Tristan shook his head. “It would be best if you three split up and went somewhere you have family or people you know. It would be ideal if Jian and Anjali went back to Malaysia and India. But you, I don’t know where I can send you that you would be safe.”
“But you won’t be? What the hell is going on, Tristan? Just ask Mary Varvara Bell for more time. I mean, if she wants the stock that badly, surely she would wait another week or a few weeks.”
“I owe her too much.”
“But that’s a really good reason to keep you alive, if you owe her a bunch,” Colleen argued. “Dead people don’t pay their bills.”
“I think it’s past that. At this point, she might just want to cut her losses and take everything I own, and she probably wants to make sure other people don’t mess with her the way I have. She must think I’ve taken advantage of her, and she’s right. Also, she can go to court with that promissory note and legally take everything I have. It’ll deter people from taking advantage of her in the future.”
Colleen huddled backward a little bit. “You took advantage ofher?Like, when she was drunk at a party or something?”
“Not like that.Neverlike that. I don’t do that. I mean businesswise. Not only did she call in the promissory note that I’m trying to fulfill, but I asked her for a favor, too. A huge favor.”
“I could’ve done you a favor, Tristan. Why the hell are you asking Mary Varvara Bell for favors?”
“When Jian and Anjali were kidnapped, I knew we needed mercenaries to get them back. We couldn’t call the police because the Phoenix police who met us at the plane when we arrived were on the take.”
“You have a whole lot of money,” Colleen said. “You could’ve just hired mercenaries. You didn’t have to go to her.”
He shook his head. “I might have money, but I don’t have the kinds of connections for something like this. I don’t know who to contact to hiremercenaries.If we needed an invitation to the Met Gala, I’d know who I could call to get that. If we wanted to meet the Queen of England, I know exactly who I would call to get an invitation to tea. Butmercenaries?I had no idea where to start. So I started with the only person I know who might be involved in organized crime or who would be the type who hires mercenaries.”
“And you didn’t call your buddy, the Prince of Monaco?”
“Maxence owns a military. He doesn’t need mercenaries.”
“It’s okay. We can fix this. We can figure out how to pay her off. How much do you think you owe her now?”
“I’m supposed to write a program for her to disguise her phone number and where she’s calling from. Kind of a super-advanced virtual private network. But my major problem is that I need to get her the GameShack stock by the end of Wednesday. I was hoping I could put her off until Friday, not that it would make any difference at all.”
“This is crazy, Tristan.” Colleen slumped in her seat, made limp by the utter absurdity of what he was saying. “You didn’t know how you were going to get the stock in six weeks, let alone by Friday, let alonetwo days from now.”
“Yeah, so I need to figure out how to get you, Anjali, and Jian someplace safe because I’m not going to make it out of this one. When I admit that I can’t come up with the stock and that there’s no way to do it, she’s going to send someone to kill me. And I don’t want anyone around,especiallyyou,when that happens.”
Colleen glared at him, trying to shove all her anger that he would eventhinksuch a thing into her stare. “I amnotleaving you to face Mary Varvara Bell alone, youninny.”
45
Ninny
Colleen
Colleen glared at Tristan with every ounce of pissed-off-edness in her body. Jesus-Christ-Holy-Savior, that he would eventhinkthat she would do such a thing.
In the face of her fury, as Colleen was getting ready to rain holy hell down on him for such a stupid thought that she wouldleavea friend or a person or whatever he was to her, because they hadn’t talked about that yet,Tristan King cracked up.
“Ninny?”he asked, laughing his butt off. “I haven’t been called a ninny since I lived in Iowa and yanked Sarah Yoder’s pigtail whilst we were playing tag at recess.”
He should not be laughing at her.“Yeah, well, you are one. I can’t believe that you thought I wouldeverleave you to fend for yourself when someone is going to send hired killers tomurderyou! If you think that aboutme,well, then, you are aninny.”
He settled down and fixed her with a stare. “You can’t go to Europe. You don’t have a passport. What are you going to do at customs?”
“We can pull a Taylor Swift again, and I’ll climb in the suitcase for you to drag me through customs.”
Tristan scratched his jaw where his reddish-brown beard was thickening. He was beginning to look a little more rough-and-tumble, which suited Colleen just fine. “If we fly into Nice, the customs official usually just walks onto the plane and inspects the passports. The suitcase trick might work.”
“See? Perfect plan.”
“I’m just concerned that something might happen to me, and then you’d be stranded in Europe without a passport,” he said.
