I shake my head but say nothing.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“You want to start a mob book club and can’t find anyone to debateTheGremlinswith you? Too afraid they’ll insult your tiny feelings?”
His face turns red. Now we’re getting somewhere.
“Need to Goldilocks a new desk? One that’s more your size? Perhaps a trip to Pottery Barn Kids will find something?”
Ooh. His face is turning purple. Good times!
“Or maybe you can’t find someone to take you seriously with a name like Gary?” I poke the tiny bear a little more. “What kind of criminal name is Gary, anyway? You should have become an accountant. Accountants are named Gary. Dentists are named Gary. Child predators are named Gary.”
Gremlin Gary is up out of his chair faster than I saw coming. He slaps me across the face.
“And Garys are the men in the world who feel powerful by bitch-slapping a woman who’s tied up,” I laugh harder.
His green eyes fill with fire. Gary sets his jaw then moves around to my back to untie my wrists. “You think you can take me on, baby? We’ll see about that.”
I shove down the bile that rises when he suggeststaking him onand turn my head to watch him release me. I rub my wrists to get the circulation going. Gary shoves me into a chair, telling me to “sit like a good girl.” Something pokes me in the backside. I lift up to see what is on the chair, but there’s nothing. It’s something in my pocket.
What the hell?
I roll around on the chair for a minute until I realize it’s a pen. I have a pen in my pocket, and I’m not happy to see Gary at all.
Gary drones on about wanting to know where I stashed his brother, how my life is in danger, how he’ll remove my fingers one by one, yada, yada, yada. Seriously, I tune him out.
You hear one evil monologue. You’ve heard them all.
My brain is trying to wrap itself around the fact that I’m not only dealing with an escaped fugitive but a crime family who found my super-secret condo. There aren’t many people in this world who can track me down. But I knew two.
I raise my hand and interrupt Gary’s Evil Plans. “Hey, Gary. Sorry to interrupt - oh, wait - yeah, I’m not sorry at all. Just out of curiosity. How did you find where I lived? How’d you know I’d be there?”
“The mouth on you,” Gary huffs as he paces. “I wasn’t exactly sure where you’d show up. I had guys on all the usual places when your boss was poisoned.”
Panic wells in my chest. “You did that on purpose.”
He snorts. “Of course we did. How else to drag you out of hiding?”
My eyes dart around the room. Many books are at least thirty feet away from where I’m sitting. Nothing on his desk to use as a weapon. Not even a staple. His desk is clear from clutter.
Damn Marie Kondo!
I lean to the other side of my seat, trying to get a glimpse around Gary when I feel the pen dig into my backside once again.
Hmm.
I sling one hand across the arm of the chair and let my other hand drift down onto the seat beside me.
“Seems like an awful lot of trouble to find your brother,” I slowly inch my fingers toward my back pocket. “I’m just curious why you’d go after me if you had a powerful hacker at your disposal? Why not have her find your brother’s whereabouts instead?”
“She says she has to draw the line somewhere and didn’t want to do all my dirty work for me,” Gary sniffs, relaxing back in his chair. “She also wanted to keep you busy so that you wouldn’t find your fugitives.”
I slip my hand into the back pocket of my jeans. Jackpot. A clicker pen, too.
“You mean fugitive. Singular,” I snort to cover the sound of clicking the pen to its writing position. “We caught Dakota Helfinger already.”
Gary raises his eyebrows then gets out of his chair. That’s it.Come a little closer, Gremlin Gary.
