It was this job that had resulted in my hospitalization. I just couldn’t remember who the hell he was or who he’d had me follow. I added to our short thread, I need to talk to you.
As I waited for a reply, I made a second post, letting everyone know I was open to jobs again. I played the sympathy card and told them I was drowning in medical bills. I hadn’t actually received a bill yet and hoped I never would. A few replies trickled in, but they were all along the lines of “That sucks, man. Good luck!”
Days went by with no new jobs, and no response from stratodigster.
My frustration mounted every day. I needed money. I needed my life and my memory back, but it was all just out of reach. I felt as if I were slowly going insane.
On the first of September, a month and a half after emerging from the coma, a bill from the hospital arrived in my mailbox. Unless my nonexistent health insurance company got involved, I owed the hospital over a hundred grand. My bank account wouldn’t even cover two percent of that. How long could I go without paying it? Would I have to declare bankruptcy? A headache walloped me like a sledgehammer to the face.
I staggered back to my apartment and I lay on the floor for a while with a cold rag over my eyes, but my head wouldn’t stop throbbing. My brain was on the verge of exploding in my skull. The doc told me to avoid stress, but she was the reason I was under stress in the first place! How could she have allowed me to be billed such a laughably high fee when I’d told her I didn’t have insurance?
“If your memory loss gets worse, or if you develop bad headaches, come back and see me,” she’d said, as if she cared.
My brain pulsed again.
I only had enough money to get me through the next two months. Bills and rent had been taken care of, but nothing else was.
By that evening, once the sun had set and my apartment was dark, my headache had faded back to a dull hum. There was still no response from the useless stratodigster.
However, there was a message from Anon9876: You ever do more than take pictures?
I told him to call me.
Minutes later, the screen of my burner lit up and a private number scrolled across it.
“Yeah,” I said.
“If you need cash, the real money is in the girls, not pictures,” a deep male voice said. “Ever snatch one before?”
I honestly had no idea if I had. “Sure.”
“Well, I’m always in the market for ones that are in the eighteen-to-twenty-five range. I’m okay with a little younger, but no older,” he said. “White girls. Brown or black hair. Small breasts.”
“How much?”
“Eighteen grand for your first one.”
My head started to throb again, but it wasn’t as painful this time. That much money would give me time to breathe. To heal.
“I know you’re hard up for cash, so if you send me proof of capture, I’ll send you an advance,” he said. “The Client monopolized you for years. If you’re as good as you were back then, we can make a fuckload of money together.”
The Client. Another hole tore open in the black curtain.
“I’m better.”
“Proof is in the picture,” he said. “Hit me up in the private chat when you have it.” The call ended.
Who the hell was The Client?
My brain pulsed.
I’d figure that out later. For now, I had work to do. Finally. I’d start in Nob Hill. It was nearby and was full of college students. I was sure to find a young brunette there.
I donned all black, then grabbed a small notebook, my keys and phone, and headed for the door. I doubled back into my bedroom and rummaged around in a drawer until I found what I needed—a black bandana.
CHAPTER 9
Riley’s stomach was in knots as Michael pulled up in front of his parents’ house. It wasn’t because she was nervous about meeting them—that had happened months ago. It had been awkward at first, but Michael’s father, Jake, was somehow even goofier than Michael, which made it impossible to stay uncomfortable for very long. Riley had decided that day that it was a Roberts family trait to have the ability to make anyone on the planet feel welcome solely by being charmingly ridiculous.
She was nervous because the evening of the food challenge had arrived. It had been five days since she’d sent the film off to California, and last night her account page had been updated with a “Congratulations! Your prints are on their way!” Normally something like that would have occupied all of her available brain space. But today, she’d been too worried about the food challenge to think about anything else.
A few times a year, and on most major holidays, the Roberts siblings partook in a food challenge. The winner got to choose an activity the other sibling had to participate in. When Michael had lost the Ghost Pepper Challenge, the result was that he had to go on a ghost-hunting investigation weekend—where he and Riley had met.
This challenge, however, had been chosen and organized by the Roberts parents. Now, Riley and Carla, Michael’s sister’s wife, were also playing. Riley’s participation had been presented by Michael as a mere suggestion, but she got the impression that saying no was akin to slapping Michael’s parents across the face with a pair of dueling gloves.
“I don’t understand how it’s fair that your parents are torturing us and yet they get to decide who wins,” Riley said, staring out at the house from where they were parked at the curb. “Shouldn’t they have to eat whatever this horror is, too?”
“My dad said that since they’re footing the bill for the vacation, they should be able to inflict pain,” Michael said. “When I was talking to my mom last night, we were in the middle of a conversation when she started giggling out of nowhere and said, ‘Oh, I just thought of another one, Jake! Get the keys!’ and then she hung up on me.”
Riley frowned at him. “And we don’t know what the nature of this challenge is?”
“Don’t have the foggiest clue. Donna tried to sneak into my dad’s office the other day to see if she could find a list or something since Dad writes everything down. The door was locked. He never locks his office.”
“If I had known when I started dating you that participation in this madness came with the territory, I—”
He leaned over the center console and cut her sentence off with a kiss that made her head spin. “You what?” he asked, face still only an inch from hers.
She smiled, her eyes still closed. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t worry, babe,” he said, opening his car door. “I packed barf bags.”
Ugh.
Riley followed Michael up the front walk to the tidy one-story house. There was a tall stone goose that sat on the porch. Michael’s mom, Nancy, dressed the goose up based on the holiday. When Riley had first come to the house, the goose had been wearing a red, white, and blue top hat for the fourth of July. Today he wore a bib with a smiling taco on it, its stick arms raised in mid-cheer. “Let’s Taco ’Bout It!” was written below it.
The door swung open just before Michael reached it and Donna appeared there, wide-eyed. “I’m a nervous wreck.”
Riley poked her head around Michael’s back. “Do you have intel?”
“None!” Donna quickly hugged Michael, and then Riley, ushering them in.
Riley and Michael deposited their things on a bench seat by the front door. Riley grabbed her phone out of her jacket pocket and slipped it into the back of her jeans, just in case she needed to call an ambulance. Jade had requested—begged, really—that Riley record every second of this challenge. Riley had downright refused, but when she followed the Roberts siblings into the dining room, she saw that a camcorder on a tripod had already been set up at the far end of the table. Riley would do everything in her power to make sure that footage never left this house nor ended up on the internet.
The kitchen was connected to the dining room by an open doorway directly behind the strategically placed camera. Carla came hurrying out at the sound of voices, glancing over her shoulder every fe
w seconds as if she were being pursued by a wild animal.
“Oh, thank God,” Carla said, pulling Riley into a hug. Holding her by the shoulders she said, “Since neither one of us is a Roberts by blood, I don’t understand why we’re being subjected to this.”
“That’s what I said!” Riley hissed back. “If we say we’ll pay for our own tickets, can we get out of it?”
Carla unhanded her and crossed her arms, shaking her head. “Nope. I tried that.”
“Dammit. Did you get any information while you were in there?”
“Negative,” Carla said. “There are a bunch of small metal containers in the fridge with foil lids so you can’t see into them. Jake was in the bathroom and Nancy and Donna were outside talking, so I tried to get a sneak peek. Jake appeared out of nowhere and said, ‘Out of there, you!’ right behind me and I screamed so loud, Donna and Nancy came running in here, sure I was being attacked.”
“Serves you right!”
Riley and Carla yelped, and spun around to find Jake Roberts standing behind them. His office was on the other side of the small foyer, so Riley guessed he’d come from there. He had his fists on his hips, doing his best to look menacing. He was as ferocious as a puppy that had just gotten caught in a rainstorm. He had two small envelopes in one hand.
“Hi, Jake,” Riley managed when her heart rate slowed.
“Hey, Ry,” he said, pulling her into one of his too-tight hugs. “I’m really glad you could join us,” he said in her ear with such sincerity, she knew it would be impossible to back out of this now. This was a tradition and the Roberts family wanted her to be a part of it, despite the newness of Riley and Michael’s relationship.
“We got this, babe,” Michael said, grabbing Riley’s hand and giving it a squeeze.
Nancy joined them, and after another round of greetings, the Roberts parents told the four of them to take a seat. Michael guided Riley to the table.
“For this challenge,” Nancy said, “Riley and Donna are on a team, and Michael and Carla are on the other.”
Michael immediately dropped Riley’s hand, took several steps back and said, “You’re going down.”
“How quickly your alliance changes!” Riley said.
“He’s the literal worst,” Donna said, laughing. “I got you, girl. We’re going to destroy them.”
Carla and Michael were seated across from Riley and Donna. It struck Riley in that moment how deeply unfair it was that the woman in the yellow dress would never get to experience things like this. How Brynn and Shawna’s ability to spend time with family and friends, to participate in something fun and silly, had been taken from them.
“Ry?”
Riley looked across the table at Michael, his brows pulled together.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Nancy, who had been standing beside her, bent forward, hands on her knees so she could examine Riley’s face. “We haven’t overwhelmed you, have we? We can get a little carried away.”
Riley shook her head. While she was here, she would try to live in the moment, and not in the past. “I’m okay. Honest. I’m ready.”
“Okay then,” Jake said from the head of the table beside the camera. He clapped once and rubbed his hands together. “Nancy has an envelope for both teams.”
Once Riley and Donna got their envelope, Donna tore it open and the two of them huddled together to see what they were dealing with. Inside was a card about the size of two standard business cards. The top had the words TEAM NANCY written on it, and below that were two columns with four boxes each. The boxes were numbered 1 through 8.
“As much as this is a competition between the two teams, it’s also a competition between me and Nancy,” Jake said. “Whichever team guesses the most mystery foods wins, and then that team also gets to weigh in on the family vacation. Nancy and I will ultimately choose the destination, but the food challengers will get to choose one out-of-the-box excursion. I personally am terrified of heights, but if we end up in Costa Rica and Nancy’s team wins, I could be forced to go zip-lining, for example.”
“Ooh,” Michael said from across the table. “If we’re going somewhere tropical, sister dear, your ass will be going swimming with dolphins.”
Donna shuddered violently beside Riley.
“She was bitten by a dolphin at SeaWorld when she was a kid,” Carla told Riley.
“Demon fish,” Donna whispered softly to herself.
Riley suppressed a laugh.
“Four of the foods were chosen by yours truly,” Jake said, “while the others were chosen by Nancy. They’re all awful either in taste, smell, texture, or, if you’re lucky, all three. There are no palate cleansers between rounds, so each subsequent horrible food will get harder and harder to identify, as it will be mixing with the terrible food before it.”
Carla and Riley shared a look of horror across the table, while Donna and Michael had resorted to playful name calling.
“I hope they all have mustard in them,” Donna said to Michael.
Michael narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you’ll get something with a nice big dollop of tapenade on it.”
Donna pressed her hand to her mouth.
Theatrically, Jake said, “Nancy, my love! Bring out the blindfolds!”
The blindfolds turned out to be four puffy sleep masks, each with half-moons stitched onto the black fabric with white thread, along with a wide fan of pink curly lashes to resemble closed eyes. Nancy affixed Donna’s first, then moved behind Riley. Riley shot a death glare at Michael, who merely laughed and blew her a kiss.
“We will bring out the foods one at a time,” Jake said. “You will be given thirty seconds to taste the selected food. Once it has been removed, you may take off your blindfold and consult with your team member so you can write down your guess. Once a guess is made, you cannot change it.”
Something was slid onto the table on the other end, closer to Jake. Perhaps the foil trays Carla had seen in the fridge earlier.
“Ready?” Jake asked.
“No!” Riley and Carla said in unison.
“Bring it,” said Donna.
“Your defeat will be swift and merciless, Team Nancy,” Michael said.
Jake said, “I love you to the moon and back, Nance, but I hope your team is running for a toilet by round two.”
“Likewise,” Nancy said.
Riley listened to the crinkle of what was most assuredly foil. Nancy walked across the dining room and placed something in front of her and Donna, and then in front of Michael and Carla.
Standing at the head of the table to Riley’s right, Nancy said, “When I say go, grab the cup in front of you and do what you must to figure out what it is. You have thirty seconds. Your time starts … now. Go!”
Riley fumbled for her little plastic cup. She brought it to her nose to give it a sniff. She cocked her head, though, when whatever was inside rattled. Sticking a finger inside the cup, she found several small hard objects, quickly determining they were jelly beans. She loved jelly beans! She popped two in her mouth, assuming it would be hard to guess the difference between, say, strawberry or cherry, but maybe her heightened senses from having her eyes covered would allow her to—
“Oh my god …” she groaned, and in a very ladylike fashion, quickly spit the chewed-up jelly beans back into the cup. She gagged.
Over the sound of Nancy and Jake’s laughter, she could hear Carla cursing the Roberts family name, while Michael said something along the lines of “Who would do this to candy?”
Knowing time was limited, Riley worked her tongue around her teeth, trying to find little bits of the horrible “candy.” She got definite notes of something seafood-like. She gagged again. She jumped when an egg timer went off.
“That’s time. Leave your blindfolds on while I collect the cups.” A minute later, Nancy said, “You may remove the blindfold and consult with your teammate.”
Riley pulled up the sleep mask, resting it on her forehead. A pen had materialized b
eside their card, and she picked up both. Using the card to shield her mouth, she sat back in her chair. Donna did the same. Michael and Carla across the table had turned their chairs slightly to help better discuss the food’s identity without being overheard.
“I was thinking something like oyster or sardine,” Donna whispered.
“Me too,” said Riley. “I’m leaning toward sardine. There’s something fishy about it.”
“I already hate jelly beans. Now I hate them even more,” Donna said. “That one was probably from my dad. He’s a despicable man.”
“Ten seconds left to write down your answers,” Nancy called out.
“So ‘sardine jelly bean’ is our answer?” Riley asked.
“Yep.”
While Riley did her best to write down their answer without the other team seeing, Donna distracted them with more of her creative insults. Michael lobbed them back with ease.
Riley flipped over the card when she was done, then offered Michael a smug little smile.
“Don’t try to seduce me here in my parents’ house, Ms. Thomas,” Michael said. “That’s tacky and won’t work.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes. The jelly bean was gross, but if that’s what the Roberts parents thought was a challenge, Riley was confident Team Nancy had this thing in the bag.
“Masks back over your eyes!” Nancy demanded.
Riley had been very wrong.
The next offerings, to the best of Riley’s and Donna’s guesses, were caviar; quinoa and dill relish; a peanut butter and onion sandwich; a hot dog topped with raspberry jelly; hummus, though the flavor of it was a mystery neither one could settle on other than “disgusting”; and popcorn coated with ketchup as well as something that tasted like sour cream.
“One more,” Carla said from across the table, letting out a slow breath as if she’d just run several miles before flinging herself into her chair. Riley’s stomach had started churning after the peanut butter and onion sandwich. When Jake had first said that they wouldn’t be allowed palate cleansers like water or crackers, Riley hadn’t thought much of it. Now, each offering was compounded by whatever last awful thing they’d consumed. By the fourth one, they’d all started laughing, mildly delirious, the moment they tried a new concoction.
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