Page 51 of Get A Fix

“Can you go to that?” Ainsley asked. “The bachelor party?”

Ash turned to me and quirked a brow.

“I don’t think so. Drunk middle-aged men who probably want to see how tough you are in real life by taking a shot at you does not sound like my idea of a good time,” I said, glaring at him, which I hoped conveyed my incredulity. “Is there any scenario where I say yeah, let’s do that?”

He studied my face. “I think not.”

“Well, there’s always sightseeing and taking a ghost tour,” Ainsley suggested.

Jeff was looking at her like she’d grown another head.

“Good job, Mom,” I teased her. “Your kids would sleep so well after a ghost tour.”

“Oh dear God, what was I thinking just now?”

“I don’t have kids, but even I know that’s bad,” Ash teased her.

“I think I need some sleep,” she told me.

I only nodded.

SIX

Ash promised me he could go up an elevator without incident, stopping to talk to no one. He had emails to answer, calls to make, and since everyone he needed to speak with was on the West Coast, it was still early for them. When I hesitated, he shot me a look.

“I know you’re a big boy and all, but I was, in fact, hired to protect you,” I reminded him.

“True,” he agreed, stepping in close, leaning in next to my ear. “But as far as I can tell, no one has any homicidal intentions toward me. The worst that can happen is bad pictures getting taken, though that can be terrible as well.”

“You’ve never taken a bad picture in your life.”

“Oh, if only that were true,” he said dramatically.

It was possible I was seeing threats where there were none. I tended to err on the side of caution, which I’d done as a cop and carried along into my work as a fixer.

Regardless, I had him pull my phone from the breast pocket of my suit—since I was holding Gemma—and then from the back of the case, peel off a small black adhesive circle and put it on the lapel of his jacket.

“Not that this isn’t fun, James Bond,” he said with a snicker, “but what is this?”

“GPS tracker. It’s reusable, so you can give it back to me once I’m in the room with you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Peel-and-stick GPS? This is what you’re telling me?”

“Yeah.” I grinned at him, rubbing Gemma’s back when she snorted herself half-awake, and she resettled quickly.

“Your boss is nothing like I thought he was. I thought Torus was just another agency. Albeit a good one, of course, but this is a bit more high tech than I was led to believe. What does your boss do in his downtime? Save the world?”

I scoffed. “If you knew everything about my boss, you’d never sleep again.”

“That is in no way comforting.”

“Cooper’s a fixer,” Ainsley chimed in. “That has to come with some amount of skullduggery and cloak and dagger, I would think.”

“See?” I told him.

He shook his head at both of us.

“I need one of those sticky GPS things for Gemma,” she commented. “I had no idea she was even out of her chair until I looked up and realized first, that she was gone, and second, that she was doing her Jack Sparrow run through the crowd to reach you.”