Page 32 of Tenderfoot

I wasn’t that far behind them.

This just got really scary.

But I agreed with Raye.

We needed to make sure Willow was safe.

And once we did that, we could be done with Kevin and whatever he was into.

It would take some time, but I’d learn that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

Not by a long shot.

FIVE

“THE MAN”

(TAYLOR SWIFT)

Okay, so it was chicken.

But even though Shanti gave me knowing looks, I ducked out of work twenty minutes early that night in order to go out and buy our usual bribe paraphernalia for Mr. Stupidhead (the girls had other names for him, and they were better, more apt and included bad words).

He was in our network of informants.

All right, in truth, one should call him an uncooperative informant because he didn’t like us, and we didn’t like him, but he saw and heard things we might need to know.

Thus, to make him cooperate, we bought him porn.

This wasn’t my favorite thing to do, but needs must in my campaign to escape Javi picking me up to take me to dinner, and this was a good excuse that Jessie bought (though Shanti didn’t).

I also nabbed two of Willow’s birthday cake cupcakes. I did this in an effort to maybe wean Mr. Stupidhead off pornographic bribes and onto baked goods ones.

After I procured his stuff, I met the girls at the storage units, and since there were now more of us, we rolled out in two of our undercover vehicles, the Honda Accord and the Kia Sportage.

Our destination was the motel where Jinx did her business.

She’d texted Luna that her client time was going over a bit, but she’d chat with us after she was done.

So we pulled into the Sun Valley Motor Lodge, a place I wanted to say had seen better days, but even at its inception, I wasn’t sure it did.

Mr. Stupidhead worked nighttime reception.

When we angled out of our vehicles, he looked at us through the windows and did one of his usual welcomes.

This time, he pretended to fashion a noose around his neck and tug upward, whereupon his head lolled to the side, and he closed his eyes and stuck his out tongue.

So, again.

He wasn’t our biggest fan.

We entered and he straightened to say, “How are there more of you? Why are there more of you?”

Luna leaned into a forearm on the counter close to him and replied, “A good thing grows when you nourish it, my man.”

He looked to me because I was carrying the bags.

Since he gave me the willies because he usually stared at my breasts (he wasn’t now because he knew I carried porn, so he was looking at the bags), I tried not to get close as I put them on the counter and scooted them toward him.

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