Page 59 of O'Mega's Revenge
“Dude, back off. I’m gay. You poke me with that boner in your pants again, and I’ll cut it off.”
“I can see who the top of the sandwich is.” He glanced between her and Missile, who hadn’t stopped pacing since we arrived at our hotel.
“Leave me out of it. I do men, too,” Missile popped off.
“Oh sweetheart, I definitely don’t plan on leaving you out.” Jackson held a hand over his heart.
Her hand went to her sidearm.
Jackson refocused his smile on Felonious, who saw through his bullshit.
“Fuck off.” Fell pulled up the plans for the estate first. “Here’s an aerial of the gardens. Do you see what you’re looking for?”
I scanned the photos quickly. “No.”
“There’s no photos of the other one, only a bunch of sculptures.”
Sprout perked up, “Danielle, can your uncle get his mom on the phone?”
His wife came in from the other room with said uncle. He wasn’t old enough to be her uncle, being born mere months before Danielle.
“What do you need to know?” Danielle peeked over Fell’s shoulder and whistled. “Is that a Neutra house?”
“That’s my woman, a connoisseur of both fine art and architecture.” Sprout high-fived his wife.
Her uncle shrugged. “I can’t stand that shit. Bad Freudian issues from my mother.”
I kept my thoughts to myself. I remembered the rumors about how his gold-digging interior designer mom fucked Danielle’s grandfather to death. It made for a messed-up family tree, but at least they made it work now that the older generations were gone.
“Well, shit. Looks like we won’t need his ma. What do you know about it?” Fell gave her attention to Danielle, pausing briefly to glance at the tits in her face but focusing on the problem at hand.
“It’s one of six homes commissioned in the region while he taught at the university. California cedar ceilings and local stone accents.”
“What about the garden?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“Water features, wells, holes?” I listed off the must-haves.
“A reflecting pool.”
“No well?”
She searched her memories and shook her head.
“What about a basement, any hidden tunnels or shit?”
She kept shaking her head. “It was a signature residence. Pretty similar in style to his West Coast architecture. I would say no tunnels. He’s not known for that kind of thing.”
“The Normandy.” I called it. Just to be on the safe side, I asked Trot to send the local DHMC crews to the modern home. We needed the larger team anyway because there were over thirty-two acres to cover with this monstrosity and all its outbuildings. More than enough to make our team of seven handmaidens and twelve Destroyers overwhelmed.
“What if they aren’t there?”
Trot voiced my deepest fear. “Plan C.” I could hear Wolf’s voice in my ear, begging me not to go in alone. Not to give myself up. But the racing of my heart overruled my pinky promise to him. Besides, I wasn’t alone. I had twenty people helping. That’s hardly alone, isn’t it?
I searched the gardens first.
As I suspected, they sprawled around an aviary and a man-made water feature that doubled as a pool. I crept through the dark searching for the signature dip in the earth, a cluster of bushes hiding a private well, or even a stone structure that would disguise what I was searching for.
