“So we can’t even fix the buyer’s sex,” said Laurel bitterly. “Some manhunters we are.”
“What do we do now, report to the Master?”
“You report to the Master, Mac. What’s there to report? He’ll probably know all this before the day’s out, anyway. I’m going home. You want me to drop you?”
“You’ve got more sex appeal. I’ll stick with you.”
Young Macgowan stuck with Laurel for the remainder of the day; technically, in fact, until the early hours of the next, for it was five minutes past two when she climbed down the rope ladder from the tree house to the floodlit clearing. He leaped after her and encircled her neck with his arm all the way to her front door.
“Sex fiends,” he said cheerfully.
“You’re doing all right,” said Laurel, who felt black and blue; but then she put her mouth up to be kissed, and he kissed it, and that was a mistake because it took her another fifteen minutes to get rid of him.
Laurel waited behind the closed door ten minutes longer to be sure the coast was clear.
Then she slipped out of her house and down to the road.
She had her flashlight and the little automatic was in her coat pocket.