Tom shot me a look. I shook my head. “She’s a tree hugger.”
“The Lamborghini is a rental.” He turned to her.
“Promise to return it to the agency and get a Tesla and I’ll welcome you in.”
“You got yourself a deal.” Tom laughed.
Brat opened the door invitingly, offering him a little bow. “My kingdom is yours then, Mr. Whitfield.”
His laugh intensified. What the hell was happening?
“Actually, I’m with the family. We’re just passing by, see. I promised my kids I’d take them to Disneyland.”
Disney World was closer to Chicago.
“Traffic to Anaheim is insane this time of the day. Your car will singlehandedly cause a volcano to erupt. Come on in, all of you.” Brat opened the door wider, ignoring me. “We’ve got pastries. I’ll make smoothies for the kids. It’ll be fun.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Tom turned around and signaled Lisa to get out and bring the two terrors with her.
“Uncle Ramb-son!” one exclaimed. One of them was named Silas, the other Saint.
I’d never heard more white bread names in my life.
The twins ran, tackling my legs and hugging them firmly. I had no idea why. I’d never made any effort to be nice to them. I didn’t actively scowl when they came around—a refreshing change from my usual behavior toward humans—but that was the extent of my relationship with them. I did buy them birthday presents. Mainly because they were born on April Fool’s, so it was easy to remember the date.
I could see Brat was looking at me with a fresh expression, one full of curiosity and delight. I imagined she was having a Beauty and the Beast moment, where the ugly-ass beast feeds the birds in the snow. Little did she know, if I had birds in my palm, they’d be rotisserie chicken before the stupid song was over.
“Ransom, it is good to see you again.” Lisa rose on her toes to kiss both my cheeks.
Lisa was a decent woman. But she also constantly tried to coerce me into family dinners, blind dates, and other social functions.
I turned around to face Tom. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He bumped his shoulder against mine, dropping his voice. “We need to take a little trip.”
I rolled my shoulders. He’d kept it vague for a reason. “I’ll grab my stuff.”
“Grab your kit, too. I’ve a feeling we’re dealing with some serious shit.”
I went upstairs to get my gun （I always carried, and it was always hot）， cell phone, and bag. When I got back down, I found Brat handing the little monsters two pink smoothies while having a heated conversation with Lisa about curling irons. I’d always detested the human need to fill silence with mundane small talk, but I especially hated how the Thorne Princess was seemingly winning over the small handful of people in my life.
“…and so,” Brat concluded to Lisa, who stared at her, eyes like two full moons, “the real secret to perfect waves is to curl each section in the opposite direction. Like—” She lifted her hands and took pieces of Lisa’s blonde hair to demonstrate. “If I curl this part inward, I’ll curl the one next to it outward. And you have to keep them tight until you’re completely done, then set them with hairspray before gently brushing. Do you have, like, twenty minutes? I can show you.”
“She does,” I said grimly, motioning to Tom to get his ass up from the stool and join me at the door. “We’re leaving. Lisa will keep an eye on you.”
“Leaving? Really?” Brat perked up. The sparkle in her eyes was telling. She loathed me.
I smirked cruelly. “Don’t look so sad. It’s only for a couple hours.”
“A girl can dream.”
“Can she? Creativity is not your strong suit,” I volleyed back.
“And you know this conclusively about me from what, an impression based on these last couple days?” She parked a hand over her waist, cocking up an eyebrow.
“I know because you can’t seem to read anything over two paragraphs long if the text isn’t accompanied by pictures.”
All this while Tom and Lisa’s eyes ping-ponged between us.
The last jab seemed to do the trick, because Brat looked thoroughly wounded. She didn’t like to be told she was stupid. I made a mental note not to do it anymore. No part of me wanted to see her banged up emotionally. I just wanted to survive this damn assignment.
“Uncle Ran-wrom said a potty word!” One of the twins—the smaller one—raised his head from his smoothie, his face smeared with pink.
“Very true. Uncle Ransom will now have to give each of you one dollar as an apology,” Tom said primly, like he didn’t grow up like me, in the guts of Chicago’s whorehouses and drug dens.
Huffing, I took out my wallet and slapped a fifty-dollar bill in front of each twin. “Here,” I groaned. “Since I know I’m about to rack up a bill here.”
Finally, Tom and I left in his Lamborghini. I wasn’t feeling completely confident in Brat’s ability not to screw it up while I was gone, but Lisa was levelheaded, and I had every reason to believe she’d call us if Brat did something stupid, like flash the neighbors or invite domestic terrorists for a pool party.
“Where are we headed?” I asked, checking my Ruger LC9 to make sure it was fully loaded. I had zero trust in people. But I did trust my weapon to always function when I needed it. It was a good rule of thumb, and one I’d adopted the hard way.
“Huntington Beach.”
“I’m going to need more than that.”
By my calculations, Tom was supposed to start his work with Mayor Ferns on Monday. It was unlike him to make a trip to the West Coast so close to an assignment. We both had that poor boy complex, where we were eager to prove we were worth our salt.
“Ian’s not been answering me.”
“Ian Holmes?” I asked, removing invisible lint from my dress pants. Holmes was a fellow counterintelligence agent from our previous lives. He was much older than us and worked as a chief operating officer by the time we’d left. Which basically meant he ran the show and was our boss the last two years of our employment. Tom kept in touch with him.
“Yeah. Haven’t heard from him in a week.”
“So? Are you two having an affair?” My eyebrows shot up. “Why would you be talking to this random ass person more than you talk to your mom?”
“I don’t have a mom, and you damn well know that,” Tom muttered. “Ian and I talk pretty regularly. He’s got a lot of insight. Has been in this business for decades. Speaking of affairs…” Tom scrubbed the stubble on the front of his throat, grinning. “Nice banter you had there with Miss Thorne.”
“Don’t go there,” I warned. The image of her smoothing my dress shirt last night with that lopsided, siren smirk assaulted my memory every half hour or so.
“I’m not suggesting you’re having an affair with her,” Tom explained. “But…if she wasn’t business, would you?”
“Absolutely not.”
Tom had no idea about my sexual life, how depraved it was. But even if he had, he seemed to think even the biggest fuck-up could be reformed. He said he was living proof of that. He was wrong. I was ten times more damaged.