Lick Is A Four-Letter Word (17 page)

—kisses and hugs

“Well,
hell,” he muttered, letting his head drop back down.

“Yup.”

They
stared at each other, at a loss. Before
Troy
could come up with anything to say, his cell phone rang. He groaned. The device
was in his pants pocket. He vaguely remembered tossing them over the chair near
a wall somewhere. He rolled over again, then stretched out a hand and snagged
his clothes.

“Answer
it, for God’s sake,” Josh moaned, pulling a pillow over his head.

Troy
huffed and grabbed his cell. When he saw who was calling, he frowned, hoping
she was okay. He slid his finger across the display.
“Felicity?”

No
answer.

“Felicity?
Are you there?” He pressed
the phone to his ear.

Josh
sat up, looking at him with concern.

“Felicity?”
Troy
tried again. He could hear noises in the
background. It sounded like a scuffle. He heard someone shout,
then
what sounded like a hand hitting flesh. His blood ran
cold.

“What
is it?” Josh asked urgently, sensing
Troy
’s
worry.

“Something’s
wrong.”
Troy
handed him the phone and rolled out of bed. It only took a moment for him to
yank on his pants. “Come on.”

****

Felicity
fought off her attackers, hitting them with her cane. She didn’t often use it,
but after last night’s exertions, her ankle was bothering her. When she’d got
up to meet her mother for breakfast, she’d grabbed it, needing the extra
stability. Now, however, she used it like a weapon, jabbing at the man trying
to grab her arm.

“What
do you want?” she cried, trying to get away. This was her worst nightmare. Ever
since Peter had died in that parking lot, she’d had a feeling something bad
would happen to her, too, no matter how careful she was. She swung her cane
again, ignoring the stab of protest from her ankle as she twisted. Now was not
the time to baby her stupid injury, but it didn’t matter. The man swooped in
suddenly and grabbed her arm. She winced as his fingers ground the bones in her
wrist together painfully.

He
grabbed her cane and threw it down. She glared at him, trying to conceal the
terror she felt. He wore all black, like a bad action movie cliché, but that
didn’t make him any less menacing. His blue eyes glared at her like chips of
ice through his black ski mask.

“Stop
fighting and I won’t hurt you,” he growled.

She
spat at him, wrenching her arm away. He let go and she took off, but another of
the men tackled her. She grunted as they fell to the ground and his weight
pinned her down. She writhed, turning to try and knee him in the groin.

“Oh no,
none of that, bitch,” he said, yanking on her hair.

She
gasped, eyes watering.
Troy and Josh will come
, she thought, glancing
past the man at her house. She’d just got home and was about to head inside
when the three men had attacked, right in front of her front yard. She’d
managed to call
Troy
,
pressing his name on her quick dial as soon as she noticed the three of them
moving in on her. At least, she hoped she’d called him. Her phone was in her
pocket. She prayed the line was still open. She needed help.

“All we
want is the flash drive,” he said, yanking harder.

“I have
no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, still squirming.

“The code-cracker algorithm.
Where is
it?” the man who’d first grabbed her asked, standing over them.

“What
algorithm?” she twisted again, not that it did any good. The man holding her
down yanked her arms up over her head. The third one who’d so far been silent
knelt down and zip-tied her wrists together.

“Stop
playing dumb. The algorithm your husband developed,” the first attacker said.

She
went still. “Peter? No, he was an accountant. I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

The man
on top of her slapped her, hard.

She
cried out, eyes watering.
God, that hurt
, she thought, blinking. Her
head spun.
His
face blurred.
The sunlight hurt her eyes. “I don’t know what you want! There is no
algorithm.” He yanked on her hair some more, arching her neck painfully.

“Hey!
Let her go!”
Troy
yelled.

Felicity
gasped as the man suddenly let go. Her head
thunked
to the sidewalk, but she didn’t care. Her heart beat a thousand times per
second, but
Troy
was here and everything would be okay. Josh wouldn’t be far behind. She tried
to roll away, but the man still held her pinned.

“Shit,”
he muttered, twisting to look. He turned back to her. “Where is the flash
drive? Tell me!” He pulled out a knife and held it near her eye.

She
almost cried with fear, but still shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.” She didn’t. Peter never told her anything about an algorithm.

The man
lifted his hand, but then Josh was there, yanking him off her. She quickly
brought her arms down, wincing as her joints protested. Josh had the man on the
ground, arm shoved up behind his back, knife beneath his foot. She struggled to
sit up. Behind Josh,
Troy
jabbed one of the other men in the throat, then did some complicated move that
knocked the man’s gun aside.

He had a gun?
Felicity
thought, horrified. She’d had no idea. She put her hands to her throat. She
felt like she couldn’t get enough air. Beyond
Troy
, the third man was already down on the
ground, unmoving.

“Are
you okay?” Josh asked, startling her. “Are your hands okay?”

She
jerked her eyes to his and nodded. He was barefoot and shirtless, but he’d
taken down a man armed with a knife as though it were easy. “How did you do
that?”

He
shrugged.
“Black belt in Tae Kwon Do.”

She
glanced at
Troy
.

Josh
smiled. “I dragged him to all my classes with me. He doesn’t talk about it, but
he’s almost as good as I am.”

“Thank
God,” she said, heart finally starting to slow down.

“I
called the cops,” Josh said. The man on the ground groaned. “Oh no, you don’t.”
He yanked on the man’s arm, pinning it at his waist. “Don’t move or you’re
going to wreck your elbow.”

Felicity
licked her lips and started talking. “I don’t know what they wanted. They said
something about an algorithm Peter had worked on. I have no idea what they’re
talking about.” Her cheeks were wet. Why were her cheeks wet?

“
Shh
, just hang in there, sweetheart,” Josh said, voice
gentle. The sound of sirens had him turning to look down the street. “The cops
will be here in a sec.
Don’t
freak out if they take me
and
Troy
down,
okay? It’s standard procedure until they sort out who the bad guys are.”

Felicity
frowned. She could see that he was just trying to soothe her, but what he was
saying didn’t make any sense. “What? They guys in the ski masks are the bad
guys!”

“He’s
right,”
Troy
said, still holding onto the man he’d subdued. “They’re going to come in and
see two non-white guys and assume the worst. Just stay calm, okay? We’ll need
you to explain what happened for us.”

Felicity
shook her head. “That’s stupid.”

Josh
sighed. “Yeah, it is.” Before he could say anything else, the police were
there, shouting at them all.

Six
hours later, Felicity wanted to scream. She was exhausted and starving. She’d
spent five hours explaining what had happened, over and over again. Josh and
Troy
had been ‘detained,’
and boy did she ever hate that word now. The only reason the cops didn’t arrest
them was because the men on the ground had been wearing masks and Felicity
loudly and angrily defended Josh and
Troy
over and over again.

“Are
you okay?” Josh asked, sitting down next to her. They were waiting for
Troy
to be released from
the room where the cops had been questioning him.

“No,”
she said bluntly, tracing a finger around her sore wrists. Her skin was
bruised. “I’m not. I’m hungry and angry.” She rubbed her face.
“And scared.”
She looked up at Josh. “I have a box of
Peter’s work stuff I never went through in my basement. Right after he’d
died,
I just couldn’t deal with it, so I stuck it down there
and tried my best to forget about it.”

Josh
scrubbed his hands through his hair. “He worked in finance?”

She
nodded. “He was an accountant. For some big company I’d never heard of. They
paid well, but it was boring. That’s what he always said.”

“He may
have been fudging the truth a little, Felicity,”
Troy
said, walking up to them. He looked
tired.

Her
eyes drank him in. He was
stubbled
and disheveled,
just like Josh, but both men looked wonderful to her. The cops had at least let
her grab their clothes so they weren’t half-naked anymore, but it had been a
close thing.

“I’m
glad you’re okay,” she said.
“Both of you.”
She
reached out.

Troy
hugged her,
then
handed her off to Josh. “So, a
spreadsheet guy, huh?”

She
snorted. “I’m guessing it’s time for me to open that box up, huh?”

Both
men nodded.

“Let’s
get out of her,” Felicity said. “I’ve decided that I hate this place.

An hour
later they were in her basement, rummaging through the boxes she’d shoved in a
back corner. They managed a quick lunch, but Felicity was too agitated to put
off looking through Peter’s stuff any longer. She had to figure out what was
going on and she’d dragged Josh and
Troy
down with her.

Her
basement was dusty and damp. There were a few small windows along the top of
the foundation at the front of the house, but the backside of the space was
dark. Felicity hadn’t replaced the light bulbs in years. She didn’t come down
here often because using the steep stairs was so hard on her ankle. And, too,
she’d stashed Peter’s stuff down here, and she didn’t need the reminder of what
had happened.

“So,
I’m sitting in the room, and guess what the cop throws down in front of me?”
Troy
was saying as he
dragged the last box out from under the old bench. She’d shoved most of Peter’s
work stuff under there.

Felicity
nodded. “Yeah, that’s the right box.
Finally.”

“Good,”
Josh said, wiping his forehead. He left a smudge of dirt on his temple. “I
didn’t want to have to crawl under there again.”

“Oh
please, I was the one stuck under the bench. You freaked out when you got a
spider on your head,”
Troy
said, voice mocking.

“What
did the cop throw down?” Felicity asked, hoping to head off a bickering
session. Mostly she found the men amusing, but after the day she’d had, she was
too tired and discouraged to deal with it. She rubbed her eyes as the dust
pricked at them, making her tear up.

“My phone.”
Troy
stood up and stretched.

Josh
picked up the box and set it on top of the workbench. The lone working light
bulb beamed dimly down atop the battered cardboard.
“Your
phone?
That makes no sense. We didn’t have our phones with us when we
ran outside to help Felicity.”

Troy
shook his head.
“No, not my new phone.
The old one.
The one I’d lost.”

Felicity
frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Apparently
the assholes who attacked you stole my phone. One of them had it in his
pocket.”

“What
the hell?” Josh leaned against the bench.

Felicity
was just as confused.

“Think
about it,”
Troy
said.

“It was
stolen?” Josh asked.

“Yeah.
Exactly.
Remember how we’d been leaving the door to the office propped open? I think
someone snuck in and took my phone.”

“But, why?”
Felicity still didn’t
understand. “Why go to all that trouble?” She stared at the cardboard box. This
whole mess had something to do with Peter. The thought scared her.