ALICE Ch 369

“Jesus Christ! Have you got this poor woman killed?” Glynda rages.

“Lower your voice,” Adella tells her, and Glynda’s eyes flash. Adella’s hardly being rude, but Glynda is unaccustomed to being spoken to that sort of calm authority. It doesn’t help that Adella is even taller than she is.

Glynda storms to the windows and closes the blinds, whirling on them. “This long and no word?”

Annette throws up her hands. “I don’t know. She seemed like kind of a tomcat party animal, you know?” She starts to pace. “Like a young Adella, no offense. For all I knew, she took a little unscheduled break with some gymnasts or something. How should I know? My background’s in genetic and chemical engineering. Am I supposed to know about private detectives and fixers?”

“You hired her!”

Annette takes a deep breath. “What do we do?”

Glynda grabs Annette by the collar and shakes her. “Do? They took my cars, took my driver, tried to kill my other driver—she made your fixer disappear. In case you haven’t noticed, you stupid cow, she’s beat seven bells out’ve us. You want to do something? Ask for forgiveness and pray she leaves it at this!”

“Whoa, whoa.” Riley pulls them apart and puts a comforting arm around Annette. “I don’t know what all that means, but this cannot be that big of a deal that we need to get this excited.”

“It is,” Adella says.

Riley looks up at her uncertainly. “It is?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, shit.”

Annette shakes her head. “It’s out of our hands. This is above our paygrade.”

“Who do you go to?” Glynda demands.

The blonde plops into a chair and hunches over. “Well, I don’t know. I didn’t hire her as an official with FUTA, I did it privately. God knows what’ll happen if I tell the board, and they aren’t going to help. I’ll get in trouble for nothing. I’m not afraid to take responsibility, but I want it to accomplish something.”

“We have to tell the cops,” Riley says.

Annette winces. “Which cops? I guess if they did something to her, they probably did it in Singapore. It’s been days. I don’t know what they’re going to do, and Irina’s here in Suzuka. I guess we could make something up to get Japanese authorities interested in her, but that honestly sounds like a terrible idea that will probably blow up in our faces.”

Riley isn’t having it. “We can’t just forget about Bea Ruiz. She’s a person. She might need help. We have to try to find her.” She turns on Adella, who raises an eyebrow.

“Do we?”

“Yes,” Riley growls, glaring at her.

Annette sighs deeply. “Yeah, OK, but how?”

Adella ignores her and takes Riley aside and speaks quietly. “This is a bad idea.”

“Idea? What idea? An idea’s what we need. I’ll totally take a bad one,” Riley replies.

“You know something?” Annette asks, looking hard at Adella.

Adella grimaces and straightens up. She folds her arms and sighs, glancing at her wife. Riley is expectant. Adella shakes her head and runs a hand through her hair. “You don’t know where Bea Ruiz is. But there is someone who probably does.”

“Who?” Glynda asks.

Adella shrugs. “Irina Orlova.”

Annette swallows. “Oh shit. I don’t like where this is going.”