Normally, she would have called on Mica to help her. He was talented with gadgets and the like and of course medical things. For this task, though, she decided Jett might be a better fit for what she had in mind.
On her break, she called him from her office at the Supernova Supermarket.
Jett sounded sleepy when he answered his phone with a surly, “What?”
Beryl didn’t let it dissuade her from her self-imposed mission. “Hey—where are you?”
“I’m at home. Recently sound asleep. This voice is a recording. Don’t leave a message. BEEP!”
Before he could hang up, she said, “Good try. I’m not falling for it. Why aren’t you at work?”
“It’s my day off. I am allowed to have one, right?”
Beryl snorted. “Debatable. Listen, I need your help with something. Since it’s rather diabolical, I figured you’d be the perfect brother to help me out. What do you say?”
“Diabolical, huh?” He pushed out a long sigh, but she could tell that breath of air was full of intrigue. “Okay, count me in. Where do you want to meet?”
“Let’s meet at your workshop in, say, two hours. I’ll come over on my lunch break, because I don’t have the day off.”
“Oh, boo-hoo,” Jett said.
The line went dead.
Beryl got out a notepad and made a list of the items she thought she would need and tucked it in her purse. She called Jake to tell him she had a meeting at lunch and would see him at dinner.
He told her he’d just taken an order for a special gift and wanted to get started on it, so dinner instead of lunch would be perfect for him.
Beryl paused on the line, teetering on the edge of telling him that she loved him. She cleared her throat. “I’ll see you later, Jake.”
“Okay. See you later.”
It occurred to Beryl that her meeting with Jett might take some time and she should build in some buffer. “I’ll drop by your shop after work, but I might have an errand to run first. Not sure how long that will take.”
“No problem. Take your time. I’ll be working on this new project all day.”
“Great. See you tonight. Bye, Jake.”I love you.
“Love you, Beryl,” Jake said, and hung up the phone like that was what he said to her all the time.
Beryl could not help the warm, fuzzy, wonderful feeling she got from hearing Jake tell her that he loved her, sounding like it was a matter of fact.
Her love for him was also a matter of fact, regardless of their future.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Darkfall left Luca’s shop after commissioning jewelry for someone he reminded himself he could never have permanently in his life. He did not get to have that joy.
He returned to the motel and forced his attention back on the job. It turned out to be the motivation he needed because after working for less than an hour on Luca’s mission notes, he discovered something interesting about one Mr. Edgar Smithers Sr. that he hadn’t noticed before.
The words “lost memory” in a month-old entry practically flashed on the page next to the man’s full name, so obvious that Darkfall wondered how he could have missed them. He’d probably been skimming Luca’s notes too fast. Apparently, Luca had noted that Smithers experienced a memory issue possibly related to a head injury. It must have seemed pretty straightforward to Luca.
Luca’s subsequent memory loss meant it wasn’t a simple case of a head injury leading to other issues. To Darkfall, it was a pattern.
Glad to have found something he could act on, he headed over to Smithers’ house seeking clarification. He didn’t have time for a lengthy surveillance. He needed to know what Luca had discovered that got him hurt, and he needed to know right now.
He was confident that flashing an Alpha law badge that wasn’t exactly real would get him the answers he needed. An older man opened the door to Darkfall’s knock.
“I stumbled across a report regarding your lost memory, Mr. Smithers,” Darkfall said, pocketing the fake ID after he showed it to the man.
