Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,34
was low and ominous.
He gave her a flat stare back, yet his voice faltered at the end. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time?”
She gasped and opened her mouth, just as Kai reached across the table and popped more quiche into it. “We won’t fight about it now,” she said. “We have to focus on the business at hand.”
“You asked,” Johan said.
Kai nodded. “I did. I should have known better.” She shook her head but turned toward Joy. “All of Levi’s men, they’re very honorable,” she said, “but they are deadly too.”
Joy narrowed her gaze, still chewing hard as she glared from Kai to Johan. Finally she seemed to have calmed down enough that she served herself some salad and attacked the green lettuce as if it were an alien enemy.
Johan watched with interest to see her plow through a big serving of greens. Finally he looked at the others and said, “So, what news do you have?”
“It’s not even so much news,” Tyson said, “but we’ll be in town to give you guys a hand. The other job was put on hold. The museum will handle their problem themselves.”
At that, Joy stopped chewing, stared at Kai, and said, “I don’t want this to interfere in your life too.”
“It’s not interfering in my life,” Kai said. “We’re friends. Remember? I don’t want to see you get into trouble.”
“I’m already into trouble,” she said. “What difference does a little more make?”
“You know what I mean,” Kai said. “Let’s not be flippant about something like your safety.”
Joy seemed to calm down, her shoulders slumping, and she nodded. “There’s really nothing to be done though. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“I know,” Kai said.
Just then Tyson’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, looked at it, then at Joy. “When did you last have a repairman in your apartment?”
She looked at him in surprise, then frowned and shrugged. “Not sure I’ve had any. I’ve hardly lived there long enough.”
“Does anybody have a spare key?”
“No,” she said. “Well, the guy I sublet it from. But he’s overseas. And of course the property manager. Why?”
“Because we sent a team into your apartment and cased it for bugs. They found two.”
She stopped and stared at him in shock, slowly lowering her fork. “Bugs, as in listening devices?”
He nodded slowly.
“That’s not cool.” She gave Galen a blank look. “That makes no sense. Why care about me?”
“Do you leave a spare key anywhere?” Johan asked.
“No,” she said. “I just have the one on a key ring I keep in my purse.”
“And how often do you leave your office without your purse?” Johan stared at her intently, because, of course, she had come to talk to him several times, and she didn’t have her purse with her.
“You’re suggesting somebody might have gone into my purse while I was out of the office? So they could do what? So they could take an impression of my key and have another key made?”
“Something like that, yes,” he said. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“But that would mean it was either Phyllis or Doris,” she said slowly. “I can’t see either one of them doing that.”
“Johan told us about Phyllis and her interesting history,” Kai said.
“Interesting, yes. But surely not something that would necessitate her bugging my apartment,” Joy said.
“No, and what I’m trying to ascertain is,” she said, “who else would care?”
“Only somebody involved in the theft,” Johan said slowly.
Joy looked down at her food. “Suddenly I’m not so hungry. Now I feel quite sick.”
Chapter 7
“I didn’t mean to ruin your dinner,” Kai said.
“I’m the one who just got the news,” Tyson said apologetically. “I could have waited a little bit.”
Joy stared at him in surprise. “Waiting a little bit won’t help,” she murmured. “This means that strangers were in my apartment, and even now people are trying to hear what I have to say.” She looked back at Johan. “Did we say anything when we were in there?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, “deliberately.”
She glared at him. “Did you expect there to be bugs?”
“Expect, no,” he said. “But I’m the one who requested the sweep.”
She stared around at all these people who were making decisions on her behalf without her. Yes, for her benefit, but, at the same time, it felt odd. She didn’t even know what to say. She stared off in the distance. “I can’t imagine,” she reiterated, “why anybody would care.”
“And, of course, that’s the problem,” Kai said. “Like you said, it