“To make me look like a shapeless blob, and not at all someone to hit on.”

“Okay. That checks out, or it would have if he hadn’t specifically requested it. He’s probably a furry.” She shoved her hand back in the chip bag. “What happened next?”

“I met SpankKing at the octopus, like the instructions indicated.”

Her lips twisted. “That’s eight arms for spanking.”

A smirk pulled at my lips. “There was no spanking, fortunately. Also fortunately, even though this guy had off vibes, he didn’t try anything. He just told me to wait for his kid—Miso—to get off the ride. Then he ran away.”

“Uh huh, totally normal behavior.” Layana pulled her hand out of the chip bag, with a Bugle on the end of her pinky. She popped the pointy chip into her mouth. “I need to hear more about his off vibes, with vivid details.”

“I have a picture,” I said, finding the photo on my phone.

Layana pulled my arm to bring the screen closer to her face. She wrinkled her nose. “SpankKing? More like Wanking-in-the-Wind Willy.”

I choked on my spit, took a moment to shake the visual, then continued my story. “So I’m waiting for the kid, and one finally comes out. We get along okay, but she swears she’s not Miso. I assume it’s a game, and we go to listen to some music, because we have no money to do anything else.”

“I see where this is going.”

“So then it turns out that the little girlisn’tMiso, only I don’t get the memo until I’m being tackled to the ground and handcuffed.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“But they let you go. And there’s no toilet wine in your future,” Layana said in a questioning tone.

“They let me tell my side of the story, the truth about what had happened.”

“And they realized it was SpankKing setting you up all along.”

“Not exactly. Apparently SpankKing really did want me to babysit Miso, only Miso wasn’t a kid. She’s a weasel.”

Layana froze, Bugle perched between her lips.

“And bybabysit,I meantake,because he didn’t come back for her.”

“You were hired to babysit a weasel? Like…a ferret?”

“Pretty sure Miso is a weasel. Not a ferret.”

“And the police believed you that you weren’t a psycho kidnapper, just like that, while you were dressed like a bunny, stealing a kid, and…wielding a weasel?”

“Actually, the weasel jumped out of my costume and assaulted a man.” I felt a smile pulling at my cheeks as images of the hottie filled my head.

His swoon-worthy face.

His broad shoulders.

His intelligent eyes.

“You’re blushing,” Layana said. “Your victim—he’s smoking hot, isn’t he?”

I nodded. “He had this brooding yet polished way about him. He was charming, too, and not in a goofy way like the guys I usually go for. He seemed….”

“Too grown up? Too hot? Too not living in his mom’s basement?”

All of those things. “Yep. And too out of my league.”