"But she lied and said she was going to the store," I insisted.
"Maybe she went to the store and then met this guy," Hunter said in a patronizing tone. "He could be a friend from work."
"He doesn't work for me!" I yelled at my brother.
"We really don't seem to have a lot of information here," Hunter commented to Garrett.
"We have one piece of information," Garrett retorted. "Mace is well-known for being an overreactive, worst-case-scenario type of person. The canned food always has botulism. It's always about to not just rain but catastrophically flood. You saw something you have no context for, threw away everything you knew about Josie, then refused to act like a grown adult man and instead came in here to drink and sulk."
"I am not sulking," I said, glowering at my brothers. They really were the worst.
"This sounds like a classic case of Mace overreacting," Garrett said, turning to Hunter.
"Except—" We turned to the door. Greg was standing there, a dark look on his face. He walked in. "Except this time, Mace is not overreacting."
"I'm not?" I asked, shocked.
"No," Greg replied, pouring himself a drink. "This time you are actually underreacting." He took a sip of the scotch. "It's worse. It's so much worse than he ever imagined."
61
Josie
Ileft early the next morning. Mace clearly wanted some space.
I went to a cute little coffee shop and sipped a hot chocolate while I made a few edits to the presentation. I hoped it was enough to convince the property owners to sell to Mace and his brothers. I also tried to do some research into the couple I had seen with Anke but didn't find anything. I had nothing to go off of.
On my way to the PharmaTech offices, I stopped by Ida's General Store to pick up some snacks.
"I have mochi balls," Ida announced when I walked in. "Made locally. It's green tea ice cream wrapped in a Japanese sweet rice paste. Dottie's granddaughter has started making desserts. She's inspired by Chloe and the Grey Dove Bistro."
"Aren't we all?" I replied.
"Great news on the property front," Ida said as I brought my snacks to the register. "I convinced everyone to come to the meeting. Believe it or not, they said they were open to it. I talked you up," she said proudly. "Bert said he wouldn't mind selling if it meant keeping the green space. The rest of those old fools seem to think they're going to take their little dilapidated parcels with them to the great beyond." She snorted. "I know you'll set them straight. Especially my sister."
"Thank you so much," I said to Ida.
"It's next Tuesday," she said, "at the bingo hall. Harrogate is on the rise, but we need to be better. We need more young people here, and they don't want to have a bunch of vacant lots and burned-out buildings around. No one wants to raise their kids in a place like that."
"Harrogate is nice," I protested.
"It could be better," Ida sniffed. "You should have seen it in its heyday. It was something else. I was talking to this couple about it. His father was from Harrogate, worked at the chocolate factory. He and his wife are trying to adopt. They're an older couple."
"Uh-huh." Ida sure did like to talk my ear off.
"I mean, they seemed pretty old to be adopting, just between us," Ida continued, "but they said they had an almost-five-year-old boy they were going to take. So props to them for looking at an older child. They said he was healthy, blond, gray eyed. Said he was real cute. They were so excited! They had a GoFundMe up. They convinced a bunch of people from their church to donate." She pulled up a page on her phone. "Would you look at that?" she exclaimed, shoving the phone in my face. "Eighty thousand dollars over their goal. Isn't that something? I should start a GoFundMe."
"Wait," I said, grabbing the phone. I zoomed into the picture. It was the couple. The ones who had the meeting with Anke and Payslee's lawyer.
"I have to go!" I said, running out of the store.
"But your snacks!" Ida called after me.
"I'll come back for them!"
I ran to the car and texted the Agent Donley the link to the GoFundMe page. Then I raced to PharmaTech. I had to tell Mace about this. Henry could be in danger. I knew exactly what Anke was up to. She was trying to sell Henry to that couple. Somehow she had convinced Payslee that it was a good idea and she could make way more money than Hunter would ever bribe her with. With the GoFundMe plus whatever money the rich couple had, Anke would be walking away with a tidy sum.
I parked crookedly in one of the visitors' spots and sprinted into the building. I was huffing and puffing and sweaty when I stumbled into his office. Mace was sitting at his desk, writing in a notebook.
