He stood in the kitchen with his phone in his hand and the back door ten feet away and the compound quiet around him.
He typed back:
Bed by eleven.
Her response came after a moment.
Emily: K. Tell Clover I said hi
He set the phone down.
In the common room, Irish looked up from the couch. Clover lifted his enormous head.
"She says hi," Rampage said.
Irish grinned.
“To the dog, not you.” He growled. Irish’s laugh followed him as Rampage went to start patrol.
CHAPTER 12
EMILY
She went fully little for the first time on a Thursday, and it wasn't dramatic at all, which somehow made it more so.
It started with Makenzie.
They'd gone into town in the morning. Makenzie, Savannah, Nicole and Emily, with Savage driving because Rampage had approved the trip on the condition that someone with a club cut was visible the entire time, and Savage had apparently drawn the short straw, which he'd accepted with the energy of a man serving a prison sentence… and then a wink to let the girls know he was playing around.
Grand Ridge was small and warm and exactly the kind of town Emily hadn't known she needed. They parked on one end of main street. First, they made a quick stop into Trinity’s coffee shop, wine bar and bookstore all in one. Trinity greeted her like an old friend and made each woman’s coffee by memory. Even though she’d only been in once before, and it had been an entire week since then, Trinity even remembered what Emily had ordered. She was impressed. But, of course, Chloe’s coffee shop was better. She had to think that. Chloe was her best friend after all.
The girls walked down the street like old friends, and they took turns pointing out the different small businesses along the path. They stopped into the veterinarian clinic that Mad Dog’s fiancé Kayla owned before sliding into a large booth in the back of The Rusty Crab. She’d met the owner, Corky, when she’d had lunch with Rampage on the day she picked up the gym equipment. After a delightful lunch, the girls, still trailed by Savage, stopped into a bakery on the corner.
“It’s relatively new. Only been open for just over a year,” Savannah told her.
Doris, the older woman who owned it, knew Makenzie by name and immediately pressed a cookie into Emily's hands before she'd said a single word.
"You're the one staying at The Watchmen’s compound," Doris said. Not unkindly. Matter-of-fact.
"News travels fast," Emily observed.
"Honey, in Grand Ridge it doesn't travel, it teleports." Doris handed her a second cookie. "We like The Watchmen here. You're safe with them."
Emily ate the cookies and thought about twenty-foot rules and response radii and someone doing the math to keep her close.
"Yeah," she said. "I’m definitely safe."
Then they stopped back into Trinity’s once again for coffee refills, against Savage’s better judgement. That’s where it started.
She hadn't meant to go to the children's section. She'd followed Nicole toward where the romance shelves were and somehow had taken a wrong turn and ended up in the corner with the picture books and the stuffed animals and the little reading nook with the bean bag chairs shaped like animals, and she'd stopped.
There was a coloring book on the low shelf. Intricate botanical patterns, the kind that blurred the line between children's and adult, thick pages, good quality. Next to it, a set of colored pencils in a tin with a bird on the lid.
She stood there for a moment.
She looked over her shoulder. Makenzie was at the romance shelf. Nicole and Savannah were talking to Trinity. Savage was sitting on a bar stool pretending to look at his phone, while scanning the door every time it opened.
Emily picked up the coloring book. Flipped through it. Put it back.
