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“Maxine,” she introduced herself, then looked around the room. “I don’t remember telling y’all to come check out the show.”
All right, so this was obviously the ringmaster of the ladies. Noted.
Maxine didn’t look like the mothering type, but she did look like the boss bitch in charge type.
She had short black hair that was cut into a bob at the base of her neck. Her eyes were electric green that were likely fake, and her face didn’t seem to move at all, denoting a Botox fixation.
“Nice to meet you, Maxine,” I said. “I’m Hades’ man, Hannibal.”
She nodded, her eyes studying me critically.
She wouldn’t find whatever it was she was looking for, though.
Not when my skills were honed in a warzone, and not in the middle of a hostile work environment like hers was.
“Hannibal is talking to Crew about a job,” Hades murmured as she picked up the juggling sticks she’d dropped during our kiss. “Do you know where to find him, babe?”
“Uh, no,” I hedged, making it seem like I had zero clue, when in fact I knew every single hidey hole in the entire place. Not to mention security code, camera location, and panic room.
“I can take you,” Hades gave me a fake smile. “Then we can grab some lunch during my lunch break.”
I looked at my watch as she led me to the room where I knew Crew’d made his temporary office. “Lunch? You just got here, baby.”
“I know,” she said as she knocked quietly on the door to Crew’s office. “I just…”
She closed the door behind us and dropped our line of conversation.
“Everything going okay?” Crew asked as he leaned back in his chair.
I walked around his desk to take a look at the set of monitors I’d set up this morning. The women in the room we’d just left were now all huddled together talking quietly. Due to the way they were positioned, though, I could barely see their faces to make out what was being said.
That, and the audio wasn’t online yet.
“What do you think they’re talking about so intently?” I asked.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Hades start tossing the juggling sticks.
Then, when they started moving so fast that I couldn’t not watch, I turned and stared.
“I thought you said you couldn’t juggle?” I asked.
Crew had paused in his watching of the camera to watch as well.
“I learn stuff fast,” she said. “I didn’t know how to do this an hour ago.”
Jesus Christ.
The woman was a damn racketeer.
That, or she was genius level IQ and could really ingest all the knowledge and put it into motion in that short of an amount of time.
The more I watched her, the more I realized that I was ‘dating’ a freakin’ prodigy.
In probably ten minutes or so of us watching her, she went from fumbling a bit on a certain move, to perfectly executing it. Her throws got higher and higher.
“Why didn’t y’all do juggling at your place?” I asked after she stopped and shook out her hands.
“Because people find juggling ‘boring’ according to my father.” She made a grossed-out face, and I wished I hadn’t brought it up. “Plus, I pretty much had to learn everyone else’s routine to the point where my brain was so full…” She gestured to her brain with her hands and made an expanding gesture with them. “I don’t think I could have kept yet another routine in my head. So I’m glad that he didn’t have a juggler.”
Crew frowned. “What do you mean you knew everyone’s routine?”
“Exactly that,” she said. “I was the backup for anyone that wanted to take the night off, was sick, or got fired. I had to know everything.”
Crew looked at her with wide eyes as he said, “I watched y’all’s latest show. You had probably thirty smaller routines to know!”
She picked up the juggling sticks again, tucking two underneath her free arm as she did, and said, “Why do you think my brain was so full?”
With that, she left out of the open door, being sure not to open it all the way so the ladies outside didn’t see how close Crew and I were standing.
“She’s somethin’ else, man,” Crew said once the door closed. “When I met her and her family, I thought she was kind of a bitch. She was very short winded and abrupt. But now…now I’m thinking that she’s doing the best she can with the hand she was dealt.”
I was thinking the same damn thing.
Walking over to the yellow shirt that said ‘Crew’ on it, I shucked my own and pulled that one on.
When I dropped my t-shirt on the seat, I said, “I’ll come back for that later. I’m going to go do some sleuthing.”
Crew made a non-committal noise, then went back to his cameras.
I walked out of the room and was surprised to find all of the ladies gone.
