Of course.
The bowl was gone too. So was the towel.
Dustin sat up. “How long have you been awake?”
“I don’t think I slept.” Greg held his clipboard in his lap, both hands flat against it. “I was thinking.”
“About?”
“Many things.”
Dustin watched him for a moment.
“How’s the, uh.” He gestured vaguely. “Situation.”
“Resolved.”
“Yeah?”
“I washed the towel.”
“You… what?”
“In the bathroom sink. It’s drying on the radiator.” Greg paused. “I did not want your mother to find it.”
Dustin stared at him.
Then he dropped his head into his good hand and laughed quietly, because Cathy was downstairs and the walls were thin.
“Greg.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a good man.”
“I’m not a man.”
“You’re a good whatever-you-are.”
Greg considered this. “Thank you.”
The laughter faded. Dustin grabbed his shirt from the end of the bed and wrestled it on one-handed. The sling was a pain in the ass. Everything was a pain in the ass.
Greg watched him with an expression Dustin couldn’t quite parse.
“You said you were thinking,” Dustin said.
“I don’t know how we keep the system from claiming your mother.” Greg’s thumb ran along the edge of the clipboard. “In all the cases I found, it never tried to work around the deal or find a loophole. It simply eliminated the contract holder. Almost like punishment for interfering with the natural order.”
“So the system won’t help.”
“No.”
Dustin cursed under his breath. It felt good.
“Okay,” he said. “But if the system never looked for a loophole, that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.”
Greg blinked. “Where would we look?”
