is now,” Odin said. “Somebody fucked with Isis’s sisters. We stay. We fight. If it’s Denko, he has us by the balls now either way.” He glanced up, dark and dangerous in the rearview. Our eyes met. Shivers went over me.

“Thank you,” I said in a small voice .

“Your family is our family,” Zeus growled, pulling back onto the street in a decisive, angry way.

I nestled my head onto Thor’s shoulder, trying not to get my fake nose plaster on his sleeve.

I’d spent so long fighting for that farm all by myself.

The four of us were a family now. We fought for the farm together.

We didn’t have a home of our own that we could feel safe and cozy in, a place that we belonged, but we’d damn well make sure my sisters had it.

“We need to solve this fast. Let’s see if anybody else knew about the unplugging,” Zeus said. “If we can trace this thing to Rhonda’s husband or to Nancy, that would be really fucking helpful. It would mostly rule out Denko. Thor, go back to the sisters and really figure out if they told anybody.”

“Talk to Vanessa first,” I said to him. “Impress on her how important it is to figure out if anybody else knew. You can tell her straight that somebody might be screwing with them, and she’ll get it out of Candy or Kaitlin. That’ll be more effective than gathering the three of them.”

“Got it.”

“And find out who Rhonda married.”

Thor smiled. “Of course, goddess.”

“Where do we go?” I asked. “While Thor talks to Vanessa?”

Odin exchanged glances with Zeus in a way that told me they were thinking the same thing, doing a secret agent ESP thing. “Question,” Odin said. “How does Andy feel about older women?”

“What? Andy and Nancy Zietlow? No way.”

“ Absolutely no way?”

“Well…”

“We’ll go and talk to Andy,” Zeus said.