Valentina laughed. “Hey, little man.”
“Don’t call himlittle. He takes offense.” Gabby’s joke came off too biting.
Valentina inspected his tags and corrected herself. “Mr. Bubbles, that’s much more manly.” She scratched the miscreant’s ears.
“Didn’t expect to see you here this morning,” Gabby said.
“Best to be prepared for anything in this job.” Shoelaces tied, Valentina stood and checked her smartwatch. “I’ve got another two miles to get in before work,” she commented to herself.
Mr. Bubbles took Valentina’s exposed leg as an invitation and started vigorously humping.
With a swift yank on his leash, Gabby admonished, “Bubbles, stop that!” The dog panted like some sort of sexual pervert and ignored her. “I’m sorry. He should have been neutered a long time ago. I can’t even bring him to doggie daycare.” Not that she could even if he was neutered. If she couldn’t afford help for her actual kids, she certainly couldn’t pay for doggie daycare.
Valentina stared back, like she was just waiting for Gabby to shut up. “Just keep him off me. I have enough horny men in my life.” She pulled a slip of paper from the phone pocket in her leggings and handed it to Gabby. “Add them to the guest list. They’re EOD agents. We’ll get them into the party with aliases. If anything goes down, they’ll be there.”
That sounded simple enough. Kramer was pretty hands-off about party planning. She could probably invite half of Avocado Avenue and he wouldn’t notice. But then again, could she trust Valentina?
Valentina took her sunglasses off and wiped them down. A little more hesitant, like Kyle when she was angling for more screen time, Valentina asked, “So everything went okay yesterday? Nothing out of the ordinary?”
Was Valentina the mole? Gabby couldn’t possibly know. “Nothing happened at all. Just coffee making and a lot of congratulations on my nose job.”
“Poor Darcy.” More sadly, she said, “I liked her nose.”
Gabby smiled. “I wish I’d gotten to meet her.”
Valentina let out a short, cough-like laugh, almost as if she was choking on the absurdity of the idea. “That would have been… weird.”
“Why?”
“You two had nothing, I mean nothing, in common, except for your face.” Valentina sighed and said, “Shit, I miss that woman.”
Oh-kay.
Gabby held up the list. “You could have just sent this over text or email?”
Valentina gave her best annoyed, big-sister glare. “No records of anything. When you’re done, destroy the paper.”
Sarcastic, Gabby asked, “Should I eat it?”
“That’s a classic for a reason.” Not dignifying Gabby’s sarcasm any further, she tightened her ponytail, readying herself to make an escape. “Don’t do anything stupid today,” Valentina said, implying that Gabby had been pretty dumb yesterday. “Try to stay focused. Be more careful. For instance, I might stop walking the dog alone in the woods.”
Nowshe told her. Gabby tried not to let out a guttural yell of frustration. Through a bake sale smile, she said, “Thanks for the advice. Speaking of safety. I want a gun.” Last night, if she’d had a gun, she might have been able to keep those guys from taking her. Next time, they weren’t coming to pick her up for a chat. They were coming to kill, and not her. She could barely even let herself think the thought without losing her breath. He had threatened her babies.
“You don’t need a gun.”
“You just told me not to walk in the woods alone. I don’t feel safe.”
Gabby knew she’d made a solid point when Valentina blew outa breath and stared off into the middle distance. “A gun won’t help, if you don’t know how to use it.” Valentina looked hard at Gabby. “They’ll take it and use it on you. Just more weapons for the bad guy.” Valentina shook her head, clearly imagining the disaster at the shooting range.
“Teach me.”
“Why aren’t you asking Markus?”
“I don’t know. You’re here, and I was thinking about it.”
“Gabby, I have enough shit to do.”
Gabby put her foot down. This wasn’t just about her. It was about her kids. “You need me. Look at yesterday, I ended up alone all day. No backup. I need to be able to protect myself. Enough with the cutesy, drop-out-of-a-bear-hug maneuvers. I’m not going to become an MMA champ in the next week. I could however learn how to shoot.”
