Page 20 of The Hard Way

Thor sighed. I knew that sigh. It was the kind of sigh that said,This is probably happening.

Zeus groaned.

Chapter 3

There’s moreto a fake nose than just the nose part. A fake nose has a large ruffle of fake skin around it, and the challenge is to smooth enough makeup over the ruffle to hide where it meets your real skin. You have to use special, really thick makeup for it, and fuck, it itches!

Thor applied my new nose in the back seat of one of the cars we’d rented at the Chicago airport—the nose was in place by the time we’d passed through Pewaukee, Wisconsin, and by the time we’d hit Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, the thing was driving me insane—almost as insane as the Michael Jackson songs they kept finding on the radio.

But I’d do whatever it took. I was now Jackie Trent, insurance investigations manager from Allied National of Omaha. In addition to the nose, I wore brown contact lenses, a brown-haired wig, large glasses, and a new lady business suit. It was hard to get used to something so structured after the stretchy wraparound dresses I’d been wearing in Rome.

Zeus and Thor and Odin wore less awesome clothes, too. In Rome I’d been dressing them in beautiful Italian suits like my personal trio of superhot Ken dolls. Now they were low-rent Midwestern businessman Ken dolls in cheap suits, but it made me love them all the more. They were coming back with me. Home with me.

Insurance investigation subcontractors—that was our job. We made business cards in Chicago and everything. We paid a ne’er-do-well pal from Guvvey’s to answer a burner phone as Allied National in case anybody actually called the number on the business card.

Zeus had a military buzz cut, wire-rim glasses, and a temporary Marine Corps tattoo. His fake name was Marcus Dormand. Thor had put his beautiful hair in a small ponytail and put in really dark contacts, giving him the type of dark brown eyes now that looked like pure pupil. We gave him long stick-on sideburns and an earring. He was Henry Simonette, our hipster intern.

Odin, as insurance investigator Max Rayborne, had aged himself, adding gray to his hair and he wore the ugliest glasses we could find at a Racine, Wisconsin, drugstore, but of course, he still looked hot. Odin was like the eighth wonder of the world in that way. A mysterious vortex of hotness.

Being that I was not a mysterious vortex of hotness, my ugly glasses actually did degrade my looks, but they effectively obscured the makeup line around the fake nose.

“I’m the ugly duckling with three swans,” I said.

“You’re beautiful to us, goddess,” Thor said.

“And you get to play the boss,” Zeus said.

It was true. According to our cards, they were insurance investigators, and I managed them.

We rented a second car, which Thor drove alone, and headed on toward ground zero of my childhood. We passed through the towns I’d always heard of tornados going through, followed by towns my high school used to play in sports tournaments. Soon we hit Okanakee, Wisconsin, two towns over from Baylortown.

The edge of Okanakee was basically a Walmart with a lot of fast-food places leading up to it. It was definitely a far cry from Rome. After that was the historic town itself, old brick buildings that had knickknack stores, hairdressers, and taverns in them.

Then we got to the main residential street, Oak Street, which was lined with stately old trees and lovely—though somewhat decrepit—older homes. American flags waved from flagpoles sticking out of porches here and there.

Margie Mason’s Bed & Breakfast was one of the nicer homes on Oak Street, a two-story brick affair with white columns and a white-painted porch.

We’d chosen the bed and breakfast because it was near Baylortown but not in it, and the only other nearby options were deer-hunting motels, which were really just depressing concrete bunkers with sad and sometimes WTF furnishings. I wouldn’t put my guys through that.

Margie was at the door before we even got a chance to knock. She greeted us warmly. She was maybe fifty with bright blonde hair, really red statement glasses, and a colorful scarf, and I instantly liked her. She asked a lot of questions, and she liked that I was the boss. “Good for you, Ms. Trent,” she said.

I smiled. “Call me Jackie.”

“Jackie, then.” She asked us about the weather in Omaha, and the software boom there that she seemed to have read an article on. Her husband ran a land development firm, and he had a cousin in Omaha.

“We’re really from outside of Omaha,” I said.

She was full of questions. Just standing there, we had to give her our whole fake story. Usually when we had a fake story, we didn’t have to use it all.

“What are you investigating? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“We’re not supposed to discuss that,” I said. “Company policy.”

“Of course.” She proceeded to give us a tour of the house. Margie was a great lover of breakable-looking lamps and vases, but her true love was cherubs. There were cherubs in paintings and cherub figurines on every level surface. She asked whether breakfast at eight would be okay. Asked about our coffee preferences. She showed us the areas where we were allowed to hang out—the living room and dining room—and the staircase we weren’t to use—up to the Masons’ bedroom and TV room, I figured. Then to our staircase.

“We only have you down for three rooms,” she began.

I took Zeus’s hand. “We two will share.” We’d decided, when we heard she only had three rooms left, that it would be best to pretend Zeus and I were a monogamous couple.

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