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He plowed through breakfast in a semi-trance, overwhelmed by the sharpness and the creaminess of it all, which was distractingly like
Agnes, and then his cell phone vibrated and he pulled it out. The letters that scrolled across the screen were unintelligible groupings of five. Wilson. The real world was calling. So was his breakfast. He put the cell phone away. He’d decode what the world wanted later.
“More coffee?” Agnes said, and when he nodded, she got the coffeepot and filled both their mugs, leaning closer to him to fill his. She smelled good, he thought. She smelled—he searched in his mind for a word. Delicious.
He also liked it that she didn’t ask him about the phone or the message.
A door slammed somewhere in the house, and Shane stood, his gun out.
Agnes stared at it. “Where did—?” Shane put a finger on her lips.
She leaned closer and whispered, “It’s probably Doyle.”
“Why—” Shane began, but then a loud voice with a thick Irish brogue echoed through the house. “Top of the morning, lass.”
Shane put the gun away just as a hulking man limped into the door from the hall. Probably a boxer in his youth, given the poorly healed broken nose and the old scars crisscrossing his ruddy forehead under his shaggy white hair and bushy beard.
“Morning, Doyle,” Agnes said. “Want some breakfast?”
“No thank you, lass, although it’s mighty tempting.” Doyle looked at Shane with piercing blue eyes. “And who is this fine strapping lad?”
“This is Shane, who is staying with me for a while. Shane, Doyle.”
“Pleased to meet—” the old man began, and then he caught sight of the tear in the wallpaper to his right and stiffened. “And what in the name of all that’s holy happened here?”
“Turns out I have a basement. Look.” Agnes went over and pushed on the wall so that the hidden door swung open. “A kid broke in and said, ‘I come for your dog,’ and then he fell into the basement and died.”
“Saints be,” Doyle said, his joviality gone, and went over to poke his head into the doorway.
Shane drank the last of his coffee and pushed his chair under the table. “Thank you for breakfast. I’m going into town to see Joey. If you think of anything else, let me know.” He looked around and picked up a piece of paper on the counter, turning it over to find a blank space. “Got a pen?”
Agnes reached into a cup on the counter by the back door and retrieved a pen. He took it and wrote down his cell phone number and gave it to her, thinking that now four people had it. A crowd. His life was getting complicated.
“Thank you for the number.” She took the paper, tore it in half, scribbled something on it, and held it out to him. “Here’s my numbers. Home and cell. What about Rhett? Should I keep him inside?”
Shane took the paper. “No, I’ll take him with me just in case anybody else comes after him.”
“He likes to hang his head out the window and snort the air,” Agnes said. “Sometimes the snot gets intense.”
“Great.” Shane whistled to the dog.
Rhett looked at him as if he’d said a dirty word.
“Go on, baby,” Agnes said to the dog. “Go with your Uncle Shane. He’s going to take you for a ride.”
Rhett lumbered to his feet, and Agnes bent to pet him, her sweatpants stretching against her butt again.
Uncle Shane turned his eyes away and headed for the hall door, Rhett padding obediently behind him.
He turned back to see Doyle watching him and Agnes standing in the sunlight from the back door, smiling at him surrounded by the scent of coffee and butter and sausage.
“Did you forget something?” she said.
Yeah, he thought I forgot this part of Keyes.
“Be careful today,” he said.
“You, too,” she said, and he nodded and left.
