“How should I know? Are there evil psychics?”
Josie scoffed. “There’s evil everything.”
Riley tried to sit up straighter. “There has to be an explanation. And hopefully a remedy. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a case of psychic motion sickness.”
“Maybe Gabe will know what the hell is wrong with you?” Josie offered.
Riley perked up. If anyone would understand, it was Gabe. Well, Gabe or her grandmother, but she was only crossing that bridge if absolutely necessary. “Is he still here?”
Josie shook her head. “Mrs. Penny took him to return Willicott’s lobster to the neighbor’s saltwater aquarium.”
“Sentences you only hear within a hundred-foot radius of the Bogdanovich mansion.”
“Hey,” Nick said, appearing with a plate of peanut butter toast and a ginger ale. “Eat this.”
His mood was impossible to gauge by normal human means, and Riley wasn’t feeling up to another visit to drunken Cotton Candy World yet.
He was glaring at her.Bad sign.
But he’d cut her toast diagonally.Good sign.
“Thanks,” she said as she took the plate from him.
“I’m still going to yell at you later,” he said, stuffing the corner of a paper towel into the neck of her shirt like a bib.
Riley sighed and took a bite of toast. “Yeah, I figured.”
“So, I guess with Sesame back we should start looking into these mysterious Hemsworths, right, boss?” Josie said hopefully.
“Ican start looking into the bastards who took Beth.”
“Sesame,” Josie and Riley corrected him.
“Whatever,” he said. “But my team is already occupied with theirprimocases. So I’ll have to handle this investigation on my own.”
Josie’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “You spiteful, grudge-holding—”
“Finish that sentence, and I’ll give you every case Penny suggests for the next month.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I would because I’m a spiteful, grudge-holding Neanderthal.”
“That’s a lot nicer than what I was actually going to say,” Josie shot back.
“Message received. Now go away, Jos,” Nick ordered.
“I don’t have to take this abuse. I’m going to go find my husband,” she announced. She threw double middle fingers over her shoulders and stormed out of the room on her tiny elfin feet.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Riley observed. She took a gulp of ginger ale.
“She’s not a very nice person,” Nick agreed.
“I meantyou.”
“I’m the boss,” he insisted. “When the team falls out of line, it’s up to me to kick their asses back into line.”
“Yeah, but what if they weren’t reallythatout of line?”
