Chapter Seventeen #3
“Sundance is a very beautiful man, don’t you agree?” she said to Cassidy while they ate lunch.
The Mexicans’ silent protest was to cook eggs, beans, and tortillas for every meal, and scorch the edges a little.
She patted Cassidy’s arm and fluttered her eyelashes at him. “I’m sure you were equally handsome when you were young and physically fit.”
Cassidy looked uncertain as to whether he’d been insulted or slapped with the truth as viewed by a young, beautiful woman, but insult appeared to be winning.
Jayce dropped his eyes to his plate and shoveled food in his mouth. He wasn’t dumb enough to get involved in this conversation. If he tried to stop her, she’d only get worse.
“I dunno about that,” one of the fake Mexicans said, because none of them liked Cassidy and they all loved egging her on. “Sundance is pretty mucho beautiful, but it would take a lot more than average physical fitness to match his stamina.”
“That’s true,” Malika said cheerfully. “His stamina would also have to match mine.”
Jayce choked on a burnt tortilla crust. A Mexican thumped him on the back until his eyes watered.
“My stamina is perfectly fine,” Cassidy said, ice in his tone.
Before the Mexicans could wind him up further, a small figure burst out of the trees.
“Hi, Momma,” Linda called out to Malika.
“Darling,” Malika said. She held out her arms. “Come meet Mr. Cassidy and his friends.”
Jayce began to understand why Malika had been so thrilled to be kidnapped. It wasn’t about him or his magnificence at all. She’d come to the boardinghouse looking for him because she’d wanted a front row seat at the new adventure, and he’d fallen for it because she’d offered him sex.
He ran the possibilities for her wanting to antagonize the new client through in his head. He narrowed them down, then fit the timeframes together. And concluded he wasn’t just dumb—he was colossally stupid. In epic proportions.
Why hadn’t she told him who Cassidy was?
The answer to that was also blinding clear. She hadn’t believed she could trust him. She thought a seven-year-old made a better ally than he would.
She’d made a good call. Linda was the daughter of two theater majors. She knew how to perform. She was also an expert at figuring out what a person’s weaknesses were and zeroing in on them with laser precision.
She went straight from hugging her pretend mother to planting herself on Cassidy’s lap.
“Hi, Santa Claus. My name’s Linda. Why aren’t you at the North Pole? Where are your reindeer?”
He’d developed a white scruff of stubble on his unshaven chin. That was the only resemblance to Santa Claus Jayce could discern.
Cassidy, to his credit, had no obvious objection to children. He was also nobody’s fool. He took in Linda’s blond hair and blue eyes.
“This child is your daughter?” he said to Malika, who did not have blond hair and blue eyes, and likely possessed none in her gene pool for her to pass on.
“She’s the daughter of my best friend, who died giving birth in one of the brothels where we both worked. I adopted her,” Malika said smoothly, with more batting of eyelashes. “I love children.”
Wait until Grady learned of the new plot twist that his daughter helped introduce to the script.
Better yet, wait until Benny caught wind of it.
Jayce might not take the whole blame for losing twenty-five million dollars.
Twenty-six million, if the Butch Cassidy storyline continued its current southern spiral.
“Sundance loves children too,” Malika added. “Don’t you, Sundance?”
Jayce smiled at Linda, who beamed back. “I surely do,” he said, because who could resist that sweet little face. “Especially this little sweetheart. She and I are best buddies.”
“I was going to marry Sundance when I grow up,” Linda informed Cassidy, “but now I’m going to be ruined, like Malika. She says it’s better than marrying an old man, and Sundance will be almost as old as you are by the time I’m a grown-up.”
The Mexicans were having a hard time keeping straight faces.
“Do you know what would be fun?” Malika said to Linda, who remained parked on Cassidy’s lap and looked well settled in.
“We could pick serviceberries this afternoon. Would you like to pick serviceberries with us, Mr. Cassidy? Oh, but we’d need someone to spot bears for us.
You’ll come along, too, Sundance, won’t you? ” Her eyes beseeched him.
Heck, yes, he was coming. He didn’t dare miss this.
He was going to die in the bank robbery anyway, and twenty-six million dollars was already swirling the drain.
The only thing he had left to lose was Malika, and she was taking care to make sure that didn’t happen.
She might not trust him as much as she should, but his faith in her ability to cause chaos was unwavering.
“I’d be happy to join you,” he said.
The Mexicans didn’t plan on missing it, either.
“Let’s all pick serviceberries,” Dave said, showing more enthusiasm for Butch Cassidy’s adventure than he had so far. “Esto será divertido.”
Yes. It was going to be fun.
Maybe more so for some.