Page 67 of Kiss Kiss Bang
“I’m fine. Go.”
He bent down and kissed Sophie’s forehead. “I hope you can fix the algae thing if you win,” he said to Olivia, frustrated. “I hate to see her sick.”
“Oh, I will. I’ll at least try harder than McGregor has. If I have to fight the sugar industry my entire term, I will.”
“Good girl,” he smiled. “I miss fishing.”
“I didn’t know you fished.”
“Lots of things to still learn about each other.”
“I look forward to it, Joey.”
“Me too, babe.” And he did. He wanted to know all about her. Then he thought . . .”You think Sophie would like to go fishing?”
“She’d love it. She’d ask you a million questions. Get super excited, but she won’t touch the bait or the fish.”
He chuckled. “Sounds like something I should plan.”
“So, the plan is: capture the bad guys who are messing with me, win the election, and fix the Florida waterways so we can go fishing. Easy enough. I’ll get right on it.”
He chuckled. It was nice to hear her a little less on edge. It reminded him of how she’d been on their date to the go-cart place. “I gotta run, darlin’. Arm the alarm behind me.”
“Bye, Joey.”
“Later, Livie.”
* * *
Apparently breaking into the federal prison database wasn’t hard. Joey spent the next three hours running queries on last known addresses, phone logs, anything, that involved the Mather brothers, but there wasn’t anything unusual. Well, nothing more unusual than what a scumbag lowlife would do. Some of the searches were going to take all night, so he decided to call it a night and come back early the next day.
But before he did that he decided to fuck with McGregor one last time. Sophie being sick because of a neglectful act from the governor was an act of aggression, one which McGregor would not get away with. It took him less than twenty minutes to do what he wanted to do, and once he’d finished he felt pretty happy with himself.
He locked up his office and said goodbye to his employees as he walked out.
As soon as he got into his car his phone rang and the caller ID said Chief Martinez.
“Hello.”
“Clad, it’s Martinez. We got a problem.”
“What?”
“The parole officer from Ocala. The one assigned to Connor Mathers? He just called. Connor’s been missing for the last forty-eight hours. A BOLO has been put out.”
Fuck!
* * *
Olivia was stirring the vat of sauce when she heard shuffling behind her and turned around. There were days she wanted to pull out her hair and stuff her ears with cotton balls, but there were moments, like this one, where she took a mental picture of her daughter and wished time would stand still. Her daughter had an old blanket in one hand, her hair was a mess, and she was rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Normally she didn’t allow her daughter to take naps this late in the afternoon, but the poor girl hadn’t been feeling well, and Olivia had let her sleep—knowing that she’d regret it later when she couldn’t get her to bed. Her allergies were acting up and it was, no doubt, from the horrible stench coming from the water nearby and that damn toxic algae.
Her daughter, sleep still in her eyes, walked into the kitchen and headed, full impact, to her mother and wrapped her sleepy body around her leg.
Olivia turned the stove down and lowered herself to Sophie’s eye level. “You have a good nap, sweets?”
“I don’t wike elevators.”
“It wasn’t too bad. That doesn’t happen often.” What else could she say? Olivia had never liked elevators either. She lifted her daughter and tucked her on her hip. It had been almost two weeks and she still brought it up every few days. “I made your favorite. Spaghetti with sauce.”
