Generation V by M. L. Brennan Page A

entirely. By the time I’d reminded her about how I was owed one and got out the door, Matt was waiting by his car and, from the expression on his face, had just taken a big swig of his coffee.
    “I won’t feel bad if you dump it,” I said, shoving papers and files over so that I could get into the passenger seat. Matt drove an old Buick that was about the size of a boat, with beat-up leather seats and probably twelve different types of fungus brewing in the fast food graveyard that built up in the floor space of the backseat. Matt had an actual office that he shared with two Realtors and a home decorator, but no one would ever guess it from his car, which was loaded down with almost all his files and paperwork, making it basically his office on wheels.
    “I miss your job at the bakery,” Matt said. “The scones were fantastic.”
    “All the leftover Danishes weren’t enough of a trade-off for getting up at three a.m.” Two months on thatschedule had left me feeling more like a vampire than usual, and despite the perks, I’d quit. Regular exposure to sunshine was now one of my few job requirements.
    “God, and the cannoli,” Matt reminisced as he pulled into traffic. “I gained like ten pounds from that alone.”
    “Dude, where? Your arms?” Matt’s suits might look like he pulled them from Goodwill boxes, but he does serious lifting and cardio. I asked him about that once, and he said that sneaking around trailing people resulted in a lot of backyard encounters with dogs and irate boyfriends. “Anyway, what’s up with the developer? Cheating?”
    “The wife thinks so, and I’ve got about six more days on payroll just to be sure, but check this out.” Matt rooted around in a stack of file folders balanced precariously on his dash, and handed me one. Years of being handed innocuous folders just like this, however, had left me cautious.
    “What’s in here? I’m about to eat, you know.”
    “Nothing bad, just open it.”
    “There’s no sex-swing bullshit, is there? Because that’s what it was the last time you said ‘not bad.’”
    “No, no.”
    “No furries either. I had nightmares for a week.”
    “Jeez, you have no trust, Fort. Just open it.”
    I eased it open, ready to slam the folder shut again if it was something awful, then just stared.
    “That’s…um…”
    “Live-action role play, yeah. I got those photos two nights ago in the park.”
    “And your guy is…”
    “The one dressed up like the wizard.”
    I peered closer. Not really what middle-aged accountant-looking guys usually were up to in one of Matt’s folders. “What’s up with the tennis balls?”
    “He was yelling ‘lightning bolt, lightning bolt’ every time he threw one. It was frickin’ awesome.”
    “The wife has no idea he does this?”
    “Apparently not. She was sure he was doing his secretary. Guess cheating comes in many forms, and not just drunk sorority girls or people dressed up like teddy bears.”
    I gagged a little. “Please don’t mention the furries.”
    Matt just chuckled, then flipped on his turn signal. We pulled into the lot of one of those great corner greasy spoon diners where the parking spots are still sized for finned Chevys from the ’sixties and the waitresses all look like they miss the days where they could work with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of their mouths. I raised my eyebrows when Matt snagged another file from the dash pile.
    “Is this a working lunch, Matt?” I asked. I’ve posed as Matt’s son, nephew, employee, coworker, and, on one never-to-be-discussed-again occasion, boyfriend. I guess that one of the drawbacks of knowing a private detective is that he’s almost never fully off the clock, and a lot of what he does involves subterfuge. Matt’s dating life was pretty much a wasteland, so whenever he needed a second person on a job, I tended to be tapped.
    “No, the owner is a client. I just have to drop off some updates. Grab a booth. This won’t take