Page 8 of Remington’s Mate

Brandon swore.

This bit the big one, Remy thought. Weeks of work down the drain, and they might not get another chance with Sutcliffe. That asshat needed taking down in the worst way.

Kitty said, “A blizzard is a blizzard. He’s seriously going to blame you for that?”

Colt said, “Sutcliffe is one of those ‘I don’t care about reality, just make it happen’ kind of dickheads. I’m just hoping we can figure out a way to tell him I’m stuck in a fucking snowbank without pissing him off, or having him decide to go with the next guy on the list.”

“Yeah, okay,” Brandon said. “Anybody got any ideas?”

“I do,” Remy said, almost before he realized he was going to. “I’ll go to the meeting. If anybody can be Colt, it’s me.” The twins were completely identical—no one but the people closest to them could tell them apart.

Brandon glanced over at Remy. “You’re not an engineer,” he pointed out.

“So?” Remy said. “It’s not like I’m going to have to build something right there in front of him. It’s just a preliminary meeting to prove to him how sleazy Colt is. Don’t know if I can match Colt’s natural sleaze level, but I should be able to fake it well enough to satisfy Sutcliffe.”

Colt gave him the finger, then said, “Not to mention the fact that, since Sutcliffe clearly doesn’t care if their buildings fall down or not, he’s not going to care how much I know. This could work.”

“You still need to sound like you know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Brandon pointed out, looking at Remy.

Remy snorted. “Excuse me? Who spent four fucking years studying with Colt, until he got his degree? Building shit with him for his class assignments? Quizzing him for his licensing exams? Proofreading his papers because he can’t spell worth a shit, and is too lazy to run spell check? Going to class for him when he was hungover? Moi, that’s who.”

Colt said, “Fistbump, bro.” His fist got huge as he bumped the camera. “Remember that time I was out all night with that super-hot anthropology major and forgot where I parked my truck, and you had to go take that exam…”

“Focus,” Brandon said. “I don’t need to hear about all the fraudulent stuff you yahoos did, pretending to be each other. I don’t want to know it, actually.”

“It’s probably better if you don’t,” Remy said. “Then you can’t testify against us ever.”

Brandon scowled at him. “Will anyone ever ask me to?”

Both twins shrugged at the same time. “We plead the fifth,” they said in unison. They did another virtual fist bump.

Brandon shook his head. “Fine.” He looked at Remy. “If you two think you can pull this off, I’ll back your play. We need to get inside this fucking company. Not just for our client, either. We need to get access to all Sutcliffe’s records so we can find out how many unsafe buildings are out there.”

“For real,” Colt said. “I’ll reply to Sutcliffe and tell him the meeting’s on. Then I can get back to what any reasonable person would be doing at stupid o’clock on a Sunday morning.”

“Boinking their mate,” Callie said.

“They knew that, babe,” said Colt.

“How was I supposed to know?” she asked. “You said ‘reasonable person’. We don’t even know any of those.”

“I’m hanging up now,” Brandon said. “Happy orgasms.”

He hit the button and cut the call.

Remy sat back in his chair, a hint of something trickling through his veins that felt like—anticipation. Maybe even excitement. He suddenly realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked forward to something.

Renovating the mansion was all well and good, but this was something real he could do. Something interesting. Something maybe even dangerous.

He’d been walking around in a fog for months. Even the computer work he’d done on the case so far hadn’t felt worthwhile.

It hadn’t felt like anything.

The only time he felt something was when he made secret trips to the spirit world, which according to everything he knew about it, would eventually make him crazy. Crazier. He’d promised himself he wasn’t going to do that anymore.

He looked up to see Brandon watching him. “You sure you’re okay to do this?” Brandon asked. He didn’t just mean the impersonation. He meant Can you keep your shit together?

Remy had been struggling with his two animals for months. Sometimes they both wanted to take over, and he’d had some dangerous fucked-up moments when he was stuck between them, a quivering blob that was part owl, part leopard, part human, and all the way creepy.