Page 2 of Ensnared By the Rabbit Genius
“Oh, come on,” Tom said as he kept pace with me. “You can still drink with us. You don’t have to look at the strippers.” He snorted a laugh. “Though I’m guessing they’ll pay more attention to you than the rest of us, just like women always do.”
“Can’t really blame them for being attracted to the only man who’s well-groomed and gets his suits properly fitted.” I eyed Tom up and down. “Did you get yours at Goodwill? You’re not even trying.”
“Dude, I got the sticky stuff for my hair like you said.” He pointed at his tousled brown waves like I couldn’t tell that he’d used too much pomade this morning.
“Good boy. Youcanbe taught.” But there was still so much to do.
We turned the corner onto East 17th, and I thought maybe we were heading to Danny’s Deli. It was a favorite of mine for when I wanted something good and filling but didn’t have a lot of time. It was directly ahead of us on the corner of St. Clair.
“I do feel sorry for the straight girls,” Tom said. “I’m shit at this stuff. And then there’s you.”
That was one of the reasons I liked Tom—he wasn’t afraid of his own masculinity. He would ask me about grooming tips, compliment how I looked, and not give a damn if anyone questioned his sexuality. He wasreallystraight, though. It was possible Tom would know all the strippers at Bruce’s party by name because he’d hooked up with each of them at least once in the past month.
“Well, shit,” I said when one of Commander Heremod’s guards went right into Danny’s Deli there on the corner, leaving everyone else to wait on the sidewalk.
“What’s wrong?” Tom asked, scanning the area.
I gestured toward the end of the block. “Apparently, the commander is also a fan of my favorite deli.”
Tom looked over and cocked his head. “Is it bad that I feel like I’m hallucinating when I see them getting lunch like any other person in the city? Like the fact that they’re five lizards and a bunny getting a hoagie is justsosurreal.”
“I mean, they have salads and stuff, too.”
“Dude…”
I chuckled at him. “No, I know. Maybe it would help if we really made an effort to call them Ceros and a Pip?” I had a terrible habit of using Earth animal names instead of their real ones. And now that I thought about it, calling them those names felt really wrong. “Yeah, we need to do better.”
“Yeah, okay. Hey, uh, is he looking at us?”
He was. Commander Heremod was definitely looking back at us from the top of the deli’s steps. I’d never been told to keep my distance or make sure he didn’t know I was there—I’d only done that out of politeness since I knew he hadn’t been given a choice. I wasn’t exactly trying to blend, but when he stared right at me, I froze. I was aware of Tom suddenly pretending to look for a signal on his phone, but I just hung there, caught in Heremod’s gaze until he disappeared inside the building.
I exhaled hard, having not realized I’d been holding my breath. What wasthatabout? I wasn’t supposed to be hiding from the commander, so why had I reacted like I’d been caught? And wow, what a shit reaction! I hadn’t tried to do a single thing to minimize notice at all. I’d only stood there like a starstruck dumbass.
“Aren’t you supposed to be covert?” Tom stopped messing with his phone—honestly, him trying to find a signal in the middle of a major city was laughable—and came back over to me.
“No. No one said I had to be.” I shrugged. “I was trying not to crowd him.”
“Okay, because he sure as hell knows you’re there, and I think he likes it.”
“Likes it?” I gave Tom my full attention because what?
“Did you miss the smirk? The wink?”
“Wink?” Commander Heremod hadwinkedat me?
Tom held onto my shoulders and said very seriously, “IfIcan see it, you know it’s real.”
“What is?”
“Alice, your giant white rabbit is flirting with you.”
CHAPTER 2
The next day, I followed the commander and his guards to Danny’s Deli again, but this time they all trooped over to Willard Park afterward. They sat on or hung around the picnic tables under the trees behind the Free Stamp sculpture to eat their sandwiches. I didn’t know if that counted as flirting, like Tom had implied yesterday, but that was where I usually took my deli lunches. Since I hadn’t done that in the time the commander had been in town, I had to wonder if I might’ve been followed at some point. Did the Norlons have some kind of tech that let them zoom in?—
Oh, come on. Why would anyone want to spy onme?I might work for the FBI, but I basically collated information from multiple sources to write reports. I was nobody special. When the director had given me this assignment, he’d called me Elton, Ely, and Elias—and he’d been holding a folder with my name on the tab.
I shouldn’t have let Tom get in my head. Willard Park was just a nice place to eat a sandwich on a sunny autumn day. Anyone would think so.
