The Mathematics of Working
Flicka von Hannover
Plan A vs. Plan B vs. Plan Hide Flicka Away.
Dieter hailed a ride from an app on his phone so he and Flicka could get the hell away from the casino. The good news was that their escape plan had worked, despite their ultimate escape door being locked.
The bad news was that they had needed it so damn soon.
They retrievedAlina from the daycare and paid the next week’s extortion. As always, Alina was thrilled to see them. She was giddy when she saw her friends in the afternoon and perky to see Flicka and Dieter in the evening.
Dieter knew that he had been blessed with a happy-go-lucky kid. He wasn’t sure where she’d gotten it from. Neither he nor Gretchen were particularly easy-going, especially him. Dieter wasaware that he was too taciturn, too prone to using his fists or weapons if he or his principals were threatened instead of deescalating and defusing the situation. Sometimes he wondered if his father, who was so methodical and circumspect about every aspect of his life, was really his biological father, but one look in the mirror had dispelled any worry about that. The gray eyes were the dead giveaway.
Also, when he shaved in the morning, he swore that his father was staring out of the mirror at him, but that might be because he was north of thirty and rising fast.
He was glad Alina had Gretchen’s green eyes, though. Sometimes he saw too much of the storms in the world. Maybe Alina would see forests and fields instead with those pale green eyes of hers.
When they arrived at the little townhouse,Dieter went through the motions of putting Alina to bed for the evening and making conversation with Flicka that night.
It all seemed hollow. It all seemed empty.
It felt like a wake-up call.
Finally, he broached the subject he’d been avoiding. “It’s too dangerous for you to work as a waitress.”
Flicka turned and looked at him from where she had been sitting on the couch, watching the dailysports recap. She asked, “I beg your pardon?”
“Obviously, they are hunting for you. They had information from somewhere, from the casino, maybe. We should find somewhere to hole up and go to ground.”
“That’s what Pierre would expect us to do,” she said. “If anything, now he’ll stop looking for me in this area because he will assume that we’re going to flee and go somewhere else.”
Dieter shookhis head while the announcer on the television held her microphone up to some athlete’s mouth. “He has a sighting of you here. He’ll concentrate his efforts in the area where you were seen.”
“Our plan is a good one. Just because he found me one time—”
He straightened, aghast at her naiveté. “You can’t be thinking about going back to work at the Monaco Casino.”
She waved off his statement. “Oh,of course not. We’ll have to switch casinos. I wasn’t talking about going back there.”
“You can’t just get another job and do this again.”
“Of course, I can.” Her smile became rather smug. “I got that job with no experience and no idea what I was doing. I’m good at getting jobs, which rather surprised me.”
“But you could stay with Alina, here where it’s safe, and I’ll go out.”
“I’ve neverbeen around a baby.” Flicka’s glance at the stairs held fear. “I don’t know anything about how to take care of a baby. She would get hurt. I can’t. I justcan’t.”
“But it’s safer.”
Flicka shook her head, and one of her blond eyebrows twitched down. “Not for her. Children should be cared for by professionals, not by any idiot who happens to be available. If something happened to her because Iwas too stupid, neither one of us would ever forgive me.”
Dieter cringed inwardly at the thought. “She’s an easy kid. She’s not a runner, like some. You’d be fine.”
She looked back at the muted television. Blue light flickered over her pale skin, turning her green eyes nearly teal. “Besides, I did the math. Between my tips and your winning average over these last two weeks, we make about fiftypercent over and above her daycare costs, so it’s fiscally worth it. If only you worked—and I took into account the kind of jobs and hours you could do if I wasn’t around—we’d still have a lot less money. I even tried to factor in if there would be savings because I could cook instead of picking up, which we both know I can’t do. We tried that a couple of times in London.”
He chuckled, remembering.
A few times, he had managed to rescue the meal with a little military ingenuity.
