Page 105 of Bears Behaving Badly
“Hey! What happened to liking my company enough to spend days on a toilet?”
“You’re standing there all ‘Every life is precious’ when you know it’s a lie.” Taryn rolled her eyes. “Every life isn’t precious. You only have to spend five minutes in IPA’s file room to get that. Parents abuse their cubs, abandon them, kill them, and sell them, like Caro’s parents did.”
For a moment, Annette was back in Mama Mac’s warm, welcoming kitchen.
There are worse things than being snatched from your family.
What could be worse than stealing her, Mama?
Selling her.
Annette had assumed she meant Lund selling Caro to an owner. It never occurred to her that Caro’s parents would sell their own child into brutalization and permanent bondage and a denial of their very natures. For money. And probably not very much money.
I’ve still got so much to learn about the world. How thoroughly depressing.
Meanwhile, Taryn was still whining. “Why the fuck should I have a care for them if their own parents don’t? Nobody wanted them. So we found people who did. After a few attitude adjustments. It’s basically a victimless crime.”
“It’s the opposite of a victimless crime, you repellent twat. Tell me one thing. One thing before we get into this.”
“What?”
“Is Gomph in on it?”
Taryn let out a scornful laugh. “That pussy? He’s a bigger softie than you are.”
“So Gomph was never after us.”
“He was after you because he was worried about you. He knew something was wrong, but not what. After you left the hearing, he started thinking maybe you should all go into protective custody, or at least get a lot more backup, and I had to keep you from meeting up again.”
“So you followed Nadia to the hospital, then kept us away from Gomph by saying we were going to be arrested. Hey!” She turned to David. “We’re not going to be arrested! For that, anyway.” Which begged the question: where was Nadia? She was one of the reasons Annette and David had run from the memorial to the warehouse in the first place.
“Believe me, you’ve got bigger problems than jail. Why didn’t you justgo, Annette?” Taryn shook her head so hard, her reddish-orange hair momentarily obscuring her face. “As far as you knew, you were in huge trouble. Why didn’t you run?”
“Because we knew. The kids. Were in. Bigger trouble.”Not sure why I’m bothering to go over this. She will not get it.
“You’re wasting your time, Annette.”
“I’m aware, David. So you and Brennan-the-IT-expert figured out how to let Caro out of IPA, and then I’m guessing Brennan was driving the car that tried to smear us all over the parking garage?”
“That was stupid,” she admitted. “He was so mad about Lund’s fuckup and Caro’s escape, he didn’t think it through.”
“Yeah, no shit he didn’t think it through. Because he tried the same thing with Oz this morning.”
“Yep. Not arguing with you—dumb moves on Brennan’s part. It put your wind up, and it got Gomph’s attention. So we had to pull backandwe had to get Caro off-site. The whole thing was a pain in the ass all the way around, and everything we did made it worse.” This in the tone of someone aggrieved because their dry cleaning came back a day late.
“Meanwhile, after you killed Lund, you were a busy, bitchy bee, calling Lund’s apartment manager, calling Annette’s boss… You knew everything Gomph did, so we thought he was the mole.”
Taryn smirked. “Not bad, right?”
“And the attack at Annette’s house?”
“Would have solved a lot of problems for us. If it, y’know, had worked. I knew Caro’d be there. But I didn’t know you and Annette were bone-buddies or I’d have sent more guys.”
“Saved by my slutty instincts,” Annette declared. “Who were they?”
“Free soldiers from SAS. Brennan was afraid you might be able to trace them back to his family—”
“Iknewthat species-ist pack of jaded sociopaths had something to do with SAS.”
