Page 101

The senator slapped his hand down on the table, hard.

That must have hurt.

“I want your phone and all copies of that video.” The senator was beyond pissed. “Now.”

“You’re not going to get it.”

I could hear the satisfied smile in Marlowe’s voice.

“One hundred thousand dollars for your phone and I watch you delete all your back-ups. Right now. I have the money in cash, in my rental outside.”

“Do you know that the girl they were kicking, the girl who they dropped on her head, ended up needing to stay in the hospital for five days? I’m not taking your stinking money. It would make me happy to see your daughter and the other two girl brought up on assault charges.”

He leaned over the table and shouted in her face. “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“If you carry that much money around with you on your trips, I say we make it a cool quarter of a million dollars. Don’t you think that’s worth it to you, so that all your constituents don’t find out that not only is your sweet little baby girl a terrible bully, but also so they find out that you hired someone to kill me?”

“You’ll never be able to prove it,” he stammered.

“I might not be able to prove that you hired someone to drive me over a cliff, but the guy you hired to kidnap me is in jail and he’s talking.”

“In your dreams, lady. I’ve paid him off. The lawyer I hired for him is the best. Even if he doesn’t get him off, it’ll be a light sentence. I’m paying this guy to keep his mouth shut, and he wants the cash.”

I watched Marlowe lean back in her chair and cross her arms. She had a shit-eating grin on her face. “There’s one last thing, senator.”

“What? You want more than a quarter of a million? I didn’t bring more than that. And I’m not going to pay you more than that.”

Marlowe twirled her hair, signaling us again, and I stepped out of the pantry. “No, the last thing is, smile, you’re on a livestream.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked around and saw me. Then he turned again and watched Simon walk into the living area from down the hall. Roan was climbing in from the side window.

“Did you get everything, boys?” Marlowe asked. She sounded exuberant.

“We got it taped, and it went live to his website, and all his social media and to YouTube. He’s already getting likes and comments. I bet this is going to be his most popular post.” Simon smiled grimly.

“How exciting,” Marlowe said as she threw her fist in the air.

28

My shoulders hurt. I didn’t want to tell Kai; he’d be more upset than he already was. He was still kind of on a rant about me confronting Teddy the Turd, even though Nash already had Teddy in lock-up since the stupid bastard confessed to everything. Personally, I was thinking that he was upset because he didn’t know where Arthur was and he was going to be meeting Beau. When I mentioned that, he’d kind of ranted that I was wrong, so I’d backed off and gone to the porch to text Sue. She told me that type of male behavior was normal, especially if they were really male-males. She knew from personal experience. Since I really adored Steve and the way he treated her otherwise, and Kai acted the same way, I figured I could put up with deflected ranting.

“Sweetheart?”

I looked up from my phone to see Kai on the porch looking at me with an apologetic expression.

“Yeah?” I responded as I shut down my text message with Sue.

“I’m done being a cranky asshole, in case you want to come back inside. I’m sorry.”

I looked down at my phone.

“According to Sue, you’re supposed to be a surly bastard for at least three hours. You didn’t even last for two. I’d say this bodes well for our relationship.” I grinned.

“Surly bastard, huh?”

I nodded as I untangled myself from the porch swing and preceded him into the house. He had the air conditioning on and I liked it.