Page 14 of The Primary Pest (Iphicles Security #1)

That made her laugh weakly. “Carl gets on me if I leave the office, but I wanted a Twix.”

“I totally feel you.” Ajax nodded. “Sometimes you just gotta twerk and have a Twix.”

Bartosz lifted his gaze to the ceiling.

“Who are you people?” she asked suddenly. “If you’re not the ones who hit me, then—”

“We found you lying on the floor, and now that we know you’re all right, it’s time for us to leave.” Behind her head, Bartosz indicated that he’d found a set of keys—hers, guessing from the Kuromi character key tag.

“What’s your name?” Ajax asked.

“Muse.” She visibly swallowed another wave of nausea.

“Like the band?”

“The muses. Dad was Greek.”

“Mine’s Ajax.”

“I feel sorrier for you.” She sat up again, gingerly feeling the back of her head. “Oh shoot. That’s gonna sting for days.”

“I’m not gonna lie.” Ajax glanced at the wound again. “You might need stitches.”

“Perfect. Gonna have to shave a patch of my hair. Again.” She rolled onto all fours and he helped her to her feet. “I hate that.”

“Maybe you could help us out,” said Ajax. “Your cash drawer appears to have been cleaned out? Anything else missing?”

“What are you doing?” Dmytro asked. “Are you Mrs. Fletcher now?”

“Who?” he and Muse asked in unison.

Dmytro shot him an irritated glare. “We don’t need to solve the mystery. That’s for the police. Now that your friend is well enough, we leave.”

“We can’t just leave her.”

“Come, Ajax.” Seemed like Bartosz agreed. “She can call for help. I’d rather not be here when they arrive. This has nothing to do with us.”

Both men headed for the door.

“Give her her phone so she can call this JT person.” Ajax drew her to one of the waiting chairs and sat down next to her. He wasn’t about to leave Muse alone. For one thing, she still seemed dazed. “Is he home right now, do you think?”

“He’s an EMT. He might be on shift. I could try.” She held out her hand for her phone.

“Don’t give it to her,” Bartosz warned. “That’s three coincidences, Mitya.”

They rattled off long strings of sentences in one of those languages they spoke when they didn’t want him to understand or argue. It looked like Dmytro wanted to go along with Ajax’s plan and Bartosz was against it.

“What are they saying?” asked Muse.

“No idea.” He shrugged. “Except the place we were originally supposed to go got broken into or something, and then our engine blew. I guess they’re rattled because they believe this has something to do with my stalker.”

“You’ve got a stalker?” she asked.

Dmytro and Bartosz stopped talking to glare at him.

Dmytro asked, “Why would you tell a perfect stranger—”

“It’s not like it’s a secret.” Ajax smoothed a clean towel in his lap. “Everyone on Twitter knows.”

“That you’re on the run from a stalker?” Muse didn’t look like she believed him. “You?”

“Okay, I don’t have proof anyone is stalking me, but someone has been sending me all these disgusting emails, and some of the pictures in them were taken inside my house—”

“Ajax.” Dmytro glared. “Shut up .”

“See?” Ajax asked. “Rattled.”

“I’m rattled too, considering.” Muse touched the side of her head again and her fingers came away bloody. She paled. “I think my brains got scrambled.”

“That’s natural. Hold this here.” Ajax ordered her to put the makeshift ice pack back on her wound.

“Thing is, people always say there’s no such thing as coincidence, but that’s nonsense.

It’s bad luck, which is just a series of coincidences.

Even when the odds of certain things happening are statistically improbable, they still happen.

Lightning strikes the same place all the time. ”

“Glad it’s normal for you, but—”

“Hey. I didn’t say—”

“Give me my phone back.” She held her hand out. “I’ll call JT, and you can just leave.”

“Perfect.” Dmytro handed it over and motioned for Ajax to come.

“Sorry, boys. I’m not leaving this motel until someone arrives to look out for Muse.” He had to be stubborn here since no one else seemed to care.

“Ajax, don’t be an idiot.” Dmytro blew like a bull. “You—”

“Calm yourself, Dmytro,” Bartosz soothed before turning to Ajax. “He’s right. This is outrageous. We’re here to protect you. You must listen to us. Come with us or we’ll drag you out of here.”

“Not. Happening.” He held his hand up. “ Wait, this is my Casablanca moment. If you touch me, I’ll have you fired. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your lives.”

Dmytro’s pale face darkened. “You are the most exasperating—”

“You’re no serenity garden yourself, Mitya ,” he fired back.

Dmytro and Bartosz argued between themselves again.

Whatever the language, their meaning was clear.

Their mission was in trouble, and they had differing opinions on how to save it.

Dmytro looked like he wanted to kill Ajax and save his stalker the trouble.

Bartosz seemed to be arguing in favor of reason.

“I love when they do that,” Ajax confided in Muse.

If he were honest with himself, he was in denial about the threat to his safety.

People got threatening letters all the time.

He didn’t want to believe anything was going to happen to him.

So what if someone hacked the cameras in his house?

So what if they had escalated from a mildly judgy tone to a brutal, frightening set of threats?

Everybody on the internet got death threats.

Everybody. If you didn’t, you might as well not exist.

He’d wanted to get out of town and regroup on the off chance there really was someone following him, so he let his mother hire Iphicles.

That’s why he’d gone along so meekly—for him. But people—girls—getting hit over the head? Leaving them to fend for themselves even though they were possibly still in danger? That crossed the line.

“See sense,” Dmytro tried. “The girl is fine.”

“Not going.” Ajax had perfected spoiled brat in Montessori school, not that he was one.

What mattered most couldn’t be bought, even for his billions, so he wasn’t spoiled per se.

But he knew how to act like he could buy whatever and whoever he wanted.

He knew how to live up to these men’s worst expectations.

Dmytro sighed. “All right. You win. We wait until Muse has someone to take her to the ER. But not in this fishbowl. You stay hidden. Then we leave after they go.”

Bartosz pocketed Muse’s keys. He practically dared Ajax to say something.

Ajax gave an imperceptible shrug in return.

He’d won the battle he cared about. He wasn’t a saint, and material things didn’t mean as much to him as people did.

If they had to take her car to get to safety, his parents would compensate her.

“You know what?” Muse glanced between the three of them and nodded approvingly. “It’s super cool that you have two dads.”