“Babe, I know my butt is good. Real good. But I’m taken. Keep the eyes off my butt.”
I grinned at him and cocked out a hip, waggling the cell at him. “Yeah, I know. No poaching on Syl’s territory. But I could take her, you know. I could.” Sylvia Turpin was his hunny-bunny, and also the sheriff of Adams County, out of Natchez, Mississippi.
“Chick fight,” the Kid muttered, and I could hear the laughter in his voice. I decided to stop the teasing before we all started trying to outsnark each other.
“YS might have a job,” I said. YS came out Wiseass, which was our current nickname for our security company, more formally known as Yellowrock Securities. I let my grin widen. “With PsyLED.”
“No sh—way,” the Kid said, lifting his head, his eyes bugging out. Eli went still, his left arm frozen midcurl.
I raised my eyebrows. “You lost count, didn’t you?”
Eli frowned. “That was just cruel, babe. Cruel.”
I laughed. “Yeah, now your arms will be all lopsided. When you finish pumping up and showering, we can talk about the job. Meanwhile, Kid, e-mail Rick LaFleur our standard short-term, hunting-only, no-termination contract, and the liability one and”—I waved my empty hand in the air to suggest my uncertainty—“something to cover us having to kill supernats to protect the human populace in any life-threatening, emergency, crisis, legal-mumbo-jumbo situation. And whatever else you think we need.” The Kid had taken over the company paperwork and instituted files’ and files’ worth—various contracts, disclaimers, exclusions, standard expenses, and even a rider list (things the customer had to provide for us to do a job), all in legalese. Reams of the stuff. Ten times what I used to have as a one-woman company. He was a teenage mutant ninja geek, and he was worth his weight in gold, even at today’s rates. I rattled off the fax number. Eli headed upstairs to shower, muttering under his breath about cruel women.
I got my old laptop and did a sat-map search for Chauvin, Louisiana. It was an odd little place by mountain standards, mostly a lot of water, a lot of swampy ground, a lot of weird canals going everywhere and nowhere, and most of them looking unused, some flatland along Highway 56, and less lining Highway 55. The city stretched out along the two parallel roads, hugging them like lifelines, which they probably were during hurricane season.
Chauvin was in Terrebonne Parish, the sheriff’s office in Houma, north of Chauvin. So far as I could tell, Chauvin had no independent police and depended on the sheriff for law enforcement. There was no public airport closer than New Orleans, no hospital in Chauvin, and most of the parish social life seemed to take place in Houma. So I’d start out there. Assuming I took the job.
Eli trundled down the steps, the scent of vanilla preceding him. The shampoo had been a prezzie from his girlfriend, and Alex had razzed him unmercifully about how sweet he smelled and how his old Ranger buddies would think he was pretty. Neither man was homophobic, and Eli took the teasing well, which all was a sign of how important his relationship with Syl was. He rounded the corner wearing only jeans and a T-shirt slung over one shoulder. Sweet mama, he looks good. And he knew it, flaunting it. And I have been too long without Ricky Bo. I just shook my head as he opened the fridge and pulled out a container of boiled, peeled eggs.
“Details,” Eli said. He stuffed a whole egg in his mouth and dropped into a chair, chomping with exaggerated jaw motions.
I told him all I knew about our job and said, “I’ll stick a bag in the SUV and head out. I’ll text you with the hotel and where to meet up.”
Eli had eaten three eggs while I talked, and stuffed a fourth one in his mouth as I walked off. Over my shoulder, I said, “One thing. If those eggs give you gas, I will not pay to have the hotel room fumigated.”
Alex groaned and snorted with laughter behind me. “His egg farts are enough to gag a goat.”
“Yeah, you should worry about that, Kid,” I said. “You’ll be sharing a room with your brother.”
“Aw man. No private rooms? Gimme that box of eggs. Give it to me.” There were sounds of scuffles, muted screams, and laughter behind me, and I was pretty sure Eli gave me an obscene hand gesture, but I didn’t look back to be sure if the guys were really killing each other or not. It took effort to live with two men, and part of that effort meant treating them like brothers, crudities and all. And besides, Eli did get awful eggy flatulence, and he had been on an egg protein kick for weeks.