And then it’d occurred to her that perhaps he wasn’t avoiding her at all. That perhaps he was simply out on a mission somewhere, deep in a jungle or sweating in some desert. He was a super-secret spy-guy, right?
But she’d quickly been relieved of that little misconception when, one night after a handful of the Knights came in to enjoy some peanuts and brews, she’d oh-so-casually let slip a question to Ozzie about Mac’s “secret” whereabouts. Ozzie had frowned and informed her that there was nothing secretive about it. Mac was back at the shop, cleaning out the fuel lines on Siren.
Uh-huh. And there’d gone that little glimmer of optimism, crushed beneath Ozzie’s words as surely as Roscoe Porter—one of her most loyal patrons—crushed beer cans against his big, wrinkled forehead.
Which brought her to today. Three weeks into what she’d come to call The Great Disappearing Act. And even though the words I’ll see you later, darlin’ still accosted her from time to time, they no longer brought with them hope or disappointment or hurt. Nope. Now they just pissed her off.
What the hell is wrong with him? The man doesn’t even have the decency to—
“You’re going to slice off a finger the way you’re handling that knife,” her Uncle Theo observed. She was behind the bar, cutting up lemons and limes to be used in cocktails. When she glanced at him—he was sitting on a stool across from her, the Chicago Sun-Times in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other—she couldn’t stop the little sigh of relief that whispered from between her lips. He was healthy. And alive. And save for a little scar near his temple and the crutches he still had to use, no one looking at him would know what a harrowing ordeal he’d been through.
But she would never forget. Never forget the fear in his eyes. The tears streaming down his face. The blood. God, there’d been a lot of blood…
No, she’d never forget. Not if she lived to be a hundred years old. She wiped her hands on her apron and reached across the bar, squeezing his hand.
He made a clucking noise, his bushy, white mustache drooping at the corners. “How long until you stop needing to touch me every thirty seconds to assure yourself I’m really here?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t know. It might be a while yet.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but a sharp knock on the front door sent Fido scrambling out from under her feet and racing around the end of the bar. His doggy nails scraped against the hardwood floor, alerting her to the fact that it was probably time to take out the clippers. Dog ownership had its own learning curve, one she was enjoying immensely. And besides seeing her uncle healthy and happy—well, as happy as he could be considering he’d watched one of his oldest acquaintances die at the hands of terrorists. She knew he was still struggling with that—nothing gave her more pleasure than to know Fido had completely recovered. The dog had nothing to show for his close brush with death except for a six-inch scar furrowing through the yellow hair on his chest.
“Yorp! Yorp! Yorpyorpyorp!” he sang happily as both Delilah and her uncle yelled toward the door, “We’re closed!”
“It’s Zoelner!” came the reply from outside, and Delilah’s hand jumped to her throat when her heart tried to escape from her body via that route.
Mac…. Something had happened to Mac and—
She hopped over the bar, not bothering to use the hinged ledge at the end. Hurdling a barstool, she was across the room in two seconds, twisting the locks and throwing open the door. Zoelner stood on the threshold in jeans and a leather jacket, his expression unreadable.
“Mac,” she said, or at least tried to say. Her throat was so restricted by the presence of her heart that it came out sounding more like a wheezing Mahhh. She swallowed and tried again. “Is he okay? Is he hurt? Do you—”
“Relax,” Zoelner said, grabbing her elbow and steering her back into the bar. “Mac’s fine.” A whooshing sigh of relief gushed from her, and it was then she realized her knees were shaking like the overhead fixtures tended to do on Wednesday nights when a troop of local line-dancers took over the place. When Zoelner spotted her uncle sitting at the bar, he dipped his chin. “Theo. You’re looking well. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see that.”
“Thanks to you and the boys of BKI,” her uncle said.
Zoelner waved off his comment. “No need for thanks. Just doing our jobs.”
And Delilah still couldn’t quite believe how blasé her uncle had been when she explained to him in the hospital—after getting the go-ahead from Frank “Boss” Knight, of course—what exactly the Black Knights were and why exactly they’d been there assisting in his rescue.
Yeah, that makes sense, was all he’d said in answer to her revelation. Then he’d gone back to eating pudding while watching the Cardinals trounce the Cubs on the television hanging from the hospital ceiling.
Makes sense? Makes sense? she’d thought at the time. In what world? But then she figured it made sense in the covert government mission world her uncle had been a part of back in the day. And, go figure, they’d not mentioned a word of it since.
Men, she thought with an eye roll. Then she decided to narrow that down to super-secret former and/or current government men… They were seriously exasperating.
“When does the cast come off?” Zoelner asked her uncle, bending to scratch Fido behind the ears. The dog was sitting in front of him, holding a paw up for a shake.
“Next week, thank goodness,” her uncle said. “I’ve had an itch I haven’t been able to get to for six days now.”
“Sounds awful.” Zoelner grinned, rubbing Fido’s belly when it was presented to him. The big goofy canine was on his back, thick tail swooshing across the floorboards, head thrown back so his upper jowls sagged and made him look like he was smiling maniacally. Delilah could only shake her head and grin, wondering how she’d ever lived without the dog’s daily antics to make her laugh. Then Zoelner glanced up at her. “You got a couple of minutes? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
“Sure,” she said, brow puckering. “You want some coffee?” She glanced at her watch. It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but the look on Zoelner’s face told her he could maybe use something a little stronger. “Or a beer, perhaps?”
“Coffee’s fine,” Zoelner said, standing and walking with her over to the bar. He grabbed a stool while she skirted the long mahogany length. This time she took the time to lift the hinged section at the end before slipping in behind.
While she poured him a cup of joe, her uncle folded his newspaper, grabbed his crutches, and said, “I’m gonna head outside to smoke a cigar.” He shot her a meaningful look. “And I don’t want to hear a word about it.”
“The doctors say you should stop smoking those things.” She placed her hands on her hips, completely ignoring his second sentence.
He rolled his eyes. “The doctors also say I’ve got the cholesterol levels of a twenty-year-old.” He began hobbling toward the door at the back of the bar, the one leading to the alley. “So I figure I’m ahead of the curve. Besides, a man my age has to enjoy what pleasures he can.”
“And speaking of pleasures,” she called to him, “stop sharing your stogies with the agents in the surveillance cars. You’re a bad influence!”