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“Be careful,” I ordered her.

She smiled, kissed my cheek, and was gone a few moments later.

Drew waved at me from the driveway where he’d put Lock into Memphis’ car, and I waved back.

Then I went back inside, grateful I had a gas oven I could turn on, and sat in front of it, leaning against my kitchen island, with my lone blanket.

I was also cursing myself for not getting the rest of my stuff out of storage.

I’d moved into this new house about three months ago, and I had plenty of time to get it done, yet I hadn’t gotten around to doing it.

“Damn,” I said, shivering slightly as the warm started to fill the room. “I forgot my computer.”

Heaving a sigh, I got up once again, grabbed my laptop and the other electronics I’d spent the time charging, and then got to work on typing up tomorrow’s blog post.

This one was titled: The reasons one needs five tablets.

Number one on the list was in case you were reading and the first one ran out of juice in the middle of it.

The second was in case of power failure.

The list went on, and I smiled for the first time since Memphis and Drew had left.

At least I was able to smile, so not everything could be as bad as I thought, right?

Chapter 6

Nothing’s ever as bad as it seems. Unless you lost a finger, then it’s pretty bad.

-Drew’s thoughts while working

Drew

“Your sister had to get into her car with our kids, Downy,” I heard Memphis say over the speaker on his phone. “And now I feel like crap because I took two of her blankets. I need you to drop them back off to her for me. You’ll have to come home to get them.”

“Why don’t I just go buy her new ones?” Downy asked distractedly. “And why was she in the car?”

“You were the one who told me her power was off and she didn’t have any firewood. I would guess it was because she thought they were cold,” Memphis growled at her husband.

I looked at Downy, then back to the camera that was being threaded through the first bedroom’s vent in the house where a father was currently holding his family of five hostage.

He was holding them in the very middle of the house, in a tiny room with no windows or doors other than the one that led into the hallway.

He had enough guns to arm a small militia in there with him, too.

“I want you to bring her some firewood, too,” Memphis continued. “And some food.”

“Memphis…,” Downy started.

“Downy, I’m not kidding here. She’s lost weight in the last week.”

Had she?

I hadn’t noticed.

But then again I’d only met her last week, so I didn’t have much to go by.

“I’ll get it to her tomorrow,” Downy started.