Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy

  Chapter 24

  A Kick in the Nose

  Amanda didn’t want to jump to conclusions about the text she’d just received, but she had to agree with Nick. Whatever it meant it wasn’t good. Knowing that someone was watching her gave her the creeps. That they had also threatened her was more than unsettling. And the fact that they knew she was a Lestrade and were calling her by that name, a name she’d never used, just about sent her over the top.

  “What should I do?” she asked Nick.

  “I don’t know. We need to think,” he said, taking her phone and staring at it, as if that would tell him everything they needed to know.

  “I should tell Thrillkill, shouldn’t I?” she said.

  “This is pretty serious, Amanda. You probably should.” She’d never seen him look so grave.

  “I know, but I don’t want to.” All she could see along that road was more grief. Every time Thrillkill got involved in something it deteriorated. She couldn’t afford for that to happen now. And realizing that, something else happened: she got angry, so angry that she felt like she was going to pop. All the teasing, all the needling, being forced to go where she didn’t want to be, worrying about Simon, explosions, blood, gluppy things, her mother talking at rather than to her, the cook’s murder, and of course her father’s kidnapping. And suddenly she knew what she had to do. It was better to get even than to get mad. She would get them all, all her enemies. She’d get everyone here in the UK, and someday she’d go back to L.A. and get the ones she had there too. Enough was enough. She turned to Nick and said, “No. Forget Thrillkill. I can solve this myself.”

  “This is no time to fool around. You saw what happened to your father,” he said, leading her to a chair.

  They sat down at one of the long tables in the dining room. Amanda rested her hands in her lap. Nick turned toward her and looked at her hands, which had started to fidget.

  “I know, but I can do this,” she said. “He didn’t know anything was coming. I do. I can prepare. And look at all the resources I have.”

  “The police have better ones. You should let them take care of everything. We’re very new at this.”

  “I know, but we’ve got something they don’t have.”

  “What’s that?”

  She stopped fidgeting and looked at him. “Me!”

  Nick started for a second, as if he hadn’t been expecting that, then broke out in a grin. “So we do. The foremost character expert in all the land. I stand corrected.”

  “I can do this. We can do this—if you want to help, of course.”

  “Are you kidding? Of course I do. But what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to figure out who that message came from, for starters. And I’m going to do it by deduction. You’ll see.”

  He took her hands and looked into her eyes. “Amanda Lester, I think you can do anything you put your mind to.”