Up To No Good: Book 4 Georgie B. Goode Gypsy Caravan Cozy Mystery by Marg McAlister Page A

hand went to her mouth at the sight of him, and she started to get up, but Vincent, standing by casually with a rifle in his hand, shoved her back again.
    Jerry, restrained by two hundred pounds of muscle and steroids, couldn’t get to her. He grunted and looked wildly at Vincent.
    “Take off the tape,” Vincent said mildly. “He might be prepared to talk now.”
    Looking as though he enjoyed it, the gorilla ripped off the tape, taking hair and skin with it.
    “Now that I have something you want,” Vincent said, “do you think we might revisit those locations?”
    ~~~
    The moment she saw Jerry stumble into the room, Tammy was seized by two conflicting emotions: enormous relief because he was alive, and a quickly growing fury because of the way he’d been treated.
    Cold fury she could work with. It was an emotion she’d felt many times around her father and brothers. All at once, the fear was gone.
    After the first involuntary look of shock at seeing her, Jerry had schooled his face into an expression of mild indignation. “Since we’re being civilized, and you have enough firepower to start a war,” he said, “Can we ditch the cable ties?” He half-turned, offering his hands to his minder.
    All eyes were on Jerry, so Tammy took the opportunity to nudge Scott’s knee with hers. Without looking at her, he returned the pressure.
    On the other side of the room, Georgie and Layla were watching them.
    If a chance presented itself, they would take it. Vincent and the big guy he called Gary had taken possession of their rifles and the handguns, but Tammy still had a compact handgun attached to her ankle. They had taken the stun gun from Scott, unfortunately, but he could still fight.
    She just hoped that Layla and Georgie were concealing a weapon or two. Even a hairpin was better than nothing.
    All they needed was a chance.
    ~~~
    Standing beside Gary, Jerry was keeping his expression neutral while trying to figure out how he might get out of this. On the surface, it looked hopeless – but he’d talked his way out of tricky situations in the past. Not as tricky as this one, admittedly, but Jerry B. Goode wasn’t one to give up.
    “Cut the ties,” Vincent ordered. He raised the gun and squinted along his arm theatrically, using Jerry’s head as the target. “Good of your friends to donate some more weaponry to the cause. It’s loaded, by the way. I wouldn’t make any sudden moves.”
    “I don’t intend to,” Jerry said, unable to quell a flinch at the sight of the business end of a gun barrel pointed his way. He sighed with relief as his hands were cut free. “That’s better.”
    “You’d better believe one thing,” Vincent said, keeping the gun firmly on Jerry. “I’m not going to mess around. You know what I want. And—” he swung the gun around until it was aimed at Tammy, and then let it describe an arc that encompassed Georgie and Layla too, “—you know I’ll stop at nothing to get it. So, shall we start?”
    Now that Tammy was right where he could see her, Jerry figured that he had nothing to lose by telling him. “At my house.”
    “ Where at your house?”
    Here we go, Jerry thought. Time to see if he could turn the best-case scenario to his advantage. “Before I tell you,” he said, “let me ask you how big you want this to grow. Keep in mind that new preppers turn up or contact us every day. We’re selling bug-out vehicles of all sizes like there’s going to be an Apocalypse tomorrow. You want names, we’ve got them. Not just the ones I’ve got now , but all those in the future.” He rubbed his chin.
    Tammy, bless her heart, picked up on the cue right away. So she should; she was the one who had pointed out that she always knew when he was up to no good because of that very gesture. She pasted an appropriate expression of disdain on her face and butted in.
    “Jerry, no. It’s not right. They trust us. You can’t do a deal with this guy.”
    “If I don’t do a deal, Tams,