Page 47 of The Hard Way

“I feel like somebody is watching us still,” Odin said. “I can’t shake it.”

Zeus looked hard at Odin. “Okay, buddy. Let’s assume somebody is. From here on out.” He took a turn. Took another turn, then a U-turn. Eventually he must have felt satisfied there was no tail, because he pulled into the Walmart.

“Shopping?”

“We need to get up on Nancy,” Odin said, and he didn’t mean it in a sexy way. I followed the three of them in. Apparently getting up on Nancy required a trip to Walmart. I didn’t see the connection, but Odin and Zeus were in their spy hive mind about it.

We headed in. Odin grabbed a hand basket, and we went to housewares. The two of them started throwing in tools—screwdrivers, slipknives, and other suspicious items. We then trekked to electronics where Zeus picked out an iPhone and Betty Boop phone case. “Are we doing a break-in?” I asked. “A break-in that we’re live-tweeting?”

“Close,” Zeus said. “When we were at Nancy’s, did you see what kind of phone she had? Out on the table? The phone and the case?”

“No,” I said.

“We did,” Zeus said. “And she bought it here. Luckily.”

“What’s the thinking?”

“Odin’s going to steal her phone and replace it with this one, which will be dead of course.”

“Because we’llfucking-gbreak it.”

“And we’ll lose our follower. If we have one.”

They got a laptop computer, too—a cheap PC.

Odin picked out a hat and coat. A disguise. “We can’t use that car.”

“But Thor has our other car,” I said. “We don’t have three cars.”

“No, we don’t have three cars,” Zeus said crowding me up against a phone-for-assistance kiosk. He touched the collar of my shirt. “Who are we, Ice? Do you need a reminder? We have three hundred cars.”

I grinned. “Riiiiight.”

We bought the stuff, and Odin went into the bathroom to change. Zeus walked me to one of the big arrays of doors. “You stand right here. You’re just waiting for somebody. See what you see out there.”

“Got it,” I said.

Zeus disappeared.

A little while later, Odin came out. He walked like an old person, bag in hand, and passed by like he didn’t recognize me. I barely recognized him. I never understood how much you could disguise yourself through posture until I hung around with my guys.

Odin headed out into the crisp, sunny afternoon and disappeared into the sea of cars. I watched people come and go. One of them would be getting their car stolen.

Eventually, Zeus came back, not in a disguise. “Let’s grab some fries. Thor just texted—he needs more time. And we need to set up the computer for Odin.”

We went to the grubby little Walmart fast-food café and split an order of french fries. He unwrapped our new laptop and charged it up. He asked me things about the town. Some of the questions related to the case, but most weren’t. He wanted me talking, wanted my mind off Denko. Or maybe he wanted his mind off Denko.

We went through several orders of fries.

Odin came back not even an hour later and slid in across from me, next to Zeus.

“Got it?” I asked.

“Fuck, I even got the car back into almost the same parking spot. I’m the shit.” He pulled out a phone and set it on the blue plastic tabletop. Nancy’s phone.

“Sweet,” I said.

Zeus angled the laptop to Odin, who plugged the phone into the side. Odin was our resident techie, and he was being all techie for sure. His amber eyes began to move back and forth, reading the screen. He hit keys now and then.

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