Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 107352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
“Yes, ma’am, thank you so much.”
“Bye, Dar. See you Tuesday,” Teddy bid him.
“See ya, and thanks for letting me sleep over, Mrs. Moore.”
“Anytime, Dar, you know that.”
Once they left, Darwin put his backpack and his small duffel on the dining-room table before walking over to me.
“You guys are going to the store?”
“Yeah, Tatum wants an omelet for breakfast.”
He took a breath. “Could we stop and eat and then go to the store after?”
“Sure. That sounds good. Is there a place you like?”
“My mom—” He gasped as soon as the word was out of his mouth.
“It’s okay,” Tatum apprised him quickly, crossing to him and taking firm hold of his hand. “I’m not sad, I promise. Not even a bit.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” she said, smiling at him. “We can talk about her whenever you want.”
“Are you positive?”
She nodded.
He exhaled sharply. “Okay, that’s good.”
“I was afraid you’d be upset if we talked about her,” she confessed, her voice soft.
“Same,” he disclosed.
“But Nash said we can talk about her all the time, and he knows all about WITSEC, so we can ask him stuff.”
His eyes were wide as he looked up at me. “You know all about the marshals?”
“I do.”
“How?”
“I’m a fixer, that’s my job, so we have to know about law enforcement, plus I handed quite a few people over to the marshals, back when I was a police detective.”
“So you used to be a cop and now you’re a fixer?”
Wasn’t that what I just said? “Yes, and before both of those, I was in the Army.”
“Where?”
“I was stationed all over, but when I was a homicide detective, I lived in Houston, in Texas.”
“Where do you live now?”
“In Chicago,” Tatum chimed in.
“Okay,” he said, exhaling sharply.
“All right, so we have to get Griffin first, and then we’ll eat. Now, is there an alarm or—”
“There’s an alarm, but we don’t really need one,” Darwin told me. “Our street is super safe and—”
“No. We’re setting the alarm. Who knows the code?”
Darwin made a face like he didn’t want to say.
“It’s best to spit it out,” I prodded him.
He bit his bottom lip.
“Everyone knows the code,” Tatum confessed. “So setting it won’t do anything.”
“Okay.” I sighed and put a hand on Darwin’s shoulder. “Don’t ever be afraid to tell me anything, all right?”
He nodded quickly.
“Good. Now show me the panel.”
Once there, I was very thankful it was the same one I had at home. As soon as the kids got all the windows shut, I reset the code, tested it, and then set it to give a notification whenever a door or window was opened or closed.
“Are you going to give us the code?” Darwin asked as I was backing out of the garage, driving what I was guessing was a 1982 Jeep Wrangler. It was white with black leather seats and was in pretty good shape.
“I will if you promise not to share it with anyone else,” I said to the young man sitting in the passenger seat.
“You’re trying to keep us safe, so I promise. I’ve been thinking that the guys Mom is going to testify against might want to hurt us.”
“Probably not,” I soothed him. “But just in case, that’s why your uncle Abel hired me.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“I do.”
“And you were in the Army and a police officer, so you know how to shoot.”
“Well, as I was telling your sister, I do other things before shooting, but yes.”
It was like the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders, and he turned to the right, consumed, it seemed, by whatever he was looking at off in the distance. I got the feeling he had not merely been thinking about his mother testifying, he had been worrying about it, obsessing, and had been scared. Perhaps even terrified.
A picture was forming in my head about Luke Duchesne, and I tried not to get angry. That wouldn’t do anyone any good.
The fact of the matter was, things were happening with each of his kids, and as the sole parent, he was overwhelmed. And lots of people were single parents and managed beautifully, but for seventeen years, he’d had a partner, and then, suddenly, she was gone. He’d been dropped into the deep end, and I needed to make allowances for that.
THREE
The kids were confused about the new code.
“Amity?” I asked at the stoplight, turning to look at Darwin, then Tatum. “You don’t know what that is?”
They both seemed unsure, like maybe I was nuts.
“Amity, as you know, means friendship,” I said, quoting Murray Hamilton from Jaws, and then waiting a moment.
“What are you talking about?” Tatum asked, squinting at me.
“Jaws? Have you guys never seen that movie?” From their vacant expressions, I was thinking no and informed them how horrible that was.
“Is this, like, a black-and-white movie?” Darwin wanted to know.
“What kind of name for a movie is that? Are you making this up?” Tatum was skeptical.