Read Online Green-Eyed Monster by Gill McKnight - Free Book Online

pretend gun, and anyway, you hit me with it. Hard. And the bomb was a vibrator. And I don’t even have a cellar. It was a garage.”
    “You raped me.”
    Silence, then, “I never.” Mickey’s eyes darkened with distress.
    “I never Gin—Vict—I never. Don’t say that,” she finished softly, hurt and shame pulsing from her face in waves of scarlet.
    Victoria shifted uncomfortably. Her accusation didn’t fit well with her either. But she would never admit that to Mickey.
    “Well, I was blindfolded and tied up and…” she muttered, feeling suddenly very cheap and dishonest.
    Mickey sighed. “How do you know she took your money?  Did you check online?”
    “No, I sent a carrier pigeon to my bank manager. Of course I checked online. I wanted to know why she was ignoring your pathetic bleats for money. And now I do. The bitch took the opportunity to clean me out while you had me conveniently tucked out of the way.”
    As Mickey wisely digested this in silence, Victoria continued vehemently, “And the real charm is she’ll tell the authorities she took it all to pay the ransom demands you so kindly supplied. Not that you’ll see a penny of it.”
    “And she’s cleared all the money out of your bank accounts?” Mickey seemed stuck in a perpetual loop at Ginette’s blatant abuse of kidnapping rules. Victoria glared and waited for Mickey to catch up.
    “The bitch.” Finally, Mickey managed to break out of her circling pattern with suitable outrage. “We’ve gotta stop her!”
    “And how do we do that, Daisy Duke, when you have us stuck out here in the rectum of Moonshine County? The money is already gone. Besides, some of the accounts she’s plundered…  well, I can’t exactly go to the police, let’s put it that way.” Victoria sighed bitterly. “She knows exactly what she’s doing, taking advantage of my absence to get away with millions.”
    “Millions?” Mickey squeaked. “We’ve got to trace it. She has to put it somewhere traceable. I mean, it sure ain’t in the glove compartment of her car!”
    “The whole idea is that it can’t be traced. The accounts she’s tampering with belong to intermediary organizations. Shell companies I created to hold my…bonuses.”
    “You mean offshore laundering accounts.” Mickey had her voice back under control. “Somewhere FinCEN can’t find it, right?” Victoria winced at the mention of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, as if she had heard the most disgusting expletive ever.  Another upset immediately surfaced. Something Mickey had mentioned earlier came back into Victoria’s mind with a vengeance. “Hey. What do you mean, you didn’t drug me?”
    “I mean I didn’t drug you. You were drunk on the kitchen floor. That’s why I thought you were Ginette.” Victoria frowned. It was true Ginette could be a real boozer when the mood took.
    “For your information, I was most definitely drugged. Are you trying to tell me you just happened along, presumed I was my lush of an ex, picked me up, and brought me here? Charming. I suppose that’s the only way you can get women into this hovel.”
    “What do you mean?” Mickey asked hotly.
    “I mean I’ve been looking around while you were snoring.  This shack is in the middle of hillbilly country. There’s probably not a sane person between here and the nearest fishing hole, gator farm, or trailer park.”
    “It’s picturesque,” Mickey said.
    “It’s Redneck Central is what it is. You sit here all day long, dreaming of big money, playing with your computer… and your vibrator.” Mickey’s face flamed. Victoria switched straight into business mode now that she had suitably unsettled her adversary.
    “Why did you want to kidnap Ginette in the first place? What has any of it to do with intellectual copyright?”
    “You stole my idea.”
    “Your idea? You’re a software engineer, so I stole your code, right? Did I do this as your employer, or did I climb in through your window