Page 53 of Bad Enough

The tic in his jaw was the only sign of emotion on his face.

She gave a cynical smile. “Look at it this way. I refrained from going through your bathroom drawers and the nightstand. I was actually afraid of what I might find there.”

His brain tried to inventory the contents. “Only use the top right drawer of the bathroom. Nightstand? Probably better that you didn’t. Ka-Bar knife at the ready, gun in the false bottom.”

“Darn. You really are no fun. Thought maybe I’d at least find the sex toys.”

He would not have been surprised if his eyes were bugged out like a cartoon character right now. “I don’t need sex toys.”

Then it hit him.

She was teasing him.

Huh. Forgot she was sneaky-funny, didn’t you?

One of the things I love about her.

Love?

He smacked aside that slip.

Instead, he said to her, “So I’m depressing and lacking, is what you’re saying.”

Her lips moved to one side as she considered her response. “Depressing? No. Lacking? Oh, yeah. There’s a total sense of someone who has no emotional attachments to anything. I mean, walking in here, I can’t even tell where you usually sit. Like you don’t even have a butt imprint on a favorite chair.”

“That’s just… weird.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s you that’s weird.” She shrugged. “But that’s okay. At least you’re clean.”

He leaned a hip against the breakfast bar. “And what will I see when I come to your home?”

“I don’t know. I mean”—she gestured to the room—“it doesn’t look like this. But knowing you? I guess you’ll see what you want to see.”

He felt a twinge inside. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.

19

JUNE 15TH

Sylvan

When they arrived at Sylvan’s home, she saw a black van out front with a fictitious security company name on it. Two of the guys she’d seen at the office, Nemo and Steel, were hooking up cameras on the far corner of the building. The nosey next-door neighbor was out watering her flowers along the fence line, her ankle-biter dog barking up a high-pitched storm.

The guys must have picked the locks to get inside and hacked the alarm. Given what she’d seen and then heard from Kubrick today, it had probably been child’s play to them.

Once inside, her shoulders sagged, and she sighed in part relief, part despair.

A hand reached out to give a gentle tug on a wispy curl hanging loose from the braid. “What’s wrong?” TB asked.

“Nothing.” Sylvan shook her head. “At least nothing I can control. Elphaba”—she gestured in the direction of the woman outside—“will have it around the entire block that I’ve just returned home, that there are several hunkalicious men working on putting up a security system, and later on, it will be noticed that a Humvee that has never been here before is sitting in my driveway.”

“So?” His expression was puzzled.

A smaller sigh this time, she shrugged.

He went to the window, glimpsing behind the partially pulled curtains at the woman at the property line, not even trying to fake spying on the activity. He turned and looked at her over his shoulder. “Is she really a witch, or do you just call her that because of the dog?”

Sylvan laughed. “You know who Elphaba is? Wow. That’s sort of frightening.”

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