The Housewife Assassin's Killer App (19 page)

Fu Manchu glares at me. “What the hell? You put the game out to Betas—before one last QA run through?”

I bat my eyes at him as I hand him a cronut. “You can’t improve on perfection, can you?”
 

He stares down at it, but he ain’t biting. “Says who?” he growls.

I swipe the plate of butterscotch brownies out of Wise Ass’s paws and wave it in front of Fu Manchu’s nose with a smile. “Says the twenty-two hundred married women between the ages of twenty-five and forty who beta-tested it over the weekend, that’s who! Here are their comments.”
 

I text the
QofH
team a PDF and watch their faces as they scroll through the comments. With a four-point-seven rating out of five, and comments from all the players, most of the raves use exactly the words I’ve said.
 

“Isn’t it great?” I exclaim. “It’s everything we want it to be! It challenges. It fills players with fear, and dread—and hope. It’s got bad guys, and naughty men.” I wink at Roger, who preens at the thought that I think he’s anything but a creepy man-ho. “It excites, and makes women feel sexy. It is now the ultimate MMORPG for any woman. It’s realistic. It’s engaging. And most importantly, it’s addictive.”
 

Does Roger recognize his own bullshit? Hope not.
 

“Dude, the smartest thing you did was add an FPS component! Awesome!” Ichabod slaps him on the back.

“It’s like
La Femme Nikita
meets Betty Crocker,” Wise Ass chimes in.
 

“No, more like
Lara Croft
meets Donna Reed,” Bollywood counters, spewing chunky chocolate chips.

“Hey, I like the new name he put on the game—
The Housewife Assassin
,” Zhao says thoughtfully. “And it tested through the roof!”
 

Roger frowns at Fu Manchu. “You changed the name of the game? What the fuck, guy?”

Fu Manchu’s mouth is open wide, but nothing seems to come out. Finally, he stutters, “I-It fits the theme. You know, kick-ass woman.”

“In my office—
now
.”

There is one big problem with glass offices within a loft space:

No privacy.
 

Everyone can hear your rant and rave (Roger) at someone whose ego is just as inflated as yours (Fu Manchu). They can see you shake your fist (Roger) to no avail, as your opponent stubbornly folds his arms (Fu Manchu), or when your back is turned goes so far as to flip you a bird (Fu Manchu), not realizing that you can see him do so in the reflected glass.

Fu Manchu stalks out of Roger’s office, slamming the door behind him.

“Where the hell is he going?” Zhao muses out loud.

“Probably to rub one out,” Wise Ass snickers. “Hell, that’s what I’d be doing if I’d just got one over on Roger.”

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

He looks at me as if I’m a piece of dung clinging to his size-six flip-flops, all of which says a lot about him. (First, he has no sense of my worth; next, no one with visible toe fungus should be in flip-flops; and lastly, a man with small feet has a woman wondering about the size of his other appendages.) When he realizes I won’t melt under his withering gaze, he shrugs. “Fixing this piece of shit game was a real coup for us. Until we were all put on this project, we were currently unassigned.”

I shake my head. “What does that mean?”

Bollywood sighs. “It means, bimbo, that instead of putting us on projects that might burnish our resumes, Shazaaaam was riding out our contracts.”
 

“But, now that we may have a hit game on our hands, we be dah man!” Ichabod shouts.

“Don’t you mean, ‘we be dah men?’” I point out.

He doesn’t hear me. He’s too busy chest-bumping with the other guys.

“It doesn’t make sense. This was a suicide mission?” Emma murmurs into my ear bud.

“I guess so,” I whisper. “And because of us, these jerks live to play another day.”

“If you’re going to Wonder-Con, you’ve got to follow Fu Manchu and talk him into taking you.”

I shudder to think what that will take.

My best guess: more than what he presumes is a 32 C.

If I thought it would be easy to find Fu Manchu, I’m poorly mistaken. He’s not in any of the fun huts, and I’ve nearly covered all fifteen acres of ShazaaaamLand.

When I finally come across him, he’s high on the uppermost-level of the garage—the one that is closest to the glassed-in walkway going into the tower. He’s staring out at the structure. It’s hard not to, considering it looks like a living, breathing organism.

Or I should say organ?

He’s sitting on the hood of a Tesla. Despite the fact that it’s one of fifteen or so here, I don’t have to guess that it’s Roger’s.

When he finally hears my footsteps behind him, he turns his head just enough to see who it is. The most I earn is a frown.

He asks, “It was you, wasn’t it?” He sounds defeated.

“I don’t know what you’re asking.”

“You’re the one who fixed the bug, aren’t you?”

I take a moment before nodding. I’ve hit plenty of men when they’re down—but only if they’re trying to kill me. Ridicule, I usually take in stride. “I didn’t do it to embarrass you.”

He smirks as he crosses his arms at his chest. “Oh, no?”

“If I had, wouldn’t I let Roger and the others know about it?”

He knows I’ve got a point. He shrugs. “So, what do you want?”

“Wonder-Con. I want to be our game’s booth babe.”

“
Our
game?” A paper-thin smile rises on his lips. “You say that as if you truly had anything to do with it.”

“The numbers speak for themselves.” My tone is nonchalant. It is also deadly.
 

Obviously, he’s tone deaf, because he sneers, “And you think you can buy your way in with brownies?”
 

“I saved your ass. What more do you want?” Other than looking stupid for work, flip-flops are stupid for another reason—they make it so easy for an opponent to break your toes.
 

“I’ll tell you what I want.” The next thing I know, he’s grabbed me and slammed me up against the car.
 

I break his hold on me by grinding my stiletto into his foot. His howl echoes through the garage until I shut him up with a punch to the throat. As he gasps for air, I grab hold of his nutsack and twist it as hard as needed to get my point across. “So, what do you say, are we booth mates?”

He’s nodding so hard that the tears streaming down his face are staining the front of his vintage nineteen ninety-eight MacWorld Convention T-shirt.

“Go on and tell Roger the good news,” I whisper in his ear. “Oh, and congratulations! Looks like your game is going to be a really big hit.”

I leave him bent over and heaving. Time’s a’wasting. I’ve got to start work on an adorable
Housewife Assassin
costume.
 

But of course, it will be the chicest of geek couture.

“I hear you’ll be joining us in the booth.” Roger leans in so close to my ear that I almost bump heads with him as I turn to see who’s looking over my shoulder.
 

Thank goodness what he sees on my computer screen is innocent enough: I’m playing the game.
 

He grabs the closest toadstool chair and scoots it so close that we’re practically hip-to-hip. “We have a little tradition when we introduce a new game at Wonder-Con. The booth babe and I play a live version of the game.”

I clap my hands in mock anticipation. “Ooh! Sounds like fun!”
 

He smiles. “It gets better. The winner gets anything they want.”

Hmmm.
“So, like, if I want a month-long all-expenses-paid trip around the world on a Lear jet, it’s mine for the asking?”

He nods. “Sure, why not? Shazaaaam has its own Lear. It’s also got an open account with every hotel on the
Condé Nast
Traveler
Gold List. And we were one of the original investors in Uber, so you’d always have a limo at your disposal.”

“You’re telling me I can go away for a full month?”

“Don’t look so shocked. The last booth babe who won took a whole year off, with pay, and got double stock options too.”

Hell yeah!
 

To tamp down the glow in my eye, I lower my lashes and ask, “Lucky lady! Was she a recent winner?”

He laughs so hard that he almost falls off his toadstool. “Are you kidding? It was at least a decade ago! I’m always that good. Or they’re always that…
bad.”
 

His eyes roam over me, lingering on my lips. “How about you, Donna? Are you bad?”

Bad?
I am your worst nightmare.

“Why don’t we find out?” I suggest.
 

He swipes a screen on his iPad. “Just to be fair, I’ll give you everything you requested and sweeten the deal with a full one-year sabbatical. Sign here, on the company release form. Boilerplate stuff. You know, about holding harmless and indemnification. A mere formality.” He takes a stylus from his pocket and points to the last line.

One year’s pay. A trip around the world, all expenses paid…

I sign with a flourish.

Just then, I remember to ask, “And, if I lose?”

“You. At my beck and call. For a year.” I don’t like his leer.

My heart is pounding in my chest. “You mean, like your administrative assistant or something?”

He rolls his eyes. “That’s the last thing I mean. Sure, you’ll still be on payroll. But you’ll be serving me in a personal capacity, if you get my drift.” He winks knowingly. “Considering where you started, it’ll be a promotion.”

Um...
What the hell did I just sign?

“But…nonconsensual sex is employee harassment. It’s federal law!”

“What you just signed says that you’ve agreed to the terms and conditions set heretofore, and that any physical intimacy between the parties is consensual and, therefore, out of the jurisdiction of company policy and venue. Not only that, but reneging on said terms constitutes compensatory reparations equivalent to a cash payment of the loser’s prize.”

The equivalent of one year’s pay. A trip around the world, all expenses paid…

Acme will never cover it, and it will bankrupt my family.

I try not to hyperventilate. I mean, I’m not really Donna Gray, so none of this is applicable anyway.

“You seem a bit hesitant.” His pouty face is supposed to be his way of feigning sympathy. “Look, I never want it said that I forced you into this against your will. If you want, you can bow out of the bet right now.” He shrugs. “Of course, we’ll have to replace you in the booth. Can’t disappoint the fans, now can we?”
 

“No, of course not,” I murmur.

Remember, I practically wrote the game…

Well, okay, I didn’t write it. But it is based on me, and the writer is one of my besties…

He holds out his hand.
 

I shake it.

He stands up. “Oh, and to make things interesting, we’ll be playing the VR version—Rifting, as the case may be. Fun, huh? So glad it was programmed into the game, aren’t you? Not that any housewife will want to mess up her mascara with goggles. The Wonder-Con fans will love it, though.” He pats my head—for too long, and too longingly—before heading back to his office.

“Get home as soon as possible,” Emma insists. “I’ll test you with Rift so that you know the game, backward and forward.”
 

“I’m not you, Emma. There’s no way I can play as well as you.”
 

She laughs. “I’ve got a contingency plan for that,” she assures me.

I hope it includes enrollment in the U.S. Witness Protection Program.

In any case, I’m putting all my assets in Jack’s name, in case I have to declare bankruptcy.

Oh, hell, the house is not just in my name, but Carl’s too. If I lose it, it’s just what he’d need to declare me an unfit mother—betting a vacation against a year as a sex slave to a pervert.

Or I can just kill Roger.

Even Teslas can spin off the road, if a tire loses a bolt or two.
 

Or three.

A shame. It’s a beautiful car.