According to her, he’d still left for work every morning and still expected his suit, breakfast, and briefcase prepared the same way it had always been. Apparently, nothing had been amiss with Mike other than the fact that his verbal and mental abuse had turned physical, probably thanks to the copious amount of drugs he was consuming.
Either way, I wanted to keep Daphne as far away from him as possible.
Art was supposed to keep me up to date with the search for him while we were out of town, but I wasn’t holding my breath on him finding Mike anytime soon. He was a weasel, and if weasels were good for one thing, it was hiding.
The sound of Daphne’s breathing shifted as she began to wake up, her eyes squinting as she sat up in her seat.
“Where are we?” she asked around a yawn.
“We’re about an hour away from Ronan’s place, you can see Vegas from here,” I told her, pointing at the city which was still lit up in the distance. “You slept like a babe through the night.”
“You should have woken me,” she said, rubbing her still sleep-laden eyes. “I would have kept you company.”
I just shrugged. “I didn’t mind. I’ve done this drive a hundred times on my own.”
Ronan used to live in the mountains above Port Haven, but after the local gargoyle clan kept complaining about him encroaching on their territory when he hunted for food, we decided it was best to move his trailer.
I’d been hoping to take him up to Oregon where there were no registered clans, but he’d insisted on the Mojave desert for some reason, telling me he’d had a vision about it.
Ronan always rambled on about the various dreams he had, calling them prophetic. But I’d never heard of a gargoyle having that ability before. I always assumed it was just the product of his cracked mind.
“Listen, when we get there I want you to stay in the truck until I go inside to make sure everything is okay. My last email exchange with him made me a little bit worried and I don’t want to have to worry about you getting hurt while I’m trying to settle him down,” I told her, glancing over at her to make sure she understood the importance of my words.
“Okay, but what if he hurts you?” she asked, her whiskey colored eyes filling with concern.
“Ronan is much weaker than I am. He’s about two hundred years older than I am and has been on his own for most of that time. I’m not worried about wrestling a little bit with him if I need to.”
I’d done it before, especially when he had his moments where he seemed to forget who I was.
We lapsed into a comfortable silence for the rest of the car ride. Rock music played softly from the truck’s stereo as the sun began to rise in the sky, illuminating the desert around us.
Ronan’s Silverstream trailer sat in, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. Only one single Joshua tree stood to the left of it, its spiky leaves swaying in the rough desert wind.
A few ratty lawn chairs sat in front of it and a plethora of pink flamingos in various designs were stamped throughout the yard.
“What’s with the flamingos?” Daphne asked as I pulled the truck to a stop.
I turned the truck off and shot her a grin. “I have my animals, and Ronan has his. They all have names, so don’t be surprised if you see him talking to them.”
“One of our retired neighbors used to do that with garden gnomes. She tried to explain it to me once while I was helping her weed her yard, but I didn’t see the appeal. It always felt like they were staring at me,” Daphne said with a shudder.
I chuckled. “Whoever invented garden gnomes must have used the real thing as their model, their expressions are exactly the same in real life.”
We didn’t get a lot of gnomes in Port Haven, but when we did they were perpetually cheerful while also having some of the deadest eyes I’d ever seen.
“Don’t forget,” I said as I opened the door. “Stay inside of the truck until I come get you. No matter what.”
“Okay,” Daphne agreed.
“Promise me, Daphne,” I pushed.
She sighed. “Fine, I promise. But please be careful.”
I nodded, offering her a reassuring smile before shutting the door and rounding the truck.
Everything seemed quiet, but that was most likely because Ronan knew someone was here. Either he was waiting for me to knock on the door or was lying in wait somewhere to jump out and tackle me.
It turned out to be the latter.
