Page 36 of The Pleasure of Panic

My neck is tired, the muscles in my shoulders strained from lifting my head off the floor. “Untie me and I’ll look.”

She ignores that. Just starts going through cupboards, slapping them closed after looking through each one.

“Nothing,” she says.

Well, duh, I want to say. “It’s a safe house. Not a bar. But we can go get a drink if you want. Talk this over, relax a little, and come up with a plan.”

“I already have a plan,” she says.

“Ya do?” I laugh. “What is it?”

She grabs at her hair, trying to straighten it out. Doesn’t help, it’s tragically disheveled. Beautifully unkempt. “You’re going to let me out of here, I’m going to take your car, and then we’re never going to see each other again.”

“Nope,” I say. “Not gonna happen that way.”

“I’ll hurt you,” she says.

“No, you won’t.”

This makes her laugh. But then she cuts it short and seethes, “Underestimate me, Agent Murphy. I dare you.”

“Look,” I say. “I can see that you’re not happy with the arrangements we’ve made for you—”

“Understatement.”

“—so let’s just renegotiate, OK? You want to make it to that seminar tomorrow, right?”

She says nothing. Just stares at me.

“We can do that. You untie me, we leave here, go back to your place, you grab a little sleep, and then I go with you to the seminar. I’ll just pretend to be a student and that way I can keep you safe and —”

She cuts me off. “How many times do I need to tell you? I do not need your protection.”

“I get that,” I say, trying to remain calm and reasonable. But the truth is, my fucking neck is killing me, I’m pretty sure there’s no circulation in my hands because the zip ties are too tight, my nose might be broken, there’s blood all over my face, and she might’ve fucked up my jaw when she clocked me. So I’m really fucking sick of this shit.

But I deal. Because that’s what I’ve been trained to do.

“I get that now,” I amend. “But it never hurts to have someone on your side, right?”

“You’re not on my side,” she sneers. “You lied to me! You lied to get me up here! And you fucked me!”

“You fucked me back. And you kinda beat the shit out of me, so suck it up, buttercup. We’re in this together whether you like it or not. Because this night, Issy, this night isn’t a game, OK? It’s fuckin’ real. I’m not after you but people are after you. So put your big-girl panties on and un-fucking-tie me.”

I kinda lose it at the end. Because ‘un-fucking-tie me’ comes out as a threat.

But it works. At least it might be working. Because she takes a deep breath, looks down at her shaking hands, and exhales out a sigh of resignation.

CHAPTER ELEVEN - ISSY

I try to keep calm . Run my options through my head. They fly by, like one of those old-time ticker tapes from the early twentieth century that telegraphed important news to people before the internet made information ubiquitous.

What the fuck is going on? There’s no way they came looking for me. I’ve been too careful. I’ve been too clever. And yeah, I have a decent business going with the whole Go F*ck Yourself thing, but I’m not high-profile. I’m a big fish in a very small pond. I mean, I don’t even advertise. My books sold a lot of copies, but I was never on talk shows and shit. So if that FBI raid wasn’t part of the game, then who called that tip in?

“Issy,” Finn growls. “I’m not going to ask you—”

“You will ask me again if I feel like making you, OK? So just be quiet and let me get a handle on things.”

“You can do that after you untie me. Because I’m telling you right now, if I have to break out of these myself, you’re gonna regret it.”