Chapter 7 #2
Ricardo frowned. How did someone with such mixed reviews manage to catch up with him and August? Especially so quickly?
And, he wondered yet again, how the fuck had their ratings come down while they’d been inactive?
He switched to his own profile and pulled up his reviews. There’d been a few he’d gone back to read sometimes because they were funny or they boosted his ego just right—don’t tell August—and one in particular had been favorited.
That one was gone.
Like… gone.
“What the fuck?” he muttered. He scrolled through reviews by date.
Yeah, he’d had a few less than perfect reviews.
Not every job went to plan, and some clients could be dicks, so of course he had some lower ratings here and there.
Nobody on the app had ever maintained a 5. 0 rating past their first ten jobs.
The shit reviews he remembered from before were present and accounted for. Multiple positive reviews were missing.
Fuck. So it wasn’t that someone was coming along and leaving trash ratings—the five-star reviews were disappearing. Meanwhile NightRaven’s overall rating was climbing even while the tone of his reviews was B- at best. The math, as August would say, wasn’t mathing.
Without a second thought, Ricardo called Heidi.
“You’re up early,” she grumbled when she answered, suggesting she hadn’t been up early and wasn’t pleased that he was calling her.
“I’m sorry,” he said with total honesty. “But have you noticed issues with RateYourHit lately?”
“Issues?” she croaked. “What kind of issues? Because I was just thinking of putting that hit out on you for waking me up. I didn’t actually do it.”
He chuckled, but only halfheartedly. “No, I mean the ratings. They’re all fucked up.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Ricardo.” Her voice held an icy edge of warning. “Did you just call me at”—she paused—“8:02 in the goddamned morning to talk to me about your rating?”
“Well, about the part where it’s been coming down. Fast.”
More silence. “What do you mean, ‘coming down’? You haven’t done a job in years. Unless you’ve been freelancing?”
“No,” he said quickly, because she probably would put out a hit on him for that. “Last night’s job was the first since we retired.” He paused. “And it didn’t go well.”
“So I heard.” She sighed, though it was more of an exhausted, exasperated groan. “Fuck’s sake.”
“We’ve had five-star reviews disappearing,” he said. “And there’s another hitman whose overall rating seems higher than it should be.”
“You’re still number one and number two. So… who cares?”
He pursed his lips. “Well, I would like to hold on to my number one spot, but also, doesn’t that sound like someone’s fucking with the system? And if they can get in and fuck with reviews and ratings, what else can they get into?”
Heidi exhaled hard. “Shit. Good point. I’m… Let me get in touch with someone at admin. It could be a glitch somewhere.”
“Doubt it,” he muttered.
“Such a pessimist.”
“So are you, especially when you’re awake this early.”
She grunted. “And yet you still wake me up.”
“Would it help if I said August and I want to do another job?”
He could almost hear her perking up. “Do you?”
“You think we want to retire on the note we left things on last night?”
“Hmm, fair point. Okay, let me look around. I’ll find you a good one.”
“Thanks, Heidi.”
Spending most of the day shopping with August was both a success and a disaster.
On one hand, it calmed August down over the RateYourHit debacle, and it gave him something to do while they wanted for Heidi to get back to them.
On the other…
“Holy fuck.” August grimaced as he slipped off his shoes in their hotel room. “Why is there always so much… walking?”
“No one forced you to go to all of those stores.”
August flipped him off. “When are you going to start letting me ride around on your back? You should be carrying me like Luke Skywalker carried Yoda.”
Ricardo rolled his eyes as he collected August’s thick socks from a drawer. “Yoda was two feet tall and Luke didn’t have a fucked-up back.”
“Since when do you have a fucked-up back?”
“I will if I have to carry you around like a damn monkey.” Ricardo knelt in front of him. “Give me your foot.”
August made a bitchy sound and thrust a foot at Ricardo.
As Ricardo swapped out the supportive dress socks for the “I’m resting at home and going absolutely nowhere for the rest of the night” socks, August said, “You could pull me around in a little cart.” He smirked, obviously warming up to the idea.
“We haven’t done any pony play! It would spice things up! ”
Ricardo sighed and switched to August’s other foot. “The only way we’re doing any of that is if you’re wearing the bit so it’ll shut you up.”
August shrugged. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, baby.”
“If you’re wearing the bit, you’re pulling the cart.”
“For fuck’s sake. It’s like you think rules aren’t made to be… gently massaged into completely different shapes for my amusement and convenience.”
“No cart.”
“Ugh. You are such a buzzkill.”
Ricardo finished putting the second sock in place, then sat back on his heels and eyed his smartass of a husband. “Alternatively, we could try puppy play.”
August’s eyebrows climbed and his spine straightened, interest clearly sparking in his eyes. “Go on.”
Ricardo grinned. “I put you on a leash. And you crawl around on your hands and knees. Then you can do all of that”—he gestured at the mountain of shopping bags—“without taxing your feet.”