Poor Fido…
She reached down to scratch the Lab’s soft, floppy ears and was rewarded with an adoring whine and the promise of eternal love shining in his soulful brown eyes. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s just the best boy in the whole world? Are you best boy in the whole world?”
“He’s probably the most mellow boy in the world if he lives with the guy who smokes this thing,” Ozzie said.
She glanced up from the dog to find Ozzie waving around a three-foot-long water bong in eye-bleeding orange. And, oh, how she wished the reason her uncle hadn’t been in touch with her was because he’d gotten himself good and baked.
If he’d pulled the ol’ Cheech and Chong, she’d be pissed at him for scaring her shitless and doing something that by Illinois law could get him thrown in the nearest eight-by-ten. But at least she’d know what to do… Namely, feed him copious amounts of White Castle and Cheetos and wait for the THC to wear off before hauling his stoner ass back home. As it stood, she was no closer to finding her uncle than she’d been before she left Chicago. And, to make matters worse, now she was dealing with another old Marine who’d mysteriously gone AWOL.
She glanced back down at the tax filings. There was something here. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Besides his Social Security and military retirement benefits, Charlie Sanders didn’t have any income. But there were expenditures listed in his—
The air around her heated as Mac brushed by her. She glanced up, only to find him not paying her the slightest bit of attention—so what else is new? Instead, he was in the process of making his third slow circle around the kitchen table. Squatting, he studied the orange and green linoleum floor as if in search of some miniscule piece of evidence. When he stood, she managed to catch his eye, but his expression was back to being dismissive.
So, we’re playing it that way, are we? She lifted a brow, hoping the look she wore clearly relayed her thoughts. We’re just pretending nothing happened out there in the front yard? We’re just acting like you didn’t pitch a stick of wood big enough and stiff enough to hang my bath towel on?
Mimicking her, Mac lifted a dark brow, his expression sliding from dismissive to inscrutable.
Okay. So I guess the answers to those questions are yes, yes, and yes.
Then and there she decided that, just as she’d long suspected, Bryan “Mac” McMillan was a big, irritating, confusing, A-hole. A big, irritating, confusing, holy-hell-hot-as-homemade-sin A-hole. And to make matters worse—as if she needed matters to be worse at this point; thanks, Universe, you giant dickwad!—ever since he’d sprawled atop her, so warm, so heavy, so very much a man, blood had been rushing into parts of her that had been too long ignored. Well…too long ignored if you didn’t count the pulse setting on her handheld showerhead—which she most certainly did not. Because, if memory served, there was a vast difference between a man’s touch and that of her trusty stainless steel bathtub accessory. So, yes. Blood. Rushing. Parts too long ignored. And the sensation was driving her crazy. Crazy enough to throw caution, and all his repeated rejections, to the wind and jump on the man like he was a bouncy house.
“Yorp!” Fido sang demandingly, upset that her attention had turned from him.
“So sorry,” she soothed, resuming her petting, watching the dog’s entire back end swing to and fro with the force of his tail wagging.
“There’s nobody on the second floor, and the garage is empty save for a pretty cherry El Camino,” Zoelner announced as he descended the stairs and marched into the living room. “I called back to headquarters and had Becky run the plates. The car belongs to Sander. No real surprise there. Oh, and FYI, Becky told me to inform you guys that Ali delivered a daughter. Nine pounds, six ounces.”
“Mazel tov!” Ozzie crowed, then, “And, damn! That’s a big baby!”
Zoelner nodded. “Anyway, mom and baby are doing well. Though, supposedly, Ghost is a wreck.”
“And speaking of big,” Ozzie grinned, wiggling his eyebrows, “check out the size of this thing.” He brandished the bong in Zoelner’s face. “It’s Goliath’s bong!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Zoelner rolled his eyes, yanking the contraption from Ozzie’s hand and tossing it on the ruined sofa. “I heard you the first time. Very witty. Now shut up.”
“Any sign of a struggle upstairs or in the garage?” Mac asked. He posed the question to Zoelner, but he was staring at a kitchen chair that was tipped on its back. Eyes narrowed, he glanced over to the old-fashioned tin coffee cup turned upside down on the floor before turning to study the newspaper lying beside the table leg.
Obviously, Fido, hungry and looking for any small form of sustenance, had gone after the coffee mug Charlie had left on the table and, in the process, created this little tableau of mayhem. Which reminded Delilah…
She scooted her chair back and walked over to what she suspected was a pantry door. Turning the knob, she nearly lost her balance when Fido rushed ahead of her, barking ecstatically and turning in tight circles within the small space that was, indeed, the pantry. His thick tail whacked against her shins hard enough to leave bruises.
“Okay, okay,” she soothed. Then, spotting a thirty-pound bag of Hills Science Diet pushed into the back corner, she nudged Fido aside and used the large bowl she found inside the bag to scoop out a healthy portion of dog food.
“Yorp! Yorp!”
“Who’s a hungry boy?” she asked in that weird sing-songy voice women tended to don around infants and canines. “Who’s just about starving to death?”
“Yorpyorpyorpyorp!”
“I gotcha, big boy. Just a second.” She exited the pantry and set the bowl of kibble in front of the stove. “Here you go. Eat up.”
Fido attacked the food with gusto, his hind end swinging back and forth so forcefully he caused himself to stumble.
“Poor dog,” Zoelner observed before turning back to Mac. “And to answer your question, that’s a negative on any signs of a struggle upstairs or in the garage. All appears as it should.”
“Maybe they were abducted by aliens,” Ozzie posited unhelpfully.
“You’ve been watching too much of the Syfy channel,” Zoelner said, crossing his arms and tilting his head at Mac, who was back to staring at that silly, knocked-over chair.
“Yeah, right,” Ozzie scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”
“No such thing as aliens, or no such thing as watching too much of the Syfy channel?”
“Well, the second, naturally.” The look on Ozzie’s face was dubious. “Because of course there’s such things as aliens.”
“Of course?” Zoelner’s lips quirked.
“Yeah. I mean, the universe is a pretty big place, right? And if it’s just us, that’s an awful waste of space.”
“You stole that from Carl Sagan,” Zoelner accused.
“No, I didn’t. I stole it from the movie Contact. Maybe they stole it from Carl Sagan.”
“Whatever.” Zoelner waved him off. “The point is, Charles and Theo were not abducted by aliens, and—”
“So, I get why ol’ Sander decided to stay tucked away in the middle of nowhere, holed-up in this hellhole of a crumbling house,” Steady interrupted, emerging from the door leading to the basement stairs. “The guy’s got a state-of-the-art grow room set up down there. It’s enough to make Jay and Silent Bob weep with envy.”