“I can’t stay,” she said. “We’ve got to process the guys you helped catch and mop up some loose ends. But everyone is free to go home now. We’ve dismantled the better part of three organizations and that’s going to be so much paperwork I can’t even imagine, but this should be theendof it.”
Clarice kept the kids in the back yard a little longer while Juliette’s team exchanged a few essential groceries for criminals and pulled out of the driveway, leaving behind just the Tiny Paws parents.
Addison took her package of diapers with visible relief. “I was about to see if I could rig something out of dishtowels and binder clips.”
Bruno and Clarice got all the kids snacks while parents packed up their things and tried to identify who owned various socks and toys.
“Did you find Veronica?” Clarice asked anxiously, when she finally had a moment with Juliette.
Juliette had been smiling and that smile went brittle. “We found her,” she said carefully. “She’s safely back home now. She’ll be under surveillance for a while, but we’re not bringing any charges against her. She should be at work tomorrow, just like usual.”
“She still might have bugged the day care and been the reason they got Addison,” Roderick growled. He was clearly not ready to believe that Veronica was innocent.
“Stork had someone working at Nickel City dispatch,”Juliette said, still neutral. “That’s how they intercepted the 9-1-1 call and it’s how they knew where you were.”
“No one here called 9-1-1,” Roderick said suspiciously.
“A neighbor did, helpfully reporting that a bunch of people with little kids were squatting in an empty house. Ironically, they thought it might be a kidnapping ring.”
“Moooooom.” Darius was waiting in the doorway. “I gotta check on my pets. They’re hungry and Tilly needs her meds. Dad is still getting Jackson ready, can’t we GO now?”
The house slowly got quieter and less crowded as each family left, until Bruno, Gil, and Clarice were the only ones, waiting on agents to bring their cars from the lot where they’d been stashed after their mansion misadventures. Clarice cleaned the kitchen to sparkling and Bruno took out the trash. Gil was put to work haphazardly sweeping the floor, but mostly he used the broom as a weapon or a microphone, swiping at chairs and singing off-key.
“Stop hitting the furniture, please,” Bruno said, snapping him with a towel.
This precipitated a swift, laughing broom battle that ended in Gil being disarmed and then set back to work, giggling.
“What a weekend,” Clarice observed wearily. “Horatio is going to be so mad at me when I get home. I hope Noah left him enough food. He doesn’t like stale water. I hope he didn’t refuse to drink it and make himself sick.”
Bruno had been putting dishes away and he seemed to hear a note in Clarice’s voice that she didn’t intend. “You were amazing,” he said.
“I didn’t doanything.”
“You knocked a guy out with his own dart,” Bruno pointed out. “You were smart enough not to get tranqed.You were the one who knew how to figure out where they went to ground.”
“It doesn’t feel like a lot.” Was she whining? How childish of her.
Then Bruno’s strong arms were around her and he was kissing her neck. “You saved me from hypothermia, and Tiny Paws is safe again. It’s a lot to me. I love you.”
Clarice felt all of her reservations and doubts evaporate at his words and the feel of his body up against her. Helovedher. This magical, kind, clever man loved her and if he could, couldn’t she be worthy of it? “I love you,” she told him shyly, and his arms tightened around her.
“DOUBLE HUG!” Gil tackled them both around the knees and squeezed hard.
Clarice really had gotten a family for Christmas.
47
CLARICE
Horatio greeted her with a howl about the bowl that was showing through the kibble that was left and lodged a complaint about the unsatisfactory water, and then purred and tolerated being picked up and petted. He slept with her that night, a heavy weight near her knees, and in the morning, he twined around her ankles as he led her into the kitchen for breakfast.
Other than that, Tuesday felt remarkably…normal.
Clarice unlocked the realty office promptly at eight in the morning, plugged in the Christmas lights, sorted the mail, and started the coffee. It was easy to think that the weekend past was just a bizarre fantasy, or something she’d watched as an action movie too late at night after too much cheese.
But her wrists still had rough, red stripes where she’d struggled against the zipties, and there were several confused messages from Monday when they’d been unexpectedly closed. She was on the phone responding to one of those when Veronica came in.
Clarice searched her face for any sign of what she’dgone through as she hung her coat on the rack next to the white one that Clarice had returned. Did her makeup look a little heavier? Were the lines on her face more drawn? Was shelimping?
