Walter could be the twin brother of Lurch from The Addams Family. He’s six foot five, in his fifties, and solid as a tank. He’s a retired cop—too old to still be walking the beat but too young to waste away on his wife’s couch drinking beer and watching television all day.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover, Walter,” I add, because I’m wise like that. “If you do, you’re just asking to get your throat sliced by a paper cut.”
He shrugs, giving me a don’t-say-I-didn’t-warn-you kind of look, and moves to the center of the ring.
Bea hops side to side, fists up, chin down, threatening. “If you go easy on me, old man, I’ll rip your balls off and make them into earrings.”
Creative shit-talking is always appreciated.
Logan swings his arm down, starting the match, and I click the stopwatch. Bea immediately scurries up Walter’s back, wrapping her arm around his throat in a headlock, like a squirrel trying to take down a giant oak tree.
As Walter tries to shake her off, the door to the windowless back room of the shop—it’s basically a broom closet—opens, and Stella walks towards me. She’s thin and pale with straight black hair. The black lipstick on her lips matches her black clothes and she has several shiny piercings scattered across her body.
“The Haddock file,” she says in that reliably flat tone, handing me a thick binder.
Stella and her twin brother, Amos, are our super-sleuth research team. They compile files on each client—quirks, kinks, debts, phobias, friends, enemies and routines—all the information we need to know, and some we wish we didn’t.
I flip through the pages. “That was quick.”
“I wanted to get it done right away. You know . . . since I might not make it to tomorrow.”
Stella is a raging hypochondriac. But she’s also Goth, so the idea of dropping dead at a moment’s notice doesn’t perturb her.
“Thanks, Stell.”
She nods, turns around and walks straight towards the back room, closing the door behind her. I tuck the binder under my arm for some late-night reading—and when it comes to Abby’s section, possibly some late-night tossing off.
Shame is for losers—which is why I have none.
In the ring, Walter manages to flip Bea off, and tries to pin her down with his foot, but she rolls away lickety-split, evading his stomping foot to the raucous cheers of the sweaty spectators.
“Tommy—a walk-in just came in. You’re going to want to take this one.”
Rounding out our band of misfit toys is Celia, our receptionist and bookkeeper. She’s a brown-haired girl, with kitty-cat eyeglasses and a snug pencil-skirt vintage style that shows off her perfect hourglass figure. Celia’s an upper-class lass who took the job to get out from under her father’s thumb. She and I hooked up a whole lot when she first started—I think knowing her father would be ticked about her fucking a bloke like me offered her an extra level of thrill. But eventually, it ran its course for both of us.
Which brings me to our firm’s non-fraternization policy. We don’t have one.
Fighting, fucking, competition and ribbing are good for morale. Trying to one-up each other keeps our people sharp, alert. As long as it doesn’t affect their professionalism in the field or infect the comradery of the team—Lo and I don’t give a damn what or who they do, when they’re off the clock.
“Show them to my office, Celia. I’ll be right along.”
I handle new client intakes. While Logan has a more cheerful disposition these days, he’s not exactly chatty. And putting a stranger at ease, getting them to reveal the details of why they need our services, takes a certain amount of finesse. Charm.
I toss the stopwatch at Logan, who catches it one-handed without taking his eyes off the sparring pair. Incidentally, my money’s on Bea for the win. Walter may have the stats on his side—but she wants it more. And in my experience, when it comes to fighting—and life—desire kicks logic’s arse every single time.
* * *
Every country has that one couple that epitomizes relationship goals. The impeccable partners, the passionate love story, the pair that all the regular Joes and Janes hope to grow up to be. William and Kate, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, David Beckham and Posh Spice, Brangelina and their gaggle of children before that went to shit.
In Wessco, Prince Nicholas and Olivia, the Duke and Duchess of Fairstone, are the reigning power couple of perfection. But for a while, it looked like Reid Frazier and Hartley Morrow would usurp them.
Reid was the bad-boy, hot-shot footballer who’d finally found the right girl, and Hartley was the celestially stunning American movie star who gave up her career to follow his. They saturated the internet and celebrity magazines that Fiona gobbles down like sweets. The courtship, the multimillion-dollar wedding, the Instagram polished pictures of the birth of their son—it was all a pretty fairy tale.