“Fair enough. Now go home and rest, honey.”
“I will.”
But of course, I didn’t. If I took time off or closed the shop every time I was feeling out of sorts, I’d never be able to pay my bills. I went back to work and finished out the day, politely giving vague replies to everyone who asked me about the scene at the diner. I checked my phone a hundred times, but neither Jack nor Susan texted me.
Just before closing, my phone rang, and I almost ran over the customer standing between me and the counter, but it was only Aunt Ruby.
“I hear you’ve had an interesting day.”
“You have no idea.” I sighed.
“I’ve heard all about it from fifteen different people. Are you okay? Is Susan okay?”
I didn’t know where to begin to answer that, so I just said yes.
“Well, come on over for dinner, okay? Mike and Shelley want to show you all the tricks they’re teaching the puppy. Bring Jack. I’m making a huge beef roast with all the trimmings. Even your tiger should find enough to eat with that, plus all the side dishes.”
“He’s not here, and I’m not sure when he’ll be back, though.”
“What?”
“I have to go, Aunt Ruby. Customers. But, yes, I’d love to come for dinner. I’ll stop by and pick up Lou. Do you need me to bring anything?”
“Nope, not this time. Just your appetite.”
Since I’d never gotten to eat my lunch, that shouldn’t be a problem.
I rang up my last two customers, closed up the shop, and picked a dozen zucchini from the plant—which had definitely grown since just that morning—to take to Aunt Ruby. Then I went home to get my cat. All the way home and all the way to Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike’s, I kept wondering if I’d ever hear from Jack again.
15
Jack
“I don’t like that we locked our phones in that vault,” I told Quinn, tying a rope around the wrists and ankles of the man I’d already gagged with a sock and duct tape. “I have a bad feeling that Tess needs me.”
She checked the pulse of the unconscious man who’d unfortunately—for him—just tried to stop us and looked at me with wide eyes. “It’s for operational safety, Jack. You know that. So they can’t track us and stop us from rescuing these people.”
“I know that, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
She grinned at me. “You have it bad, my friend.”
Alaric floated down from the ceiling of the abandoned warehouse and gave me a flat look. “Is your Tess capable of protecting herself?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then we go on. You will call her after the hostages are safe. Yes?”
“Yes.”
We started forward.
16
Tess
Lou and I arrived at Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby’s house just in time for the nightly edition of Silly Pug Tricks. We’d given Shelley a puppy for Christmas, an adorable little black pug that she promptly fell madly in love with and named Pickles.
Since then, after the required education in potty training—always outside—and not biting the hands that fed her—puppies were natural nippers, it was a form of play, so they had to learn not to do it with their humans—Shelley had been training Pickles to do a variety of silly but entertaining tricks.
