Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight (Stephanie Plum #28)(49)

“I saved you from the train, didn’t I?”

I looked around to see if there was a sign that my angel was getting all this.

“I don’t suppose you have any other ideas?” I asked him.

“Not at the moment.”

“Wonderful. I’m going to the office to see if any new FTAs came in. I’ll be back at dinnertime and maybe you’ll have some other ideas by then.”

“There’s something that never fails to give me ideas,” Diesel said.

“No!”

“I was talking about pizza. Do you want me to have Ana get it or do you want to bring some home?”

“I’ll get the pizza.”

I finished my sandwich, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and drove to the office. I stopped for a light and glanced down at my breasts. I thought they were perfectly okay. They aren’t centerfold breasts, but I can run up and down a flight of stairs without a bra and not rupture something.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Connie was cleaning her gun and Lula hadn’t returned from her session with the astrologer when I got to the office.

“Anything new?” I asked Connie.

“No, but Vinnie called in and he’s not happy that Oswald Wednesday is still in the wind.”

“I’m not happy about that, either,” I said. “I’ve turned my parents’ house into a safe house, and I’ve got a strange man sleeping in my bed.”

“If you want to get rid of him, I’d be happy to have him in my bed,” Connie said.

“If only it was that easy.”

Lula burst in. “What’s happening? Did I miss anything?”

“I found Charlotte Huck, and she’s with my parents,” I said. “That’s about it.”

“How did it go with your reading?” Connie asked.

“I don’t remember all the details but there’s a moon that’s out of orbit and it’s creating a disturbance in my energy zone. And Stephanie’s moon is taking its place where my moon should be, so she’s getting all my good juju and I’m keester cakes out of luck.”

“That sounds about right,” Connie said.

“Yeah, it made sense to me,” Lula said. “There isn’t much I can do about it until my moon gets back on track.”

“Charlotte gave me the key to her house,” I said. “I’m going to get some clothes for her.”

“I’ll go along,” Lula said. “You might need some muscle. There could be squatters in her house. It happens when you leave a house empty. Or Oswald could show up. I bet he looks in on that house all the time.”

I drove past Charlotte’s house on Spruce and cut through the back alley. I didn’t see Oswald’s Porsche. I didn’t see anything that might look like a cop car. I didn’t see any random suspicious-looking vehicles.

I parked behind Charlotte’s house, and Lula and I went in through the back door.

“This is a nice house,” Lula said. “You could see nobody’s been here for a while. It’s still all tidy.”

We went upstairs to Charlotte’s bedroom, and I pulled some clothes out of her closet and went through her drawers.

“This is terrible,” Lula said. “This girl needs the queer guy, Tan France. Get his number. Is he in the book? She don’t need birth control with underwear like this. We need to do an intervention.”

I put the clothes and some toiletries in a laundry basket and carted it downstairs.

“I need to use the powder room,” Lula said. “I’ll be right out.”

I took the basket to the car and stashed it in the back. I turned around and was face-to-face with Oswald.

“Hello,” Oswald said. “We meet again. I see you have the puzzle figured out. You’ve obviously found Charley Q. And I suspect you also are harboring HotWiz. Are they in your apartment? Doubtful. Diesel is living there. I can’t see him tolerating two geeks day and night. So where are they? Your parents’ house? I don’t think so. You aren’t that dumb.”

A lot he knew. I was absolutely that dumb.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Diesel sent me to this address to get clothes.”

“I almost believe you. Not that it matters. You’re going to make a nice hostage.”

I reached for the pepper spray in my pocket, and he pointed a gun at me.

“Just call me Quick Draw,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t kill you. Not immediately anyway. I’ll shoot you in a horribly painful spot and make sure you hang on long enough for me to accomplish my task.”

“What is your task?”

“To demolish the Baked Potatoes. Silenced forever. A favor to the world. If you’re going to be a hacker, you need to be smarter and better than whoever you’re hacking. They’re not. They’re just plain-ass potatoes. No butter, no sour cream, not even a sprinkling of chives.”

“Has it occurred to you that you are insane?”

“Of course. All true geniuses have a touch of insanity. I happen to be criminally insane and that makes me much more interesting.”

“Diesel thinks you’re boring and childish.”

“Diesel doesn’t even have a last name.”