Page 66 of It Takes a Thief

And “Ooo, ooo, Ford! I’m waiting for you to fuck me from behind!”

Real fucking mature.

Meanwhile, Ogden had gotten in touch with Galileo, who said Maddy was out to lunch with that cockbite Dr. Chesbrough. Out to fucking lunch! I demanded that Galileo track her down, and that was the last I heard. Could I possibly fume a bit more? We were being toyed with, blackmailed by the sleaziest most brain-damaged genius we’d ever gone up against, and he could very well be keeping my old lady hostage somewhere.

So for now, we high-fived and “whoo’d” and in general scared the shit out of the normal citizens who had walked or driven to the top of the mesa. What happened was, once they’d get to the spot Mewtwo had been noted, they were unable to capture her/him, I guess him. Then maybe half an hour later, Mewtwo would appear a bit farther down the street, and we’d all thunder off like a giant herd of losers.

Until now.

“Man!” gushed Tobiah. “I just wish I’d been able to get eyes on Noodlum’s computer camera, that would’ve been classic to see him seize up and start drooling!”

“Roll around on the floor!” Wolf grinned so widely it seemed it’d split his face in two. Just because his archenemy Tobiah had done the deed didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate a good prank now and then. “Biting his tongue.”

The normally gruff and dignified Duji made like an epileptic, turning his hands into claws. It wasn’t that we weren’t sensitive to the plight of epileptics. It was that we hated Noodlum so much, and hadn’t been able to inflict a single scratch on him that we knew of.

In fact, we didn’t even know this would work. Like Tobiah said, we had no eyes on him. We didn’t even know where he was.

I wandered back from my congratulatory crowd and called the Chinle Hospital. It was a long shot, but it was Dr. Chesbrough’s day off and I didn’t bother asking for his cell. I had to rope Wolf into finding that for me and man, talk about an awkward conversation.

What I wanted to say to the douchemonkey was “What the fuck are you thinking of, taking my wife to lunch?” But I couldn’t come across strong if I wanted intel from the dickwad. Thus, the incredibly awkward conversation that followed.

“I’m Ford Illuminati, Maddy’s husband.”

It was definitely not my imagination that he tensed up then. He had a slight southern twang, and I pictured him looking like an Allman Brother. For the first time in a long time, I wished I had some Adderall. “Oh. You can’t get ahold of her?”

“No. Goes straight to voicemail. I heard she was out to lunch with you.”

“Out to lunch? Oh, I wouldn’t call it that. We were just, ah, discussing some new plasma replacement protocol.”

I’ll bet. I’ll fucking bet there was plasma replacement. But I kept a firm chokehold on my rage. I could go beat this fucker senseless later… when Maddy was found.

But he did give me some valuable information. “Her car wouldn’t start, so I called an Uber for her. That was the last I saw of her. She heard her sister June was in the ER so she wanted to get to Pure and Easy as fast as possible.”

Uber, eh? Computer whizzes such as Noodlum had been known to hack into systems like that. It would be a no-brainer if he’d commandeered an electric car, or inserted one of his own people to drive Maddy.

“Can you do me a favor and go see if she’s at her apartment? Call me back,” I instructed the doctor.

Faux Pas sidled up to me sideways. He always knew when something was wrong. “What is up?”

I had to confide in someone. Turk Blackburn had been my tight running buddy, but he’d come out of the closet and gone to Lake Havasu to found a newer, gayer, MC, the Bent Zealots. “Ahh, Maddy was out to lunch with some nozzle a few hours ago.”

“Out to lunch,” Faux Pas repeated.

“Yeah. He claims they were studying some protocol. I say they were studying each other’s protocol.”

“It does sound a bit… fishy.” Faux Pas always told it like it was. He wouldn’t make it sound better just to placate me. “I am sorry for what has happened, Ford. Tuzigoot told me you’re going to be stepping back a bit from the construction side of things.”

I nodded. “Yeah. This is all getting to be too much for me. I have to admit it. I’m not a superman. I can’t do it all and expect to keep my family intact.”

“You are making the right choice, little brother.” A roar of joy rose from my club and the random citizens milling around by the organic garden. Faux Pas observed impassively, “Looks like another Mewtwo sighting.”

I snorted. “That, or my nurse wife with giant boobs just taunted us some more.”

“Come on, men!” shouted Tobiah, arcing his arm. “We’re going down that canyon to the petroglyphs with the aliens!”

So we slogged along for another couple hours, a giant group of maybe a hundred people, ninety of them intent on capturing the weird dinosaur-human clone, Mewtwo. After the strobe light video, though, the taunts and changes from the game came fewer and farther between. Had Noodlum given up on this game? Did he really have Maddy in his custody?

Nurse Maddy’s taunts were weaker, too. “Aw, cumon guys. You must be awfully bad boys if you can’t find me.” And she’d turn around and bend over, displaying her butt crack for all my brothers to see. I had to put my hand over the computer screen.