wasn’t nearly as dumb as her brother had accused her of being. In fact, they both had a love of robotics and artificial intelligence, and Oriana’s hobby was advanced engineering.
“We should work on a project sometime,” Oriana suggested, pushing her tray of empty paper plates away. “There’s an engineering lab I’m allowed to use anytime I’m in the city.”
“That sounds great, but I promised Charlie I wouldn’t involve myself in AI anymore.”
“Why?”
Stevie took a sip of her giant soda before admitting, “There was an incident.”
“It was with the US Army,” Max abruptly chimed in, turning toward Oriana, her grin wide. “In fact, it was a minor international incident that almost became a major international—”
“Hey!” Stevie barked. “Gag order. Remember?”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I don’t know why. They put a gun to your head. Literally,” Stevie reminded her sister. “Not to get you to sign, but because they felt threatened by you.”
Max gazed off, eyes narrowing as she tried to remember. “Nope,” she finally said. “You’re going to have to be way more specific.”
Shen, still working on his french fried bamboo sticks, gawked at Max and asked, “How many times have you had a gun to your head?”
“So many,” Stevie and Max replied together.
Oriana’s phone vibrated and she lifted it off the table, studying it. “What the fuck?” she growled.
“What?” Kyle asked.
“It’s from Aunt Irene again. She says the wild dogs are pissed about the house and they are throwing us out. She said we should get over there to talk to them right now . . . and bring Dr. Stasiuk-MacKilligan.” Oriana blinked. “Who?”
Stevie raised her hand a bit. “Uh . . . that’s me.”
“Oh. Oh! So that makes sense.”
“Well, it’s not gonna happen,” Max cut in, shaking her head. “She could be setting you up to get murdered. She hates you.”
“Irene Conridge does hate me,” Stevie confirmed. “She probably is trying to kill me.”
Laughing, Kyle disagreed. “I can say a lot about Aunt Irene, but I can assure you that she’d never do anything like . . .” He looked down at his hands and, after a few moments, finally admitted, “Yeah, she could be trying to kill you.”
“We could just ask her?” Oriana suggested.
“Ask her if she’s plotting to kill my sister? That really seems logical to you? That’s stupid. What we should do is hack into her computer and find out if she’s planning something. Like moving a large quantity of money into Swiss bank accounts. The hitmen I know keep their money in Swiss bank accounts.”
“Hitmen?” Stevie asked. “That’s so outdated. It’s hitpeople now. Or assassin.”
“Assassin is so snobby. That’s like people who say ‘wet works.’”
“I’m sorry,” Shen finally cut in. “You all think Irene Conridge is planning to kill Stevie?”
“Of course not,” Stevie felt the need to correct. “She’d never do it herself. She’d hire someone.”
“Hence the use of assassin,” Max interjected.
“Okay.” Shen pushed back his chair, stood. “I am well aware that I am the most rational of this group. I’ve been informed of this by both Charlie and Toni. So, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to go over there.”
“So my sister can be shot from a rooftop like JFK?” Max demanded.
“That wouldn’t happen,” Shen replied. “Because that’s stupid. Not only that, but I’ve found that if Irene Conridge does really hate you, she wants you to live a long time so she can use that time to make you miserable.”
Kyle nodded. “He has a point.”
“So, let’s just go and talk to the wild dogs. Get that fixed, and then we can find out what Dr. Conridge wants. Although, why she wouldn’t just ask Stevie over if she wanted to see her—”
“Because she knows that if she asked me over, I’d burn the house down with her in it.”
“Let’s just go,” Shen said on a long sigh as he stepped away from the table and picked up his tray.
* * *
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice called out and Shen turned to see Coop running toward them. He liked Coop. A lot. He wasn’t like the rest of the Jean-Louis Parkers. He was really friendly and didn’t hold anyone’s lack of Russian literature knowledge against them.
He was also tall, handsome, and one of those breeds that didn’t look freakishly large when in their human form. He was also the one Berg called “music guy.”
And Stevie used to be music girl. They understood each other on that prodigy level that Shen would never get.
So what did that all mean to Shen at the