Chad’s stomach gurgled.“I’m starving.How does beans on toast for breakfast sound?”
“It sounds bland.”
“Bland is what I do best.”
“I’ll cook us something,” Romeo said.“I’ve missed cooking for you.”
Chad smiled, and Romeo admired the warmth in his eyes, basking in the look a moment until Chad’s stomach whined again.
Romeo left Chad stretching in the living room.
Like he’d heard through the boarded-up window, there were two magpies in the field again.They hopped around together while the songbirds dropped seeds from above.
It was far more peaceful than it had been before.
The magpies had needed to swoop, and knock into their feeders, unable to perch.
It had been chaotic, savage almost, the way they attacked the feeders for their food.Romeo had enjoyed watching them, but the calm outside was hard to look away from.
Romeo whisked up eggs, adding a chopped mushroom and some grated cheese to the mix.
Chad joined him when he poured the mixture into a frying pan.
“That smells incredible.”
“It’s only eggs.”
“I was talking about you,” Chad sat down at the table.
Romeo flashed him a quick smile, then went back to watching the pan.He glanced out the window just in time to see the shadow pass over the birds.
The songbirds took flight, and the magpies followed, and there was no squark of death.
But it was still there, the bad omen.
The dark shadow.
It hadn’t left like Chad said it would.
“Romeo?”
His heart thundered behind his ribs.
“I’ve missed something.”
“What?”
“I know I have...”
He flipped over the omelet to cook the other side.
“That night we went to the bridge...”Romeo started.
“What about it?”
“You had a brightness in your eyes, a fire, and I’ve only ever seen it when you’re working a case, and the way you were speaking ...it was the same as when we’d looked into Harriet’s disappearance.”
“Oh.”
