Talking about how you will always love Ivy. “I believe we were eating lunch.” The knots tied up in my stomach don’t make the meal appealing anymore.
One Word
Max
She didn’t cringe away. I touched Fiona’s hand, and she neither flinched nor screamed. This means I can make progress.
Slowly and carefully, but it’s possible.
The fact that I have to meet with Vex this afternoon only drives me crazier because I have to leave Fiona and rely on War’s kids.
Ruin, Reck, Rath, Rend, Rift, Raid, and Rush walk into the bakery. Will it be standing by the time their shift is over?
This is stupid. Fiona will hate me for siccing these kids on her. Then again, are they really that bad compared to the dozens of street kids that funnel through here each day?
Rend shoves Ruin and trips Reck as they walk up to my table.
Yes. Yes, they are. “Don’t break anything while I’m gone.”
“Where are the hot girls?” Ruin asks as he falls into a chair.
I roll my eyes. “If you get kicked off of Willow Street, I’m going to work out with you for the next six months.”
“Uncle Max,” Reck whines.
“It’s that or tell your mom.”
All the boys get quiet.
“That’s what I thought.” Annika scares me, too.
Fiona walks over to the table.
Perfect timing. I wanted to say goodbye before I left. “Hey, Fiona. These are my nephews.”
“Hey, boys.” She gives them a friendly smile.
As a unit, the boys’ jaws drop.
Which would be cute if they weren’t gawking at my woman. “Manners,” I bark out.
“Hello,” they say in unison.
“If they give you any trouble, you let me know. This should cover their food.” I set three-hundred-dollar bills on the table.
“I’m sure they’ll have a good time. What can I get you, boys?”
I can’t help feeling just a little disappointed that she didn’t say goodbye. Have I made any progress with her?
***
“What have you found?” Vex stalks into my secret lair.
It’s really just a warehouse in a vast sea of warehouses that I own, with a setup to ensure ultimate privacy while hiding my power usage, but secret lair sounds so much cooler.
“Nothing. I told you it would take a while to sort through the amount of data we’re looking at.” I want to find Marlie as much as Vex does. “We traced the aliens’ van to a helicopter outside of the city. Then it disappeared. They were smart. There were no tail markings. Out of tens of thousands of the same make helicopters in the country, we’re looking for a scratch on one. It’s not like they registered a flight plan or came up on any radars. I have an algorithm searching for helicopter noises and then eliminating them from our list. But even that is hard to do because they could have fixed the scratch during routine maintenance.”
Vex starts pacing. “There has to be something else we can do. A thread we can pull. A lead I can follow up on.”
