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“I think you might be the first person ever to use organized crime and wanker in the same sentence.”
“And not get killed for it? Yes.”
“God. I knew Futurium had some connections to the Mastaba. Yevgeny told me.”
“You knew?”
“I knew.”
“Crissy—”
“Both the real me and the fake me are surrounded by criminals. I think that’s why Eddie Cantone is leaving. It’s not just that the BP will have new owners. It’s that we’ll have new owners who killed the old ones.”
“Which is precisely why I brought you something.”
I waited, and he gave me a dark little smile. “A small gift.” He reached into that wicker bag and dropped a handgun onto my chaise by my hip.
“Nigel, no.”
“Yes.”
“Is this one yours?”
“It’s the model I own. A Glock 19. Compact, nine millimeter. I bought it for you this morning. I can take you to a range and give you a tutorial.”
I didn’t pick it up.
“It’s not loaded,” he reassured me. “But I have ammunition in here,” he went on, gesturing at his tote.
Finally, I lifted it off the canvas. “I don’t have a license.”
“I know. Tomorrow we’ll start the paperwork.”
I hated it. But Yevgeny was dead, the Morleys were dead, some woman named Cleo was dead. And I had no idea what my sister and her mobster friends were up to. “You ever read Chekhov?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“This is a paraphrase, but Chekhov said if you reveal a gun in the first act, it best go off by the third.”
“I know that quote,” he said. “I bought it for you because, your highness, I fear we are in the third act.”
I didn’t have my phone, so I didn’t have an alarm. I guess I could have set the alarm on my tablet, but it didn’t cross my mind. I figured Frankie would wake me for school.
He didn’t.
I woke up and it was almost ten thirty, and I freaked out. I threw on my clothes, which were the same clothes I had worn the day before, which didn’t thrill me, and ran downstairs to ask Frankie what the fuck was going on and to drive me the fuck to school—now I was bitchcakes, and the irony that I was bitchcakes about missing school was not lost on me—but another of his Futurium pals was with him in the living room, and they were tense. They told me the police were talking to my mom and said it was all about Crissy. They said Betsy hadn’t done anything wrong, but I needed to stick around at Frankie’s that day.
This was bullshit.
But they said I could use Frankie’s phone and talk to her as soon as the police had left.
Obviously, that didn’t happen.
But it was clear I had to get Frankie’s phone—or someone’s phone—and call Betsy or Crissy or 911, or I had to hack his Wi-Fi password with my tablet and use that to get help. Because the idea his Wi-Fi was broken was bullshit.
Now, I wasn’t sure I could hack a password without an app, but I was going to try. Crypto seed phrases were one thing. Those were insane. (Still, my coding teacher back in Vermont was pretty badass and taught me to never forget what she called her “mantra”: NO-SIRS. No Site Is Really Safe. She was pretty ballsy.)
On the other hand, people’s Wi-Fi passwords are usually pretty basic.
