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She winked at herself in the vanity mirror and shook her fake, fabulous blond locks.
She hit the speed dial on her super-duper, compartmentalized Mickey Gibson burner phone.
“Hello?” said Gibson.
“Action,” cried out Clarisse, at least in her mind.
CHAPTER20
IT’S YOUR FAVORITE PHONE PAL.”She looked at her notes, which read:Keep tone fresh, appealing, and casual. To start. And play off her energy, if she has any.
“I’m busy right now,” replied Gibson as she steered her van.
“Out and about on our case, or home web-sleuthing the next pesky billionaire who refuses to pay his bills?”
“You have a funny way of putting things.”
“Is it incorrect in any way?”
“Not at all. It’s spot-on, actually. That’s why it’s funny.”
She’s getting more comfortable, Clarisse wrote in meticulous penmanship in her notebook.Work that for a bit before dropping the hammer.“I thought our last conversation ended badly, so I wanted to reach out.”
“Ended badly? You mentioned the next murder and then hung up on me.”
She flipped back two pages in her notebook:Spin this positive before it flips negative. Stakes are high. Impress that. Donotend conversation. That will be on her.“I also mentioned that you were out there, the public face as it were. Knee-deep in it. That makes you vulnerable.”
“Meaningyoumademevulnerable.”
“There was no getting around that, Mickey. It was always going to come to that. The only question was the timing.”
“So what exactly do I get out of all this?”
“I thought I made that clear before. You solve this, you are a girl who calls her own shots. Unless you want to work for ProEye until you drop dead from boredom. And if so, we can do a full stop here because half-ass won’t cut it. I think you can already see that, can’t you?”
“But I also do not want to die prematurely.”
“You want to see your kids grow up. We talked about that before.”
“But you still want me to see this through, and maybenotsee my kids grow up.”
Clarisse brought up pictures of Tommy and Darby on her screen. They were absolute cuties, innocent, still forming in every way. They were clueless about how much shit life had in store for them. And that was if they had a normal life, whatever the hell that was.
“I don’t like going over old ground. Did you find out how the man died?”
“Poison. And he was restrained.”
“So they watched him die?”
“Apparently, yes.”
“Okay, now can we talk tactics and strategy?”
“I thought that was up to me.”
“I can help you get there, faster.”
“And what doyouget out of this?”
