Read Online You and I, Me and You by MaryJanice Davidson - Free Book Online

FBI.
    â€œBut everyone here has some kind of problem.” Dogged Emma Jan was still trying to defend her clinically insane colleagues to a rich white woman with a sharp knife. “Sure, it’s great to have a kleptomaniac and a schizophrenic in the mix, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good.”
    â€œExactly their point,” she replied dryly. “Thus, farewell funding.”
    â€œAnything sounds bad when you put it like that,” George muttered. I was not sure why he was annoyed; of all of us, he was the most easily employed somewhere else. His sociopathy held him back in several areas, but earning a living was not one of them. As Patton was a great wartime general, McCarthy a fervid Communist hunter, Dick Cheney a terrific document hider, and Henry VIII an efficient sacker of monasteries, so George Pinkman would be a wonderful salesman/enforcer/sex puppet/hit man. The world was made for people like my partner (as well as the gentlemen mentioned above).
    â€œI can’t— I don’t— What are we supposed to do?”
    â€œWorking on it.” The terse sentence was nearly drowned out by renewed chopping.
    â€œThe others are gonna freak,” George predicted (correctly, I suspected).
    â€œTo put it mildly, which is why I’m telling you first. The Three Doltkateers. You’re going to help me help them with the transition.”
    Again, we traded glances, and, again, George said what we were thinking: “Michaela, if your plan is all about how the three of us are gonna ease a transition, any transition, for a bunch of neurotic, armed, medicated nutbags, it’s pretty much doomed to fail, and everyone in this kitchen is probably gonna die screaming.”
    â€œOn the surface, nothing has changed. We’re still working.” Michaela had moved on to zucchini. “People will still come to the office; we will still work. We will still investigate evildoers and complete our time sheets on time. We’ll still do computer forensics and stomp government corruption. We will continue finding and spanking predators of all sorts, rooting out hostile intelligent ops, and stomping Internet fraud. Need I remind you that the country knows there is no Malaysian prince bestowing millions thanks to BOFFO? So, again: nothing has changed.”
    â€œWith no funding.”
    â€œLet me worry about that. Oh—one thing has changed. Effective right this second, I’m killing the Secret Santa Program.”
    â€œAw.” George pouted. He’d been planning to torture Emma Jan with a hundred compact mirrors hidden all around her work space and possibly her car and home. So at last, good news.
    â€œI’ll ponder the funding. Your job is to worry about your colleagues.”
    â€œUm,” the sociopath began.
    â€œConsider your next remark carefully, Pinkman.” Whud. Whud. Whud-whud-whud.
    â€œCan’t wait to help the team with this nifty transition,” he finished in a high, giddy voice.
    I laughed in spite of myself.
    â€œStart with Paul.”
    The three of us groaned in pained unison.
    â€œHe’ll take it better from you, especially if there’s a plan B.” In response to my raised eyebrows, she snapped, “I’m working on it.”
    â€œI feel safer already,” George remarked to the rising pile of slashed zucchini.
    â€œIncomprehensibly, Paul likes you—all three of the Jones girls.” Michaela pointed at me with her knife. “And you, and you.” She pointed at Emma Jan and George. “He enjoyed working with you on JBJ. Well, enjoyed might not be the correct term. Implementing his new software to help you toss a net over JBJ was something Paul hated less than most of the things he hates.”
    George mimed wiping away a tear. “Aw. That makes up for everything.”
    I could understand her concern, though. Paul was special—even for BOFFO. He was Michaela’s special