ALICE Ch 382

Riley envies the relative ease and simplicity of Adella’s bold, red jumpsuit. It’s so effortlessly glamorous, especially when Adella puts her hair up with a floral clip. Adella is already put together. Riley’s too vain to mimic her wife’s style.

The bathroom is crowded with three. Riley and Annette share the sink while Adella leans against the door with her arms crossed. As Riley tries to get her chest situated in her little black Gaala dress, Annette applies her mascara.

“Adella, your job’s the hardest,” Annette says for the tenth time.

“No. It isn’t,” Adella replies, but with none of her usual smugness.

Riley’s doing her best to ignore it. She’s only seen Adella truly upset a few times, and only really scared once. Adella is nervous, and anything that can make Adella nervous instantly triples Riley’s already considerable anxiety.

“You have to be ready to move as quickly as you promised,” Adella tells Annette. The look on her face isn’t pretty.

“Adella, I might not have a crime boss for a dad, but even I know how fast we have to move,” Annette replies. “Riley distracts the guards. Adella gets the room key. Pass that to me. I get the laptop. We’re out of the country before they know it’s gone. My people will have it cracked in hours, and we’ll have her by the balls. Then we can cut a deal to find out where Bea is.”

“Or we’re in a Japanese prison,” Riley says in a singsong voice. “Which I assume is very nice, but also very small. Too small for Adella.”

“My father can get me out.”

“Mine… can’t,” Riley says with a little hiss through her teeth.

“Adella, Bea could have been wrong,” Annette says as she puts on her earrings. “Maybe she isn’t just the front. Maybe she’s brought all these people here because she wants to meet with them. If that’s how it is, how are you going to get to her? I know you can do it, but choosing your moment could be hard. You need to coordinate with me. If you can’t get to her, we find a way to lure her out. Nobody moves until I signal.”

“Well, everything I know about plans like this, I learned from movies,” Riley says, pushing her boobs up. “And I know that it’s always better for capers if you get the old crew together. But we didn’t do that. We skipped a critical step of getting the old crew together. I feel like that’s a mistake.”

“We are the old crew,” Annette tells her.

“I’m just saying, I’d feel better with the crew of people that we collected in a montage with funky music backing us up. The three of us aren’t exactly Seal Team 6, Annette. More like Gerbil Team 3. I mean, Adella’s kind of a badger, but you and me? We’re chinchillas at best.”

“Can’t risk the others. Ingrid shouldn’t be involved. Julieta—does anyone actually know anything about her? And Aki, I don’t trust. She has connections to Japan’s version of your father,” Annette says to Adella. “Her taking this job doesn’t make any sense in the first place. She has her own agenda.”

Riley pouts. “So they just get the night off?”