Page 28 of Gluttony
“Detective.” Two thumbs pointed at her chest.
“Bullshit.”
She smirked. “Your lust spikes every time you speak about her. What happened? You couldn’t get it up? She rejected you? Oh, that’s it. She doesn’t like the hot-stud movie star type.” Liza pointed her cell at him. “You know, all I need to do is to be in the same room as you two. I’ll find out how she really feels. Easy fix for you.”
“No!” Tony snapped a little too quickly that he surprised even himself.
Did he not want to know? Was he afraid? Or maybe it was simply the fact that he was used to everyone liking him. So why not her?
“I’ll find out on my own,” he growled.
With that last word, he swung his legs over the bed and left, smiling to himself as Liza shouted after him, “You’re welcome!”
* * *
Tony spentthe next few days hiding out in his apartment, avoiding phone calls and doing every kind of reconnaissance he could think of on one Miss Bailey Haze. Being a hermit helped keep his power safely below catastrophic levels. But his agent called. His producer called. The studio publicist called. He’d ignored them all until finally, on the fourth morning of hiding, he could hide no longer. He had a press junket booked to promote the new movie later that evening. It meant he had to go out into the real world, and that meant he’d have to call Bailey.
She’d not called him.
He tried to sort through his thoughts but came up with nothing satisfying. She was being professional. She worked for Nightingale Securities, and Max doled out the jobs. Tony should approach him if he needed her again. But because he’d been avoiding contact with Bailey, he’d had to be rigorously studious about keeping his sin in balance, which meant keeping an eye on his bio-indicated Yin-Yang tattoo, and using Griffin’s method of timing any gluttonous act by balancing it out with an equally weighted act of temperance. He caved to a craving once, denied it the next. The last thing he needed was to be out of balance and to accidentally blow a hole through his apartment floor.
Timing everything he did was tedious, and boring, and he’d rather pluck his eyebrows out than have to keep doing it. He didn’t know how Griffin had managed it for so long.
But now time was running out. He’d not uncovered any more information about Bailey’s CIA history on his own, even with the family’s artificial intelligent management interface, AIMI. The in-house computer was a source of much intel for Tony, but there were places she couldn’t hack because her program forbade it. But Sloan programed AIMI. She could also hack into the CIA records.
Grabbing his cell phone and wallet, Tony shoved the two items in his distressed jeans pockets and checked his appearance in the mirror.
“Where’s Sloan at, AIMI?” he asked the air.
“Good morning, Tony Spazarus,” came the female computerized voice over his apartment’s internal speakers. “Sloan Lazarus, the Queen of all Things, requests that her whereabouts remain unknown for the next minute and twenty-five seconds.”
Tony’s fingers paused mid swipe on his hair. Tony Spazarus?You’ve got to be kidding me.He clenched his jaw and waited a few minutes and then asked AIMI again. This time, she replied with, “The Queen of all Things is currently in her apartment. Would you like me to call her?”
“No. That’s fine. I’ll head over now.”
“Would you like me to notify her you’re on your way?”
“No. Just lock the apartment after me.”
Normally he left his rooms unlocked, but Bailey’s paranoia was rubbing off. He took a deep breath and headed down a level to Sloan’s apartment door. After a knock, Max opened it. He folded his arms across his black Nightingale Securities shirt and gave Tony a judgmental once over.
Tony was about to ask what gives, when he realized it must be because of Sloan’s injury from a few days ago. He probably should have been around earlier to check on her.
“Sloan here?” he asked.
Max sucked his teeth, then stepped aside… only for Tony to cop a load of something hot, wet and hard in the face.
“Jesus!” He flinched back.
“That’s for not coming to check on me, dumbass.” Sloan stood two feet in front of Tony, blue eyes blazing, black hair flying like some kind of magical sorceress, and… she held a pizza box in her hand, half empty.
Tony looked down at the floor where a black cat lapped up the fallen squashy yellow debris that had slid off Tony’s face.
“You threw pineapple chunks at my face?”
Sloan shrugged, eyes still furious.
Tony checked her bare arms. No scars in sight. “You’re all healed.Youshould have come to seeme.”
