Peggy opens one eye—just a slit—and looks at me, meows a long, soft, satisfiedmmeeeeeeeeooooooowww, and then closes her eyes again and flips to give Sarah her belly.
“Who is such a good kitty? Peggy is such a good kitty,” Sarah coos.
The cat stretches luxuriously.
Davis brushes past me, metal detector in hand, and I look between him and Sarah.
“Can you stay a little while longer?” I ask her.
“I’m bound by the laws of the universe to sit here as long as the cat has chosen me for her throne, so it’s really not up to me.”
Davis sighs audibly behind me.
Sarah’s brown eyes twinkle brighter as she smiles. “Must be an exceptionally difficult treasure hunt if you can makehimsigh like that.”
“I’m not the problem. I didn’t bury it. Some stupid old pirates did. Excuse me. I have to go fight him over whether or not I’m allowed to also crawl around in a falling-down old cabin.”
“Good luck with that. Please don’t die.”
“Don’t fucking jinx it,” Davis mutters.
Sarah smiles wider and pulls out her phone.
Davis sighs again.
“Beck’s gonna be so mad he lost rock-paper-scissors,” Sarah murmurs.
Davis pauses at the door. “You cheated, didn’t you?”
“Yep. Put a cheese ball in front of him and then challenged him to see which of us got to come. Rafael’s outside, by the way. Beck wouldn’t let me come by myself, even if I can handle things just fine. Including raccoons. What’s the raccoon story, by the way? Levi and Ingrid both went silent in the group text after she said something cryptic about owing Giselle real Bavarian pretzels to apologize for the raccoon incident. And Rafael said he talked to Chuck and had orders to shoot any raccoons that try shit.”
I look at Davis.
His cheek tics. “Nature natures. You coming, Sloane?”
He opens the door, and I dash to follow with a quick, “I’ll explain later,” tossed over my shoulder to Sarah.
He doesn’t sigh again.
He also doesn’t hold my hand to help me across the ground past the decrepit outhouse to the back door of the cabin.
Can’t go in the front.
Not with the way the porch has collapsed.
This is okay though. We’ve made it safely to the cabin, so that’s something.
I pause and look back at the outhouse. “Is that?—”
“Yes,” he replies. “Just an outhouse. Yes. I checked. No, I don’t plan to do it again.”
“Okey-dokey. Good enough for me.”
“Lots of spiders inside,” he tells me as the hinges squeak ominously while he tugs the back door open.
“Any raccoons?” I ask.
“Unlikely, but we’ll handle them if we have to.”
