“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Laurel said.

  “The whole point of this is to keep you safe. I’m not going to blow it so you can look at a pool and some generic landscaping.”

  “You think he’s going to be disguised as a groundskeeper? I’ll watch out for anyone with a mustache wearing coveralls and clean boots.” Laurel rolled her eyes.

  “You’re so good at this. You should be a detective,” I said.

  “The clean boots are always a giveaway,” she whispered to me.

  “Sorry if I don’t trust your judgement or your discretion right now.” Reyes yanked heavy light-blocking curtains across the window and the room fell into semi-darkness. “Last time I let you go off unmonitored you got shot at by an old lady, chased a fugitive through the woods, and Cash woke up with the murderous bastard sitting in her bedroom.”

  “Well, when you put it that way.” Laurel dropped onto the couch.

  “It’s not putting it any specific way. Those are just facts.”

  There was a knock at the door. “It’s Agent Malone.”

  Reyes nodded at Duarte, then at one of the bedrooms. Reyes took up a position by the front door. Duarte ushered me and Laurel into one of the bedrooms and closed us in.

  “This is absurd,” Laurel said.

  I was finding it difficult to disagree with her. Just getting here had required three vehicles, a parking garage, two bridges, and a number of back roads in order to confirm we weren’t being followed. We had been in this apartment for all of ten minutes and I was ready to take my chances back home.

  Reyes knocked on the bedroom door before opening it. “All clear. It was Malone.” As if we were confused when Malone had announced himself.

  We filed back into the common room. There was a shorter black dude in a suit cut to accentuate the formidable size of his arms. He shook our hands. “I’m Richard Malone. I’ll be running this operation.” He pulled out a chair at the table in the center of the condo and nodded for us to join him. “Boyd will be up shortly with our supplies and equipment. We’ll set up our command center here.” He knocked on the large dining room table.

  “So we’re all just staying in this apartment indefinitely?” I asked.

  “Well, until we catch Brewer,” Duarte said.

  “And we’re only staying until Michelson can get two more agents assigned.” Reyes nodded at Duarte.

  “I’ll be here for the duration though,” Malone said.

  “Are you a footie pajama man? Because Braddock and I have very strict rules about nighttime wear,” Laurel said.

  “Dude, don’t be a dick,” I said to her. She gave me a look. “It’s okay if he’s not wearing a onesie as long as he’s whimsical. He seems like a superhero type. Maybe something in the Marvel or DC canon.” We laughed. The guys did not.

  There was another knock at the door. “That will be Boyd.” Malone stood. He looked pointedly at the bedroom. These FBI guys were clearly going to be a riot.

  Laurel sighed heavily but allowed Duarte to lead us back to the bedroom. We stood around silently until Reyes let us back out a minute later. Malone and a white dude were moving equipment cases from the small entryway to the center of the common room. A small living room jutted out opposite the kitchen. The forbidden balcony was off of that. Looked like we were going to be confined to the pockets of space around the FBI.

  “Laurel Kallen, Cash Braddock, this is Agent Matt Boyd,” Malone said.

  “Agent Boyd.” Laurel nodded and shook his hand.

  “Matt is fine, ma’am.” Boyd was Johnny Bravo shaped. All shoulders and torso. He shook my hand after shaking Laurel’s. His grip was firm, if not a little timid, like he was afraid of crushing my hand.

  “Boyd, what are your feelings on whimsy?” I asked.

  Boyd looked at Malone who shook his head. “I don’t know that I’ve ever examined my feelings on whimsy.”

  I shrugged at Laurel. “Better than outright rejection.”

  “There’s got to be a line somewhere, I guess,” she said. “Do you guys need anything from me or am I good to unpack?”

  “Go ahead,” Reyes said.

  “Does it matter which room I’m in?” she asked.

  Malone looked around. “You and Braddock are in those two rooms.” He pointed at two doors on the far side of the common room. There was another pair of doors on the other side of the kitchen.

  “Thanks.” Laurel disappeared into one of the bedrooms with her bag.

  Malone and Boyd continued unpacking equipment. In addition to laptops and a very necessary printer, they had a fuckload of surveillance equipment. I stood there watching awkwardly for a minute.

  “Braddock, do you mind going into one of the bedrooms again? We need to install cameras outside and we can’t have you visible when we open the doors,” Malone said.

  “Sure.”

  Boyd gathered a stack of cameras. Duarte stuffed his back pockets with hardware and various tools. Clearly, jeans were the way to go for safe house duty. Boyd already looked conspicuous enough with his muscles and his suit. Putting up cameras while wearing that was just too much. It would have been easier to put a sign outside announcing it was an FBI safe house.

  “Cash,” Duarte said.

  I realized he and Boyd were standing at the front door waiting for me to disappear. “Oh, sorry.” This was going to be a long couple of days. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be a long couple of weeks. I ducked into the room Laurel had chosen.

  She looked up from the open drawer she was setting T-shirts in. “Hey.”

  “You’re actually unpacking,” I said.

  “Yeah. That’s what I said I was going to do.” She refolded a couple of pairs of chinos as she pulled them out of her bag.

  “I just thought it was an excuse to leave the room.” I leaned against the small desk in the corner.

  She shrugged. “I’ve been living out of a suitcase for the better part of a year. I learned it’s easier to settle in if you unpack even if you don’t plan on staying long.” She put the chinos away.

  “Right.”

  “This is going to be weird, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Naw, it’s exactly what I wanted to do this week.” I suddenly remembered my lunch date with Marjorie. “Shit. Except I have a lunch today.”

  She gave me a look. “You have a lunch today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “It’s not as weird as it sounds. Actually, it’s way more weird than it sounds. I’m supposed to have lunch with my mom.”

  Laurel stopped arranging clothes to stare at me. “I thought your mom was dead.”

  “I kind of assumed so too.”

  “So you’re having lunch. How long have you been in contact?”

  “She showed up on my doorstep the day you showed up at the gallery.”

  “Shit,” she said.

  “I guess.”

  “That’s like heavy, dude.”

  “It is,” I said.

  “So you’ve got to cancel your lunch?”

  “Yeah. That seems difficult.”

  “How is that difficult?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got to call her and, you know, talk.”

  “You could text her.”

  “Yeah, okay. I could do that.” I pulled out my phone.

  “Wow. How have you made it this far in life?”

  “Pure luck,” I said.

  I’m sorry to do this at the last minute, but I have to cancel lunch today. That seemed reasonable.

  Marjorie wrote back immediately. Sure. Are you okay?

  Yeah, fine now. I’ve been put into an FBI safe house. Apparently they are real strict about coming and going all willy-nilly.

  I imagine so. Maybe I could call you later?

  “How’s it going over there?” Laurel asked.

  I sighed. “She’s being all understanding and shit. And now she wants to maybe call me later.” I waited too long to respond so she wrote again.

  Unless that’s not allowed. I don’t want to endanger you.

  Well, if she was going to be all rational about it, I couldn’t very well blow her off. Yeah, sure. That would be fine.

  Great!

  Laurel crossed the small room to look over my shoulder. “Aww, you have a phone date. That’s sweet,” she said all saccharine-like.

  “Shut up.” I pushed off the desk. “I’m going to unpack too. I heard it really helps you settle in.”

  “Good luck with that.” She went back to the bed and pulled a Dopp kit out of her bag. Of course she had a fancy little kit. My toiletries were in a Ziploc, which was a perfectly acceptable mode of transport for one’s toiletries.

  One of the guys had set my duffel just inside the doorway of the bedroom next to Laurel’s. I picked up the bag and set it on the bed. Unpacking seemed difficult. I texted Kyra instead.

  So I’ve been put in a safe house.

  I unzipped my bag and dumped the contents out. Thankfully, Kyra wrote back before I had to start putting things away.

  Shit. Are you okay? she asked.

  Fine now. But you might want to cancel our studio visits this week. Or take Van.

  I got bubbles but no response. I looked around at the space. It was a mirror of Laurel’s room. A small desk was against our shared wall. Next to that was a dresser with a TV. There was a small closet and another door. The door opened and Laurel came out.

  “How the fuck?” I asked.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Our bathroom is connected.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Bathroom. Yours, mine. Connected. I believe they call it a Jack and Jill.”

  “Well, thanks for that little lesson on bathrooms.”

  “Okay, now can we admit this is going to be weird?” she asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  By dinner time I had an entirely new understanding of weird. Duarte ordered pizza. Boyd gave me a soda like we were kids at a slumber party. No one seemed to find the prohibition approach to pizza strange. We ate in silence. Afterward, Laurel ditched me to get some work done. The agents went back to surveillance and somber typing on laptops. Boyd was real excited at the prospect of getting his paperwork done. Jodie Foster never got excited about her paperwork. Okay, maybe she did, but I still would have much preferred to be sequestered with Clarice Starling. Boyd was nice and all, but he lacked certain attributes.

  I tried watching TV, but the air was too still. It made the volume too loud. Until I turned it down and it became too quiet. There was no in between. I had never been so idle in my life. And I was good at being idle. I’d made the majority of my choices in life around the concept of leisure. And yet I found myself watching FBI agents, Sac PD detectives, and a police consultant fill out reports rather than literally anything else. Just watching Boyd do paperwork was putting me to sleep. Watching Laurel do the same was barely more interesting. Turned out watching someone I was sexually attracted to do a boring task was still boring, just with boobs. She also had a propensity to push her hair out of her face. And a new tic where she chewed on her pen. Who knew I found pen chewing sexy? Not me.

  I finally went into my bedroom and started reading. When I woke up the next morning, I found them all in the exact same places, but with coffee and different clothes. Apparently, I should have brought work with me. I just wasn’t a bring work with me type of person. I was generally an avoid any work type of person. It was kind of why I became a drug dealer. And obviously there were no downsides to that.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was good Marjorie had given me a heads-up she wanted to chat on the phone. Otherwise I would have been seriously thrown off when it rang. As it was I was only mildly thrown off. I tossed the book I was reading onto the bed and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Cash? It’s Marjorie.”

  “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Good, great. How are you?” she asked.

  “Okay. Pretty bored. Turns out hanging around a safe house is kinda boring.”

  “Better than being in danger, though.”

  “There’s that, yeah,” I said.

  “Are you there alone?”

  I wished. “No. Laurel—my ex—is here. And a whole mess of cops.”

  “Oh.” There was silence as she found an appropriate response to that. “That must be uncomfortable.”

  “It could be more comfortable.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  “There was some pretty exciting unpacking. And a thrilling lecture about not looking out the windows. So reading, mostly,” I said.

  “No kidding. I spend all my spare time reading too.”

  I scooted up the bed and shoved some pillows between my back and the headboard. This was looking to be an actual conversation. “Yeah, I mean, I thought everyone did. Until I was trapped in a small ass condo for two days with five other adults, none of whom are reading.”

  “I never understood that. When I finally got clean, that was what saved me.”

  “Really?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Well, it’s not a narrative you hear a lot. Reading saved me from heroin.” I tried to envision it, but I didn’t know her well enough to see beyond a junkie clinging to a mass market paperback.

  She laughed. Like really laughed. Not meeting her daughter for the first time in twenty years and trying to make it feel normal type of laugh. “You make a good point.”

  “I dig it. It’s just unique.”

  “It was the only thing that distracted me. Some people go for Jolly Ranchers, I went for Ernest Hemingway.”

  “Wait. You like Ernest Hemingway?” That was just unacceptable.

  “Oh, yeah. When I was about fourteen, I became fascinated with Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and it just snowballed into a Lost Generation obsession.”

  “When you were fourteen?”

  “Yeah. I was a strange kid,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “I’m not sure how much you know about your grandparents. But Dad was a real prick. Some alcoholic fathers are absent. Ours was present and he wanted you to know it.”

  “Clive wouldn’t let me spend much time with them, but I got the same impression,” I said.

  “He didn’t tell you about them?” She sounded surprised.

  “He sort of did, but it was mostly basic facts. He wanted me to form my own opinions. My opinion was Grandpa was a dick and Grandma was sentient wallpaper.”

  She chuckled. “Yes. That sounds about right.”

  “How exactly does Hemingway connect with Grandpa?” I asked.

  “Hemingway was an escape. Reading had always been my way out, but Hemingway was different. I read a story from In Our Time in ninth grade English. There was something so simple and straightforward about it. That was it for me.”

  “I fucking hate Hemingway,” I said.

  She laughed again. “No!”

  “Yes, but I think it’s just because his misogyny oozes from the page. I probably shouldn’t have read so much background before reading him.”

  “See, I know all that, but it doesn’t erase the comfort. The rhythm of his stories is my chicken soup. When everything is out of control, I can always go fishing with ol’ Ernest.”

  “I gotta tell you, that’s weird,” I said very seriously.

  “Oh, I know,” she said. “So what are you reading?”

  I flipped my book over to stare at the cover even though I already knew the answer. “Fingersmith. It’s like a Victorian era queer crime thriller.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  “It is. I had to pack quickly so I went for thick books, which means Sarah Waters. Plus, her books always make me feel better about my own crimes. I almost never impersonate an heiress or a ghost in order to steal large sums of money,” I said.

  “Almost never? That’s good of you.”

  “What can I say? I’m kindhearted.” There was a knock on my bedroom door. “Just a sec. Someone is knocking.” I muffled the phone against my chest and called, “Come in.”

  Reyes opened the door. “Dinner’s here.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I’ll be out in a sec.”

  He shook his head. “You’re intolerable.” He closed the door, but I caught his grin.

  “I’ve got to go. Apparently, we do family style dinners in the safe house,” I said.

  “Of course. Thanks for talking to me. I’ve really enjoyed it,” Marjorie said.

  “Yeah, so have I.” I was surprised to realize I wasn’t just being polite.

  “Maybe we can talk again soon?”

  “Totally.”

  “Great. Good night, Cash.”

  “’Night.”

  When I got out to the kitchen, Boyd handed me a heavy ceramic plate with an unopened takeout container in the center. I turned to the dining room table in the middle of the room, but it was covered with laptops and various equipment cases.

  Laurel was sitting at the bar on the other side of the kitchen. “Here, Cash.” She nudged out the stool next to her.

  “Thanks.” I wove through the guys grabbing plates from Boyd and sat with her. “Is it me or is this apartment a little small for six adults?” I asked quietly.

  “Technically, I’m pretty sure it was only intended for four adults. Reyes and Duarte are here unofficially.” She opened her takeout container and dumped drunken noodles onto her plate.

  “Right. That’s not overkill or anything.”

  “It’s not like there would be an abundance of space without them. There are only two other bedrooms.” She was right. The issue was with the open floor plan with not enough floor.

  “I don’t suppose they have bunk beds in there.” I dumped my own drunken noodles onto my plate.

  “I’m reasonably certain they do not.”

  “So we should feel lucky they decided to give us our own rooms with our own beds?”

  “I’m not going to write them a love letter or anything. The feds must have hundreds of places like this across the country. This was a choice. Probably based on money.”

  I looked at my pile of noodles. “I don’t suppose beer was in the budget?”