Blaze removed his finger from the trigger and snapped the safety onto his gun, still holding it pointing down and away from Sarah. “What are you doing?”
Sarah clamped her hands on her hips and stared at him. “I need to finish this reading. Give me five minutes.”
“This is against operational security. Wediscussedsocial media.”
“I will talk to you about this infive minutes.Wait outside.” Sarah turned back to the phone and a half-dozen brightly colored tarot cards strewn on a card table draped with sparkly fabric. Her voice was lower and vaguely Russian-accented as she said, “And now, Madam Belova will continue telling your future.”
Blaze left her studio, carefully closing the door behind himself.
Of all the damn scenarios, Sarah succumbing to the lure of social media had not been on his radar. He knew that the likes and attention were as addictive as gambling, but he hadn’t thought she would endanger them both for an electronic dopamine hit.
For five crazed minutes, Blaze’s tactician mind ground through alternate operational scenarios, most leading to their deaths or worse.
Finally, Sarah opened the door of her studio and peered down at where Blaze sat on the floor, and then she flipped on the hallway light, a brilliant glare that made his eyes smart. “Barging in while I’m in the middle of a reading disrupts the experience.”
Blaze contemplated the pistol he held in his hands. With its safety on, he could beat his own head in without endangering Sarah. “I need you to tell me why you went online.”
She sat beside him on the floor. “Because I couldn’t just ignore all those people who were begging for readings, and the farm needs the money.”
In a small way, it was a relief that she hadn’t been bratting to get his attention, but the recklessness of it astounded him. “You exposed our position for, what, a hundred bucks?”
“Forty dollars, actually.”
His heart beat faster in his chest. “Your aunt knows you do these bogus psychic readings under this account. Surely, she set up an alert that notified her at the moment you went online. The gears in the White Russian organization are already turning. Hitmen have almost certainly been ordered to come here.”
“She probably didn’t even see me, and weneedthe money.”
“Why on Earth would a temporary cash flow situation prompt you to betray our position like this?” he demanded.
“It’s not a ‘temporary cash flow situation’ to me. Last week, those hackers stole every little bit of savings I had. All the money the farm generates dumps right back into running it. You were cut off from your money by those people who hacked our bank accounts, too, so you can’t even loan me some to get me by.”
“But we would have figured it out.”
“With your guests coming here next weekend for the Fourth of July, we have to be able to buy food and other items they’ll need. Weneededmoney. I’m getting us some money.”
“Betraying our position wasn’t worth forty bucks.”
“Without access to our bank accounts, we need every dollar we can get our hands on to keep us afloat, to buy the feed corn for the chickens and hay for Charlie and HowNow, and especially if you want to buy steaks andwhole chickensto rotisserie for guests.”
“I wish you’d talked to me about this first. I was planning to call other friends, ones who aren’t wrapped up with the White Russian mafia, to float me a loan of a couple hundred thousand until the hacking situation is resolved. I was deciding today who to call and planning to make the calls tomorrow morning.”
Sarah jammed her hands together to make one huge fist. “Well,Iwish you would’ve told methat.It must be nice to have rich friends who can just loan you bougie money at the drop of a hat. I sure as heck don’t have any friends who could do that.”
It had been a long time since Blaze had thought of money in terms of scarcity. “Was that tarot reading a private video like a DM, or did you announce yourself on social media?”
Sarah sighed heavily, and her shoulders dropped with defeat. Blaze dreaded her answer.
She said, “It was a live reading that anyone could watch. I did one lady’s cards for money and then a general reading to gauge the temperature of the spirit realm, which is like a weather forecast for the future. So many people needed to hear that the cards are favorable, and everything will be okay.”
“And were the cards ‘favorable?’” he asked, wishing like hell she hadn’t gone online.
Sarah squinted her eyes at him. “I sure as heck said they were, and a whole lot of people have a tighter grip on their lives now. We have acommunity,you know. I started being Madam Belova after my parents died, and they got me through that time, financiallyandemotionally. There are a lot of desperate people out there, just like I was. It’s important to give them encouragement andhope.”
Blaze rested his head on the wall behind him. “So your aunt knows where we are.”
“Well, she might not. I never have my location services on when I’m on social media, especially on livestreams.”
“She’ll recognize your studio from last time.”
