"You were awfully quiet last night."

"Hmm?" Shakira flicked a distracted glance at Otto as she waited for the traffic light to turn green.

"When we went for that walk last night, you didn't say much. And you're still kinda quiet."

"Sorry. Got a lot on my mind." She continued staring straight ahead. When the traffic light turned green, she eased her Humvee forward.

Uh-oh. "The conversation we had before we left bothered you that much?"

She sighed. "It was a bit much, even compared to a typical conversation with you."

"Sorry." He stared out at the traffic ahead and shrugged. "I just found those drawings and thought they were funny and decided to comment on them. Y'know, the same kind of thing we do on our podcasts."

"Well, some of the drawings you told me about … I don't think my skin will ever stop crawling." She shook her head, slowed, and made a right turn. "Not only is that kind of thing sick and twisted, the people who drew them are using our likenesses without permission. And I'm gonna nail 'em for it."

"Okay, I can understand that. Hope they don't slip out of it by saying it's for satirical purposes."

"Oh, fantastic. You know, that'd be just my luck." The truck in front of them moved into the left lane and Shakira accelerated. "Finding out that people are discussing your sex life on message boards and drawing porny pictures of you … it doesn't bother you at all?"

"Most of it doesn't. Maybe it just means I'm getting inside people's heads." He smirked. "And as I said last night, I bring a lot of it on myself based on the things I talk about all the time. But really, there are so many sick and twisted people out there, a few online comments or drawings aren't gonna get under my skin. Like the case Kim's mother is working on, a guy who can apparently mind-control people into humping in front of him while he stands there and whacks off. Or the guys who sometimes get caught punchin' their munchkins in department store restrooms. Hell, the last time I used a public restroom, I found a cucumber on the floor. Make of that what you will."

"Cucumber?" Shakira shook her head. "No, never mind, I don't want that image in my brain."

"Anyway, on top of all this, there's any number of people who end up on the news because they did something fucked-up in public. Not to mention the customers Jack used to deliver to. We've both seen our share of them."

"Well, yeah, I guess. There was this thing on the news a few months ago about a couple who got caught doin' it in a dumpster."

"Seriously?" Otto raised an eyebrow. "How did I miss that one?”

"I dunno, but I wish I had. The icing on the cake, by the way, was that a cop was the one who caught them. He heard weird grunting and thumping sounds coming from the dumpster and thought it was a wounded animal. Imagine the look on his face when he lifted the lid."

"Eww. How could anybody even …?" He twisted his face up and shuddered. "In garbage juice!"

Shakira clamped a hand over her mouth and grunted something that sounded like, "Hurrrk!"

"Anyway, that's exactly what I'm talking about -- there's a lot of fuckedupness out there. You just need to get some perspective."

"Well, sure, but the stuff you were commenting on last night is gonna make people think we really are humping it out and I could be arrested just on suspicion. At best, people will start to think I have a Shōtarō complex." She sighed. "In fact, just hanging out with you might be enough for someone to dump a whole lot of trouble on my doorstep."

Oh, hell. He dreaded asking the question but went ahead with it anyway. "Then why …?"

"Why keep hanging around you? I ask myself the same thing all the time." She shrugged. "I don't know, you're a fun guy to spend time with. But now that we've got thousands of people watching us while we're in that house, we should be more careful."

Fair enough. "Okay, I'll try to control myself." He chuckled. "Not easy, what with the teenage hormones raging and being around such a beautiful woman."

She arched an eyebrow and he held his hands up.

"I'm just sayin'." He sighed and rubbed his right hand over the bald portion of his head, found a piece of pillow lint stuck to the slight stubble, and brushed it off. Time to shave again. "I don't know what got into me last night. Lack of sleep eroding my impulse control, maybe."

"Still having those nightmares?"

Ugh. Not that I want to talk about it, but … "Yeah. They're getting worse. Weirder and scarier."

She gave him a concerned look, faced forward again, and slowed. "Feel like talking about it?"

"I only remember fragments. Most of it is flashes of me running from something or being attacked by something. The worst thing about it is that it always feels like I'm remembering something that actually happened. But it couldn't be real." He let a quick breath out and shrugged. "Anyway, I can get by on four or five hours of sleep each night, but it has to be in solid blocks. Waking up every half hour must be making me a little doofy. But as I said, I'll try to control myself."

"I'd appreciate that."

He smiled. A moment later, he said, "That line about the microwaved peanut butter was pretty funny, though, right?"

She snort-laughed. "Okay, I'll give you that. Even though it put an image in my head that will haunt me for the rest of my goddamn life."

He grinned. "Well, I'm sure Dale has fucked worse things."

"Oh, Jesus." Shakira laughed again. "Of that, I have no doubt."

"Maybe that's why we found his truck sitting on the lawn this morning. Maybe the constant burning sensations distracted him when he was trying to park."

She let out a guffaw and shook her head. "I haven't seen him with anyone that hideous."

"Okay, maybe I'm just taking cheap shots at him because he insulted you last night."

"Well, I do appreciate your standing up for me. That was really sweet. In your own, warped way." She grinned.

"Glad to be of service." He grinned right back. Now that's more like it.

She flipped on the left turn signal and waited for a break in the traffic. A moment later, she turned the corner and groaned. "Ah, hell."

Otto glanced at her and looked straight ahead. One of their favorite coffee houses was on the next corner. And so were three large vans with media logos on their sides, parked across the street from the coffee place.

"Marvelous. Someone must've followed us from the house recently."