The Princess and the P.I.

An amateur online sleuth must enlist the help of a jaded PI to clear her name while taking down a shady tech start-up in this exhilarating romantic caper. Famed Reddit detective Fiona Appiah is great at solving problems--online, that is. Cold cases, reality TV scandals, everyone calls on @Princess_PI. It’s her way of escaping her strict religious life at home and the memory of her brilliant brother’s sudden death. But when the sheltered sleuth tries to apply her inquisitive skills to real life, her plan to reclaim her late brother’s invention from the ruthless corporation that stole it goes disastrously wrong. Now, instead of getting justice, Fiona finds herself accused of murder. Maurice Bennett is no stranger to insomnia. These days, he’s not losing sleep over the cases he’s solving--but running from the one he However, Fiona is not the helpless damsel she appears to be. Sure, she needs Maurice’s help to clear her name, but she’s got conditions of her own: she wants a crash course in real-world detective work. Maurice isn’t exactly thrilled. With every late-night stakeout and tension-filled interrogation, their partnership starts to feel a little <too< close for comfort. To bring the real killer to light, they''ll need to trust each other and that might be the most dangerous gamble of all.

Autorentext

Nikki Payne

Leseprobe
Do Crime

Fiona looked down at the convention program:

"Disrupting Orgasms: Leveraging Blockchain to Revolutionize the Female G-spot."

No.

"Post-Human Partnerships: How the Metaverse Will Save Love."

Definitely no.

"iVest: The Holy Grail of Health."

Fiona circled the last one.

This place was a kind of church, really. The Gaylord National Convention Center at National Harbor gleamed like a temple to excess. The reflective glass walls cut with multicolored lasers worked on the mind like stained glass. And inside, everybody used the same liturgical language of self-importance. Everyone's a disruptor, even the way all the Silicon Valley tech founders looked like Jesus. Fiona should have been at home here. Church was her first language. Her whole life had been pews and pulpits, worship, and waiting.

But she didn't come to praise today.

She looked around and allowed herself to feel the untethered contempt that had been roiling in her belly for years.

No, God wouldn't like the plans she'd made today. For nine months, her barely used agenda had exactly one date circled.

September 2nd. Do crime.

Fiona jumped at a sudden burst of applause to her right-an overly congratulatory standing ovation for hosting the event in Prince George's County. A largely Black, largely wealthy county in Maryland. If Atlanta was Black Mecca, Prince George's was Wakanda, where every high school was a mini HBCU and every modest home cost at least half a million dollars. Fiona couldn't cross the street without Black Excellence slapping her across the face.

She just kept telling herself to relax. Today was going to be just like any other day. The founders of iVest would preach about their invention like it was the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Except it wasn't their invention.

iVest initially sold tags to help pet owners identify their lost pets. In fact, their name wasn't even iVest. It was the appropriately bland Thorpe Solutions. Fiona's brother, Kwesi, had been their best developer, pouring himself into a project no one else thought worth their time. The idea had started simple: a vest that could deliver medication on schedule and monitor vital signs. Their mother's chemo treatments had been hell. Kwesi had dreamed up the vest as a way to retroactively save her, maybe even forgive himself for not being able to save her at all.

He'd trusted his company with the project, but more specifically, he'd trusted his boyfriend, Mark.

It'd been the worst mistake of his short life.

Now Mark's company would debut the vest as their own.

The thought of Mark's chin-implanted, Botoxed face holding that vest-her brother's legacy-while people fawned over his genius infuriated her. The vest had somehow become symbolic of Fiona's mother and her brother, both of them ripped away from her and both thinking the worst of her when they left.

Fiona wound her way through the throng, her senses overloaded by the clamor of everything. A robotic arm for feeding pets remotely, a refrigerator that tweets your grocery list. And sex. So much AI sex. Fiona wasn't sure people were interested in kissing real people anymore. She was suddenly embarrassingly aware of her father trailing behind her.

"Uh, Dad, you didn't have to come to this. I know you had a big appointment today."

Kofi Addai, senior pastor and self-proclaimed prophet, looked up to the heavens. Grim in his bespoke Ankara shirt, he followed her like a storm cloud. She could already hear his sermon, denouncing the sexbots and Wi-Fi fridges as the idols of a new Sodom. He said nothing, though, only cleared his throat in that way that meant judgment, the holiest kind of silence. Her ineptitude was legendary in the family. What weight she had gained and what colleges she had failed out of were the most common chatter in the aunties' WhatsApp.

It was Kwesi who shone. Her brother's vest was the crown jewel of the expo. CortiZone, his $56 million baby, was the only one of its kind. But Fiona had aggressively flunked out of engineering at Salisbury University, so she didn't know much about the tech specs. And honestly, in the grand scheme of things, her ignorance mattered little. Fiona had a plan nine months in the making.

Fiona Akua Addai, the youngest daughter of a doomsday pastor, American by way of Ghana, Black in the Prince George's County way, moderator of the third-largest amateur sleuth subreddit in the Maryland-District-Virginia tristate area, and twenty-eight-year-old virgin, was about to steal the crown jewel of the TechXpo.

Vengeance was supposed to be the Lord's. But this afternoon, it would be Fiona's.

Itinerary: Robert Thorpe Meeting

Get paid

Quit

This was Maurice's last job for Robert Thorpe. He agreed to meet him at the convention center, and maybe it would be better here than in his office. Maurice would have to let the old man go. His assignments had become difficult to stomach. They were slimy in a way he didn't want to be connected to. He would refer his oldest client to other agencies and part ways amicably.

But suspicious spouses kept the lights on at Knightwatch Private Investigations. Those were just about the only cases he allowed himself to take lately. Low stakes, so his mistakes couldn't cost lives.

Maurice pushed open a meeting room just off the conference room floor. When he closed the door, the muffled thump of techno music seeped through the walls, and Maurice could still see fog and lasers under the crack in the door. God, tech conventions are exhausting.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of a pink puffy jacket cutting through the dim hallway like a bad omen. He stiffened.

Not today. Please, not today.

Robert Thorpe sat across from him, beefy fingers pressed against the table like he might push himself up any minute. He was trimmed in gold like a tricked-out car: glasses, earrings, necklaces-even his thick championship ring-all gold.

"How's your mom?" Robert said, tapping at his hair self-consciously. His was thin and balding, a state he usually never allowed anyone to see. Maurice wondered why he was so lucky today. The former baller usually wore thousand-dollar hairpieces that knocked ten years off his face.

"She's married," Maurice said. Robert sometimes looked at him the way most men of a certain age who knew his mother looked at him. Looking for-maybe praying against-any ghosts of resemblance.

"You still not sleeping? You …