6

6

I swear to everything that is Evil and Unholy in the world, if Jason hijacked my narrative again while I was asleep, I am going to castrate that no-good-son-of-a-bagpipe-player and make him wear his testicles as a necklace.

No? Hmm. Fine. I guess I believe you. He can keep his nuts. For now . . .

It seems Jason was right that I needed to rest because when I wake up it’s the next morning. I rarely sleep more than six hours at a time, so for me to have slept through almost an entire day, that definitely says something—and no, I’m not happy about the fact that the ‘something’ said essentially proves Jason right. Fucker.

The back of my head is still tender where I hit it, but I no longer feel like every move I make is going to cause my entire being to implode in a spectacular display of fireworks so I guess that’s an improvement.

Jason is nowhere to be seen, so I decide to take advantage of the opportunity to see how much I can move around without him mollycoddling me. My limbs are rather stiff from a day of disuse, and my head doesn’t feel great, but otherwise getting out of bed does not make the world feel like it’s going to turn upside down on me. I take that as a good sign.

I cross to the mini fridge and find several chilled bottles of water and, on the floor next to the fridge, a box of granola bars. Not quite the feast my famished stomach is calling for, but I suppose it would be better to start simple, anyway.

After chugging down a whole bottle of water and inhaling a couple of granola bars, I decide the next item of business is a steaming hot shower. Unfortunately, the water boiler for Jason’s safe room is about as well-kept as the room itself, so a moderately lukewarm shower is what I have to settle for. Even with that minor sacrifice, the shower combined with the snacks and water bottle leaves me almost feeling human again.

As I step out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, Jason chooses that moment to re-enter the safe room, bundling three large paper bags in his arms. The blush that creeps up his cheeks is almost adorable.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” I say, rolling my eyes as I drop the towel to the floor and cross to the bed where I had laid out my clothes before my shower. “I don’t suppose you have any spare clothes for me in those bags.”

“No . . . I . . . uhh . . . I figured you’d . . . uhh . . . prefer to pick up your things when we stop by your place . . . ”

Okay. I admit the blushing combined with the stammering is adorable. I’m almost tempted to stay nude a bit longer, just to embarrass him further and watch him squirm. But, on the other hand, I don’t want him to think I’m staying naked to seduce him or anything, so I suppose I’d better remove the chance for that misunderstanding from the equation.

“Good call. I never could stand your fashion taste, anyway,” I say, pulling my dress over my head and mercifully reprieving Jason from the affront of my nudity. The dress reeks of the smoke from the explosion, is torn in a few places, and normally I hate wearing dresses anyway, but as it was what I was wearing at my mother’s funeral, it’s what I’m stuck with until we get back to my house. And it’s still almost certainly better than anything Jason would have picked out.

The blush slowly fading out of Jason’s cheeks, he steps the rest of the way into the room and places the paper bags on the second bed.

“Sorry for leaving you alone, but I figured that now you knew we were someplace safe, you’d probably want to have some time alone when you woke up.”

It’s really fucking annoying how well he knows me.

“Figured I’d take the opportunity to run some errands,” he continues, reaching into one of the paper bags and pulls out a fast food biscuit sandwich and bottle of orange juice and hands them to me before retrieving an identical set for himself. “I also stopped by the two closest of my safe rooms and retrieved the cash and supplies I’d stored there.”

“Well aren’t you Mister-Fucking-Efficient,” I say, in between bites of my breakfast sandwich.

He ignores the jibe and proceeds to empty another one of the bags onto the bed—disguise items, including wigs, boxes of various-colored contact lenses, and facial prosthetics. This leaves one remaining bag, which I assume is filled with cash and fake I.D.s.

Indicating the disguise items, he says, “This will hardly do the job of T.H.E.M.’s Appearance Artificers—what was your nickname for them again?”

“The ‘Fabricating Ugly Cock-Kissers’,” I reply. I’ve been referring to them in my mind as the F.U.C.K.’s for so long I’d forgotten their official title was Appearance Artificers.

“That’s right,” he says, smiling nostalgically. “Anyway, none of this will be nearly as good a job as the Appearance Artificers do, but it’s better than nothing. We’ll probably have to change our appearance frequently if we want to keep Nick’s minions off our tail.”

“I am certainly not going to complain about not having to be poked and prodded for two hours by the F.U.C.K.’s. I’ll take a fake wig and nose any day over those creeps.”

Jason smiles again, and asks, “You ever do the gender-swap?”

“Porcupines, no,” I reply reflexively, then I remember Jason is the only person who knows my porcupine story. Well, Jason and you, now. Curse that motherfucking-cock-wrangler and his loose tongue.

“Wait . . . did you? Do the gender-swap, I mean?”

“Yeah, once,” he replies with a coy smile. “Was supposed to assassinate a politician from South America who had a proclivity for American women. Zeke offered to give the job to Mary Sue instead, but I said I was willing to try it out. The Appearance Artificers didn’t . . . ahem, cut anything off that couldn’t be replaced, of course. Just gave me a temporary boob job and some injections to soften my facial features. Didn’t need to pass a medical inspection or anything, just enough to get him alone in a hotel room to slit his throat and jump out the window.”

I shudder at the idea of letting the F.U.C.K.’s do that to me. The regular procedure was painful and embarrassing enough. Besides, it’s not like they’d actually give me a prosthetic penis to flop around like a baby elephant trunk, and I’d still be getting my ‘monthly visitor’, so there would be zero benefits for me to get the procedure done.

Desperate for a change of topic, I say, “So what’s our next move?”

“I have another safe room between here and your house so it makes sense to stop there on our way to your place. Depending on how things go at your house, that will likely determine whether we risk hitting up the last safe room, which is down in Orange County. If we have to abandon that last one, four out of five ain’t bad.”

“I’m guessing we’re going to need to stakeout my place significantly before going in?” I hate the fact that these assholes have infiltrated my life so thoroughly that my home—my Fortress of Solitude—is no longer safe. That alone is almost worse than everything else they’ve done to me—and yes, I’m including the murder of my mother in that list.

“Yes. We’ll want to observe it for half a day, at least.”

“I figured,” I concede with a resigned sigh. “Let’s get a move on, then. The sooner I get out of this stinky dress and into some real clothes the better.”

“One thing first. Before we go to your place, we’re going to want to pick our first set of disguises. Waltzing into your place looking as yourself we might as well just hand ourselves over to Nick’s minions.”

As usual, the dick-drugger is right.

Sifting through Jason’s set of female wigs, I debate between a longer red one or a shorter blonde. I eventually settle on the blonde one, remembering Jason’s weakness for those of the red-follicled-persuasion, stubbornly continuing my determination to avoid any chance of him thinking I’m trying to seduce him, which I absolutely have zero interest in ever doing again. So why do I keep bringing it up? Damn it.

Figuring it best to go all out on this mission, I also pick one of the fake noses and a pair of prosthetic cheek patches. Jason helps me apply the latex prosthetics to my face, and then, while he begins to assemble his disguise, I begin applying makeup to blend over between my natural skin and the prosthetics.

As we’re not infiltrating his home, Jason opts for a less-extensive disguise, no doubt figuring he should save the more complex items for another time when he’ll need them more. He picks a wig that transforms his short-cropped dark brown hair into medium-length, wavy chestnut and a fake beard that matches. Almost makes him look like Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Wouldn’t fool anyone who knows him intimately if they looked close enough, but good enough for a stakeout and quick ‘get in, get on with it, and get out’ mission.

Our disguises donned, I turn to Jason and say, “Now, can we please get out of this claustrophobic shithole and start trying to find the assholes who killed my mother and destroyed our employer?”

Jason smiles mischievously, and we head for the door.