“I don’t have to raise anything,” Tilly said.“I just have to wander around town with a clipboard and write down names and fake amounts.It’s not like I’m going to collect any of the money.”She held up the clipboard in question.“See?I put Andy down for five thousand dollars.He’d have to sell one of his kidneys to come up with that.”
Interesting.“Is five thousand dollars a lot of money for a kidney?”
“For a kidney?Probably not.For Andy?Depends on the day of the week and who he was grifting.”
“Andy is a grifter?”That gave Malika pause.“How…”
Not in the least surprising when she thought about it.
Tilly tidied the newly arranged books so that the spines were all even.“The whole town of Burning Scrub started out as a grift.Mavis keeps us respectable.”
Not much wonder Adeel was so fond of the place.He loved the whole art of the con and the manipulation that went with it.
“Think of flirting as a type of grift,” Malika said, inspired.“It can be harmless and fun, or you can use it to get what you want.Which can also be harmless and fun.”
“You fit in well here, you flirtatious grifter, you.”Hands on hips, Tilly surveyed the results of her book arranging efforts.Then, satisfied everything was in order, she turned to Malika.“Okay.I’ll do it.But don’t blame me if it doesn’t go the way you think it will.”
“It’s going to go exactly the way I think it will,” Malika said.
Tilly was blond and adorable.Eli couldn’t possibly resist her.Tilly, however, would have no difficulty in resisting him.For some reason Malika could not understand, Tilly disliked men.
“Can I flirt with someone too?”
Startled, Malika and Tilly looked around.Linda peered around the frame of the open door at the front of the room, next to the massive black chalkboard and the sturdy wood teacher’s desk.
“I can’t get you to sit quietly during the school year, and yet here you are, hanging around during summer break,” Tilly said.“Quiet as a mouse.”
“You never talk about anything fun when school’s in,” Linda said.“Malika talks about fun things all the time.”
“Thank you,” Malika said.
“Don’t thank her,” Tilly said to Malika.“It means she’s been spying on you.”
Malika couldn’t think of anything she’d done lately that a child shouldn’t see, but she’d keep that in mind.
“Would you like to play a game with me, instead?”she asked Linda.
Linda perked up.“What kind of game?”
The kind that would drive a man with grown children, and a young wife who desired many, many babies, insane.Linda was also blond and adorable, but not in the same way as Tilly.
“That’s evil,” Tilly said admiringly, once Malika explained.
“I know.”
Malika was quite proud of herself for thinking of it.Now all she had to do was find a way to get into the camp.
*
Jayce
Every night thatBurning Scrub had an adventure in progress, the character overseeing the client met up with Benny, Mavis, and Grady for a debriefing and adjustments to the script.Jayce slipped away from the camp once the campfire burned low and Cassidy started to snore.
The walk in the dark took forty minutes.Now, he sat at the long dining room table in the boardinghouse with the team while Pearl slept with the Lovett children upstairs.
“The client wants to kidnap Malika and hold her for ransom until her brother returns.Except Butch Cassidy didn’t kidnap women,” Jayce said.
He’d thought Grady would take his side in this, but he was wrong.
