Page 42 of How To Plot a Payback

“The lady said she has to go,” the man from the corner pipes up.

“Finn Masters,” I say automatically, because funnily enough that name has been bouncing around my brain for the past twenty-four hours.

Finn, for his part, looks like he’d rather be doing anything but speaking up right now.

But that’s exactly what he’s doing, isn’t it? And a little tender bloom unfurls in my chest as I realize just how nice it is of him to stick up for me.

I slide out from beneath Dr. Arment’s grip.

Dr. Arment frowns. “Who is this? Your bodyguard?”

“Yes,” I say with a smile.

“No,” Finn says with a frown at the same time.

“That’s just the Cat Man,” the receptionist chimes in, as though this answers everything.

Dr. Arment’s eyes shift from her, to Finn, to me. The varnish is wearing off that easygoing smile of his, and with each passing second I’m getting confirmation that my gut reaction was right. He’s starting to give off the vibe of the kind of man who goes to country clubs and laughs really loud as he buys everyone martinis, and then ten years later appears on the front page for money laundering.

“There’s no problem here,” Dr. Arment says, more to Finn than to me. He squints at the other people waiting along the wall as though trying to spot additional security detail.

How humorous.

He really does think Finn is my bodyguard. This thin, bookish, curly-haired man with glasses and two cats who looks like he’s never thrown a punch in his life.

“There wouldn’t have been,” Finn replies, “if you’d have just let her drop off her beast of a dog instead of getting handsy.”

Well. That’s a bit harsh, but his heart’s in the right place.

I go to rub the top of Bernie’s head, but he’s dropped off to inspect the cage of cats. Then gnaw on the cage while the cats meow furiously.

Oops. I yank him back.

“I was reaching for the leash, young man,” Dr. Arment snaps, his voice rising. “And it was merely a friendly gesture.”

“A clearly unwanted gesture.” Finn levels his gaze. “Particularly with her.”

“I’m friendly with everyone,” he says, waving his arm around the room. “And your sensitivities have no right to bear down on the freedom of my expression. And who I am.”

“Funny, I’ve been a customer for years, and you’ve never tried to grope me.”

And that is how, fifteen minutes of heated debate later, including one rather long argument over exactly who first said, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins,” I find myself on the sidewalk outside Jones Animal Clinic with two dogs, two cats, and one very irritated Finn Masters.

Chapter 7

Finn

“Unbelievable.”

“You say that a lot, I’m noticing,” Lavender says, tilting her head with that horrible smile of hers.

There is—and I can’t emphasize this enough—absolutely nothing amusing about this moment.

“It’s happening,” I mutter incredulously, while holding tight to the crate of cats and Miles at my side. My car is the last in a long, long row down the street, where I parked at approximately 6:30 a.m. for early drop-off on the way to work. Drop-off. The very standard and normal practice for Jones Animal Clinic, which caters to the busy lives of its LA clientele by offering before- and after-hours services. Six thirty. For a drop-off vaccination and grooming session that was supposed to take, and has taken many times in the past, a little over two minutes.

But what happened today?

Lavender Rhodes happened.