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your group
.
    Right. She needed people. Since it was August, not wintertime, her snowbirds were flung all over the country, but she could get to Mitzi—and Mitzi was really the best person, given the situation.
    Roman inhaled, preparing to speak, but Ashley cut him off. “And I want you to drive me.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You need to evacuate me.”
    The plan took shape even as she spoke.
Mitzi
. Of course. One of her grandmother’s closest friends and a born schemer, Mitzi would know what to do. She would tell Ashley how to save Sunnyvale, and if Ashley brought Roman to her—well, that would be perfect. Ashley would have time to get to know him in the car. She’d discover his weaknesses. Figure out his tells. And then when she turned him over to Mitzi—
    Mitzi would fix this.
    “You have to give me a ride.”
To Georgia
. “To the house of a friend of mine, because I need somewhere to stay.”
And she’ll know how to cut you off at the knees
. “And you have to swear not to knock Sunnyvale down.”
Until I’ve had time to figure out how to rescue it
. “And you have to give me a chance.”
To bluster and flail wildly until you’re so distracted by my incompetence, you don’t know what hit you when Mitzi tells me how to deliver the knockout punch
.
    “What kind of chance?”
    “To explain. In the car. A fair hearing.”
    “What constitutes a fair hearing?”
    “When I talk, you listen. When I ask you a question, you answer it. Same goes for me. And nobody lies.”
    “If I do all this—give you my word that I will evacuate you to your friend’s house—”
    “With my belongings,” she interrupted.
    The eyebrow lifted.
    She tried to look innocent. “I need some clothes to change into. And a few incidentals.”
    “—that I will evacuate you to your friend’s house
with your belongings
, and that I won’t give the demolition order until we’ve had a chance to regroup—”
    “Or allow anyone else to demolish it.”
    “I don’t allow anyone to demolish my properties but me.”
    “What about Noah?”
    “He works for me. I supervise.”
    “You’re a bit of a control freak, aren’t you?”
    His nostrils flared, just for a microsecond.
    Ha! Victory. She was getting on his nerves.
    “If I commit to all of that, you’ll unlock yourself and come away from here. And you’ll agree not to speak with the press about any of what’s happened.”
    “I won’t call any journalists during our regrouping period,” she said. “After that, all bets are off.”
    A stiff nod. “I accept. You have my word.”
    “Cool.”
    He crossed his arms. The rain had turned his shirt black except for a dry red strip beneath his armpits. It stuck to his shoulders and stomach, displaying the outline of each pectoral muscle and the hard, round shapes of his deltoids.
    More than excellently proportioned. He was some sort of Latino Canadian god.
    But with that blank expression, he didn’t look quite
real
. They were Ken-doll muscles. Injection-molded PVC.
    Not her type. Not even a little bit.
    “Turn around,” she said.
    “Why?”
    “I have to fish the key out of my butt crack, and I don’t want you to watch.”
    She looked for a fissure in his Ken-doll perfection, but he gave her nothing. He stood up and turned around.
    She felt triumphant. They were leaving, but on
her
terms. He’d given his word, so he had to take her to Mitzi now, and Ashley would have two days to bait him and sweet-talk him and argue with him on the way there—whatever it took to figure out where he was weakest so shecould give Mitzi the ammunition necessary to crack this man wide open.
    He couldn’t be hollow inside. There was a beating heart in there somewhere. Blood and hidden organs. Mitzi would know which one to step on, and then Ashley would do it. She’d do whatever it took to get Sunnyvale back.
    But if she didn’t get it back …
    She couldn’t finish the thought. When she tried to flip the key around, she dropped it. Her