Bored out of my mind, I glanced at my watch. It was ten thirty in the morning, an hour and a half into the show, and I’d gotten a meager fifteen signatures for my petition. Tara was absolutely right: I had to do better than that if I hoped to have any leverage at all when I went to court to ask for an injunction against Uniworld.
More people were coming up the aisle, so I rose to deliver my jelly bean pitch. As I stepped out from behind the booth, I caught sight of a lean, so-blond-he-was-almost-albino guy watching me from across the way. In his mid-thirties, he had a clean-cut Scandinavian look about him and was dressed as though he’d just stepped out of an IKEA ad. A decent-looking guy, I decided, until his hostile gaze met mine. Did he have a problem with me?
I smiled, hoping to disarm him, but it didn’t work, so I turned my back on him and began coaxing people to sign the petition. After collecting a few more signatures, I returned to my seat beside Tara and tried to pretend I wasn’t aware that the guy was still watching.
“Spook Face over there is weirding me out,” Tara whispered.
“Ignore him. He’ll go away sooner or later.”
“Um, Aunt Abby?” She nodded in the man’s direction.
Crap. He was heading toward us, sidestepping browsers with the easy stealth of a leopard.
“Call Special Ops Salvare,” Tara whispered frantically. “We need backup.”
I shushed her as the man approached. He picked up a cow photo for a closer look, put it down, then bent over the clipboard, running his finger down the list of names. Tara nudged me just as the man straightened, pinning me with his ice blue gaze.
“Good morning,” he said in a smooth voice that registered a Germanic background. “I’m curious about this petition you have here.”
My inner antennae quivered a warning. Something about him set my teeth on edge. “I’m collecting signatures to halt Uniworld’s-”
“Stop, please,” he said at once. “You misunderstand. I’m curious as to what your petition is doing
I decided to play it cool, find out whom I was dealing with before I went on the defensive. “Okay. First of all, let me introduce myself. I’m Abby-”
“Yes, I know who you are, Ms. Knight.”
He knew who I was? My inner antennae were vibrating like crazy now. Trying not to appear nervous, I pasted a smile on my face. “How do you know me?”
“Your name is on the sign taped to your table.”
Oh, right.
“I’m Nils Raand,” he said curtly, “the local representative of Uniworld Food Corporation.”
No wonder he was hostile. “Then I don’t need to explain my petition, because you already know about your company’s criminal treatment of their animals.”
“Excuse me, Ms. Knight, but I must lodge a protest. We do nothing criminal to our animals. Everything is FDA approved. Check your facts before making false accusations.”
I jabbed a finger at one of the photos. “So you’re defending the practice of injecting cows with hormones to increase milk production, regardless of the cost to animal or human life?”
His gaze didn’t move from my face, but I could see the tensing of his jaw, even though his tone remained eerily calm. “I did not come here to debate the issue with you. I came to ask you to put away the petition.”
I folded my arms. “Well, I’m not going to do that.”
Raand stared unblinking, as though he was trying to figure me out. “As you wish,” he said at last, “but consider yourself warned.”
“Warned? What is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged, as though to say
“You can’t sue me,” I called. “What I’m doing is guaranteed by my First Amendment rights.”
He didn’t look back.
I pressed my lips together and glared a hole in the back of his crisply ironed shirt. I hated bullies, and Nils Raand was nothing more than a bully in chic clothing. Too bad for Nils, bullies didn’t scare me.
CHAPTER TWO
With a huff, I turned toward my niece. “Do you believe that guy? What a jerk.”
“Totally. But you were awesome, Aunt Abby. Way to tell him off.”
“Thank you, Tara.” At times like that, I was almost glad I’d suffered through nine hellish months of law school. If only it hadn’t ended by my being booted out.
To show that Nils Raand’s threats hadn’t bothered me in the least, I picked up the clipboard and the candy bowl and went back to the aisle to round up more signers. A half hour later, I proudly displayed my petition to my niece. “Twenty-five new signatures. Not bad, huh?”
Tara glanced up from her cell phone and gave me an impish smile. “I’ll bet I can get twenty-five more.”
“You’re on.”
“Okay, and in return you’ll buy me a Barrow Boys T-shirt before the concert?”
“You got it.”
Tara grabbed the clipboard and stood in the center of the aisle, calling, “Heart-shaped red jelly beans! The best jelly beans in the world, right here at Bloomers-booth six, aisle one-and they’re totally free. Sign the petition and get your… Uh-oh.”
At the sight of a pair of stocky security guards striding toward us, Tara scooted around the table and got behind me. The guards wore black baseball caps, dark gray pants, thick black belts, and light gray shirts with patches on their shoulders that said SECURITY. They stood directly in front of me, shoulder to massive shoulder, looking as large and threatening as a pair of rabid rhinos. I was surprised they weren’t smacking the palms of their hands with nightsticks.
More bullies. Great. My day was complete.
One guard placed his huge paws on the table and leaned toward me, nodding at my clipboard. “Looks like you got a petition there. That what it is? A petition?”
Stupid questions deserved smart-ass replies. “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”
“You want to hand it over?” He hitched his belt up over his belly and glanced around as though looking for an audience-or making sure there were no witnesses.
I pulled the clipboard toward me. “No.”
“You tell them, Aunt Abby,” Tara said, still crouching behind me.
“Know who sponsors this here Home and Garden Show?” the second guard asked, dipping a meaty fist into the candy bowl and fishing out a handful of packages.
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Who?” Clearly he thought he had the upper hand.
“Why? Don’t you know?”
Behind me, Tara snickered.
The guard’s chipmunk cheeks reddened with embarrassment. He straightened and looked around at the other booths, a thumb hooked in his belt about where a gun holster would rest. “Seems like this little lady don’t want to cooperate.”
The first guard, taking the same stance, also glanced around. “Seems like it to me, too. Seems like her lack of cooperation could cause a problem here.”
“I was thinking that very thing myself,” his partner answered, speaking to the ceiling.
Realizing their conversation wasn’t going to get any deeper, I waited until their gazes drifted back in my direction, then said testily, “It’s Uniworld, okay? I get it.”
“What was that?” Guard Number One asked, cupping a hand around his ear. “Did I hear someone say
