Page 17 of Without a Clue

He waits until I’m fully settled on the couch. Gives a look around as if expecting someone to be peeking out from behind the velvet curtains.

“Hugh,” I say, because honestly, it’s almost nine o’clock and everyone is waiting on us.

And he’s starting to creep me out.

Working for Hugh, for the record, is not like other PA jobs. Other PAs print off copies. I print off copies while testing out how many seconds it takes me to snap the bullets of a .44 Magnum into place as research for his new mystery (he realized early on I was a handy amateur in all things crime, making me the perfect test subject for most of the characters who had normal jobs and lives before randomly murdering someone in his books).

Other PAs bring coffee. I bring Hugh three cups of coffee with sedative in one to see if he can guess which one knocks him out. And then test exactly how long it took him to actually be knocked out (oh, the pizza delivery guy who walked in on that one).

I keep him to his calendar. I remind him of deadlines and then drag him away from fun to lock him in his room to hit those deadlines. (Literally. His request.)

I pull the bayonet out of his sleeping hand and bring him his pills in the morning to keep his blood pressure down.

I am, essentially, the mother of an eccentric seventy-five-year-old author.

And now he needs reining in.

“We at least have to message them—” I begin, still thinking about how to salvage the event we’re late for.

“I have reason to believe someone is trying to murder me. And it’s one of The Seven.”

I pause from reaching into my pocket for my phone. Squint at him.

“Hugh,” I say again. “Come on. What’s this really about?”

“I’m serious, Pip. I think my life is really and truly in danger.”

The idea is so preposterous, so out of nowhere, that I laugh.

And yet he doesn’t chime in, and after a few seconds, my laugh dies out.

“You can’t be serious,” I say.

He brushes a hand over his face, looking away to the left, somewhere in the distance. “I am,” he says, more to the drapes than to me. “Incredible to believe, but I am.”

I sit back, leaning against the upholstered pinches in the couch. Cock my head. Sit in silence for some moments.

“No,” I say at last.

Can’t be.

Not them.

“You have been working too hard, Hugh,” I continue. “That’s my fault a bit. I haven’t been as attentive the past couple weeks, and you’ve gone . . .”

Mad is the word I want to say.

Manic.

Because that’s another thing with Hugh. I learned early on that part of my job is to keep him from spending both too little and too much time writing. It’s a thin line to balance and a long fall on either side if he missteps—and with Hugh, he tends to fall off the line every time without me.

Too little writing and pushing too far past the deadlines and the publishers come threatening.

Too much writing and escaping into his little office hole and he forgets to eat, sleep, bathe, and comes up with the most insane conclusions and ideas.

And the past six weeks, well, I’ve been chasing a rabbit down my own little rabbit hole.

I reach forward. Pat his knee and move to standing. “Come on. Let’s do this recap and go straight to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning—”