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As she turned to look at me, her lips formed an ugly sneer. "Says the townie. What, are you two cousins or something?"

Randy and I shared a glance.

He replied, "I, um, don't think so."

Felicity gave a hard little laugh. "What, you don't know?"

I spoke up. "Actually, we're not related."

She smiled. "So I guess that means you'renotfucking."

I squinted in confusion. "What?"

She made a show of looking around. "In this town, I bet you only fuck your relatives."

God, what a cliché.I laughed in her face. "Only when the cows are busy."

She frowned. "What cows?"

Talk about a waste of a joke.I sighed. "You know what? Never mind."

But already, Felicity had moved on. Stepping away from us, she pulled out her cell phone and made a series of calls while Randy reloaded the luggage. As he did, it belatedly struck me that all of the workmen were gone.

How had I not noticed that earlier?

I pulled out my own phone and checked the time. It was just after two o'clock in the afternoon, hours away from quitting time. I sidled closer to Randy and whispered, "Hey, where'd everyone go?"

"The workers?"

When I nodded, he glanced toward Felicity and whispered, "She fired them."

I frowned. "Can she do that?"

"I don't know," he said. "But she did."

The news made me feel just a little bit sick. Jobs weren't easy to come by, and the thought of anyone losing theirs on a whim was pretty hard to stomach.

But as it turned out, the guys I'd seen earlier weren't the only ones who experienced a sudden change of employment, as I discovered all too soon.