Page 61 of It Takes a Thief

I gained confidence. Ford would pay the money and I’d be on my way. Show Low. Wasn’t this where the Ochoas had their empire? Was this payback for the way we’d smacked them down at Bee’s new bud and breakfast inn, Smoky Mountain High? We’d melted them, shot them with machine guns, and even murdered a couple with bows and arrows. These must be Ochoas. I began to worry again.

There was a video camera hanging from the ceiling pointed at the bed, so I wasn’t surprised when the door opened. What did surprise me was that the Ochoas sent a white man in.

A short but muscular guy, bare-chested except for a leather vest—it wasn’t a cut, only had a patch that said “Honk if you’ve never seen a gun fired from a motorcycle”—entered then, looking almost shy from under a curtain of hair. He had sparse facial hair, as though he wasn’t old enough to grow any, and tiny slits for eyes, as though he were part Asian. But he definitely wasn’t Mexican.

“Ah,” he said, eyeballing me appreciatively enough to give me a creepy feeling. “You’re awake.”

“Yes,” I said with all the authority I could muster. “Can you tell me what the Ochoas want from my husband?”

He frowned and sat on the bed, bowling my legs toward him. I lifted them back where they’d been. “Ochoas? They was run out of this place months ago. They’re pretty much decimated after what you guys did to them.” So he did know about Ford’s club. He wasn’t anyone from the Rez.

“So… no Ochoas? You’re a squatter?”

“I guess you could say that. This was Ruben Ochoa’s house, but it’s mine now. You like it?”

I knew enough about this sort of thing to pretend to go along with the guy in charge. “I wouldn’t know. How much can I see from here when I’m handcuffed?”

He looked at my legs almost shyly. I tensed. I was wearing a knee-length skirt for my lunch with Ellis, and this guy put his hand below my knee. “Mm. Never seen your legs before.”

He’d seen other parts of me? “Where have you seen me before?”

He smiled. “Lots of places. Your hospital website. I used to watch you going shopping, putting kids in the van, that sort of thing. I’ve got to say… your legs are just as beautiful as the rest of you.”

He slid his hand up, stopping briefly to fondle my knee, then continuing up. I smashed my legs together and said in a high pitch,

“So! What’s your name? You obviously know mine.”

“Yes,” he said warmly, still sliding his hand, “Madison Shellmound.”

“Illuminati. I’m married to Ford, as you probably know.”

He shrugged. “Don’t pay attention to that sort of thing. You can call me Muldoon. That’s when I’m thinkin’ straight, like right now.” I pressed my thighs together and even tensed the muscles, but Muldoon jammed his hand between them, nauseatingly close to my pussy.

I gave it a try, anyway. “Please stop that, Muldoon. I’m a married woman. I’m sure Ford will pay whatever ransom you require.”

He squirmed his fingers between my locked thighs. “Bein’ married doesn’t mean anything. I’ve had my eye on you for a long time.”

But I’m not attracted to you. This really required tact. “Hey, how about giving me a tour of your house? You can show me the kitchen, we could have a beer—”

Abruptly he removed his hand, going around the small of his back and whipping out a semi-auto Glock. I’d seen this one a lot. It was one of Ford’s favorite models. And I’d seen a lot of them waved around in my time—just never with the barrel pointed at my head.

“I’m not falling for that, bitch,” snarled Muldoon. He was so snarly his upper lip got snagged on a tooth, and the tooth was pretty snaggly too. “I let you out of these handcuffs, you run off.”

“Where’m I going to run to? We’re on a big mesa far from town, I can see that from here.”

He lowered the gun. “Yeah,” he admitted. “But I’m not asking Ford for any ransom. I’ve got all the money I want, thanks to my brilliant hacking abilities. In fact, I need to go do something right now.”

He left, replacing the piece in the small of his back.

He left the door open, so I could hear there was absolutely no one else in the house, unless they were sleeping soundly. In fact, I was kind of sleepy, too.

I drifted away, and who knows how long I floated like that until Muldoon came back into the room.

FORD

We had a sit-down the night before the Red Rocks Showdown. It sounded incredibly silly explaining to my brothers that I thought Noodlum had somehow hacked into Pokémon Go—in fact, people had been showing up at our tuxedo rental and weed dispensary, which also had been marked as PokéStops, and I can’t believe I’m even saying this. I told them I needed all hands on deck tomorrow, a strange request seeing as how I didn’t know what would happen. Tobiah was all set to go with some kind of corny Pokémon wristwatch that would light up when a new cartoon he hadn’t “captured” yet would come into range. Of course, you wouldn’t believe the jokes the old-timers made. They must’ve been the wettest blankets on the moist bathroom floors in history. But the next day, they were all at the Bum Steer. Laughing, for sure, and talking about nerdsicles and dill weeds, but they were there. Taking me seriously. Giving up their farmer’s markets and library book sales—which, now that you mention it, I would’ve rather been at.

Instead, I was at a table, discussing the highway job with Tuzigoot. We were so close to finishing, we were talking about shoulder widening and lane striping. I was even dropping some hints about the next big contract we’d been awarded, how I wanted him to take point on that.