gave me time to get out of the way. He’d only come close once, catching my thigh, tossing me back several feet, before he had to pull back off the curb to make his getaway.
“I’d forgotten about him.” Zeke frowned, “anyone else?”
“I don’t know. Occasionally I get threatening mail, but most of it is pretty lame. I mean, it’s things like ‘I’m gonna kill you, bitch.’ Most people who threaten, don’t follow through.”
“Now you know the other reason we thought I should stay here. You are the most likely person to be a direct target.”
“Oh goody,” I let my spoon slide into my bowl. I was no longer hungry; I was angry and nervous. I actually hated trouble. It was a counterproductive hate. Without the threat of trouble, I’d be broke and out of business, but the idea of trouble made me kind of queasy. “Did he mention what I should be on the lookout for?”
“Since the money was probably illegally obtained in the first place, no. It isn’t like they can walk into the office and start waving guns around demanding repayment,” Zeke said.
I considered this prospect. I’m a paranoid alarmist, who does better when there is really a crisis. I don’t make mountains out of mole hills and I don’t run around screaming the sky is falling, but let someone shoot at me and I’m fine, let me think someone is going to shoot me and I go into panic mode. Life is funny that way.
Somehow, I made it into the office. I sat behind my desk, listening to music, trying to ignore the knot that had formed in my stomach. The knot was probably fear of dying, but Zeke was going to make me go shopping for cookware later; so there was another possibility about the source of the knot. Have I mentioned that I don’t cook? I took Home Economics my freshmen year of high school and set the kitchens on fire trying to melt butter. Nope, kitchens and I didn’t really get along.
There was a quick rap at the door. I stared at it, willing whoever it was to go away. This wouldn’t actually work, but it was worth a shot. They rapped again, waited another second or two and then just opened the door.
Anthony checked the ceiling before coming too far into the room. When he’d decided it was safe, he took the seat across from me. He held a stack of papers in his hands. I was guessing those were the letters that might make the knot tighter.
“Are you busy?” He asked after a few more moments of quiet. The door hissed shut behind him, the latch clicking. No one ever shut my door; eventually, we’d put some kind of gizmo on it.
“Yes,” I lied. “I’m willing you to go away.”
“How’s that working for you?” He smiled. It made him look younger, brighter.
“Not so well actually.” I reclined in the chair, resigning myself to the task at hand.
“I’ve assigned Sebastian to do security for Alex, but she’s throwing a fit.”
Alex Zeitzev wasn’t just my friend, she was a private detective, my cousin, and Russian. As such, she had more backbone than most and could be as stubborn as an alligator, possibly, just as lethal.
“Don’t look at me, the women in my family terrify me. I’d rather deal with the Russian Mob than my mother.”
Anthony nodded in understanding. We had a long history. He had once been hired by the Russian Mob to kill me. However, he found he didn’t have the stomach to take out a ten year old girl. He became my protector instead. Now, he was my lieutenant, I did the paperwork and signed checks, because I had a business degree. He hired and fired staff and handed out assignments, because he was a hitman with a heart of gold. As a result, we had a thriving business.
“Amanda Reed isn’t where you put her,” Anthony said. “We’ve got people looking for her, but it appears she went to ground shortly after you dropped her off. Her new name and papers were never used.”
“Who?”
“Kenzie.” MacKenzie Reynolds was another friend of mine. She was also a cousin, on my father’s side, and a private detective. It seemed to run in my family to either be cops or pretend to be cops. Of course, I never said that out loud to Kenzie or Alex, they would have both killed me.
Of course, I would have traded places with Kenzie at the moment. She got to look for bad guys, I got to go shopping and it wasn’t for books, it was for household items. This was a complete waste of time and money. When Zeke moved, I wouldn’t need anything except the microwave and the blender.
Shopping Woes
Shopping should be one of the circles of hell. It’s tedious, time consuming and thoroughly aggravating. Zeke seemed to have an incredibly long shopping list that included everything from pans, to knives, to towels. I had two items on my list: a microwave and a blender.
At the moment, my microwave was working fine, but I had three dead ones in my utility room. Their deaths had been sudden and unexpected. My blender was on the fritz. It had dawned on me as we walked into the housewares department that should Zeke get the urge for a protein smoothie or a margarita, there’d be problems. First, he was likely to get electrocuted. Second, whatever he put into it was going to make it smoke. Finally, after a few moments of smoking, the base would kick the blender off of it and send ingredients all over my floor. I was certain the Danes did not need protein smoothies or margaritas. The three dead microwaves and dead blender had all died of the same cause: cosmic entertainment. I had terrible luck with gizmos and gadgets. Besides the microwaves and blender, I also owned a dead tablet, a dead ereader, two dead wireless routers, seven dead TVs, and a dead DVD player. People kept trying to get me to upgrade to a Blu-ray player, but it seemed like a waste of money especially since I didn’t currently own a TV.
“Ceramic, Teflon, or glass?” Zeke asked.
“Ceramic and glass are the same thing,” I said.
“No, they aren’t. What would you prefer?”
“They’re pans.” I looked at the multitude of choices. There seemed to be hundreds. I guessed that if I got a set with lids, I could pop popcorn in them when Zeke moved out. “Well, some of them are pans. I don’t think ceramic pans are a good idea. They’d break on me or on the Danes. I can just see one of them pulling a ceramic pan onto the floor and it shattering. We’ll be picking shards of glass out of our feet for months. I guess as long as they aren’t ceramic, it doesn’t matter.” I looked at the pans a moment longer. Zeke was reaching for a set of cast iron. “Wait, don’t those have special cleaning instructions?”
“Yes, you have to wash them carefully and dry them a certain way,” Zeke responded.
“And you think I’m going to do that? Plus, I don’t see any lids. I need pans with lids.”
“When you buy pans, you get lids. Have you never bought pans before?” Zeke frowned.
“Nope. I’ve bought a few pans individually, because my microwaves occasionally die, but I’ve never bought a set.” I gazed at the collection again, found a set of blue pans and grabbed the box.
“Those are cheap pans, you don’t want those,” Zeke took them away from me and put them back. He grabbed a set of boring black and silver pans.
“Those are ugly,” I commented.
“You don’t cook,” he replied.
“I might learn if I had attractive pans.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“You’ve never bought an attractive pan.”
“Good point.” I shrugged.
“Knives next. Do you want ceramic or carbon steel?”
“They make ceramic knives? Wouldn’t it break?”
“Ceramic and glass are not the same thing,” Zeke sighed.
“Yes they are.”
“No they aren’t.”
“Pretty sure they are.”
“They aren’t,” Zeke glared at me. I raised an eyebrow, agreeing to disagree without saying a word. There was no way we were buying glass knives. I was unlucky. It would break and maim me, because the universe doesn’t actually want me dead, just wounded. We picked out a set of carbon s
teel knives that said hand wash, which was good, because my dishwasher didn’t work. I had loaded it one day, turned it on, and flooded my kitchen. I ended up throwing away all the dishes inside, because washing them seemed like a lot of work while standing in a puddle, waiting for the super cleaners to show up. I had them on speed dial. They gave me a discount.
We were discussing towels and why they had to be color coordinated when I saw her. The devil was walking towards me, in high heeled shoes that sounded like gunshots when they hit the floor. I scampered behind the towels, attempting to hide.
“Excuse me,” the woman’s voice made the blood in my veins turn to ice. “But I think my daughter was just standing here.” She had seen me; I poked my head around the display.
“Hi mom, I didn’t see you.”
“Nadine, who’s your friend?”
“Zeke. He is staying with me for a while.” I replied, trying not to let my voice quiver. Did I mention the women in my family are terrifying?
“So, the two of you are shopping for household items?” She asked, looking in our cart.
“Well, sort of, I don’t have stuff,” I stammered. “It’s hard to have a roommate when you don’t have stuff.”
“A roommate?” My mother seemed to think about this word for a minute. My mother was born in Russia. She’d earned her VISA by spying for the Americans during the Cold War. Once here, she’d married an Irish man and had five kids. I was the only girl and the middle child. She terrified all of us, even with