Page 72 of GAF Factor

“Hey! Don’t just toss that on the ground! I need that!” Jane shouted.

“It’s in the way.”

“It’s in the trunk. That’s the opposite of in the way.”

“If we need to get to our gear in a hurry, we’ll be sorting out panties and books instead of grabbing guns. That could be a problem.”

She crossed her arms as she glared at me. “Then maybe you should keep your gear on you.”

“I can’t keep it all on me. There’s too much here.”

“Then maybe you should have left some at home,” she retorted, walking away.

“Oh, yeah!” I called after her. “Next time, I’ll leave the guns behind and we’ll just knock out the bad guys with your laptop!”

“You’re lucky she didn’t bring her typewriter with her,” IRIS said, strolling around the other side. “You haven’t truly been knocked out until you’ve been hit upside the head with that thing.”

“Have much experience with that, do you?”

“Let’s just say I don’t always know when to keep my mouth shut. So, what’s the plan?”

“We’ll start at his parents’ house. It’s unlikely he’d go there, but they may know something—or somewhere he’d go.”

“I can see this being a really comfortable conversation for Isla.Mr. and Mrs. Yates, I know I’m divorcing your son, but he’s trying to kill me and I need to find him and hand him over to the Irish so they can kill him before he succeeds in killing me.”

“I was thinking we would leave most of that out and stick with he’s missing and where he would go if he was in trouble.”

“Probably best,” IRIS agreed.

“We have another problem,” I muttered.

“Great. As if this job wasn’t hard enough. Please, tell me how this could get worse.”

“I have a feeling Isla isn’t going to let us kill Shawn.”

IRIS burst out laughing, punching me on the shoulder. “Ha, that’s a good one. I like it, but seriously, what’s the problem?”

I stared at him, waiting for him to get the picture. Slowly, his smile faded and turned into a grimace. “You can’t be fucking serious. He’s already tried to kill her twice. Why would she care?”

“That’s just the type of person she is.”

“Insane? Delusional? The most fucking idiotic person on the face of the earth?”

“Watch it,” I snarled. “Remember who you’re talking about.”

He rolled his eyes with a sigh. “So, what the fuck are we supposed to do then?”

“Let’s focus on finding him first. Then we can worry about how to deal with him.”

He grabbed my suit as I was about to leave. “What if we shoot him when we’re trying to catch him and he bleeds out? Will she be pissed at us? Or what if I, say, accidentally set off a bomb and blow him up?”

“Accidentally set off a bomb?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“Let’s just stick with taking him alive.” I removed his hands from my suit and straightened it out. “And IRIS, if you don’t want to lose a hand, don’t fucking touch my suit.”

“Geez, you’re so touchy about your suit.”

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