FORTY-FIVE
At some point, he’d fallen asleep. It was dreamless and uncomfortable, and he wouldn’t have even known it happened except that the light coming in from the window beat against his eyelids until he was forced to concede defeat and wake up. His shoulder hurt. His wrists and hands were numb. His jaw was throbbing like that time he needed a root canal.
But he was still alive, and Ginny had stopped crying.
Also, he needed to piss. Urgently. Very,veryurgently—or what little remained of his dignity would simply wither away and evaporate.
“Dad?” Lex’s muffled voice called out from the restaurant. “Dad, are you dead? Because if you are, I’m going to kill you!”
“Lex?” Shepherd tried to sit up, immediately hit the bonds of his ties, and winced as his neck seized. His hands and feet burned with pin-and-needle pokes. “Lex!”
The kitchen doors slammed open.
“Dad!” Lex said. At the same time, Oscar gasped and shouted, “Shepherd? Shepherd’s girlfriend? I’m sorry, ma’am, I forgot your name.”
“Ginny!” Lex shouted. “Oh my God, what the hell?”
“Alexis,” both Shepherd and Oscar warned as one.
“We got robbed,” Ginny said. Shepherd couldn’t see what was happening. It was the first time he’d heard her speak since Charlie left them, and it was annoying how the sadness in her voice still made him want to punch Death in the throat.
Lex groaned. “You got robbed? That is so embarrassing for me.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Shepherd replied, his need to pee flooding his brain with dangerous levels of sarcasm. “I’m so sorry me being robbed is embarrassing for you!”
“What am I supposed to tell people, huh? That my dad andhis girlfriend got tied up like birthday piñatas? That’ll win melotsof friends at Saltwater Scouts.”
“Hold on, hold on.” Oscar’s foot snagged on a chair leg, shoving Shepherd’s face harder into the tile floor.
Shepherd hissed in pain.
“I can help.” Oscar tried to stick his fingers between the rope and Shepherd’s ribs. Failed to do anything except turn Shepherd’s hiss of pain into a snort of suppressed ticklish laughter. “I’m the best locksmith in the county.”
“These aren’t locks,” Shepherd snapped. “They’reropes.”
“Same basic principle.”
“Just get a knife!”
Lex clapped and whooped. “Yes, knife! Coming right up!”
“No!” shouted Shepherd, Oscar, and Ginny at the same time.
Lex grumbled. “The disrespect in this place, I swear.”
Oscar, trying to untie Shepherd, made the bind around his chest tighter. Shepherd winced, swore, tried to yell at his former best friend over his shoulder, which only made everything hurt worse. Including his bladder. He was going to pee his pants in front of his daughter, the man who had stolen his wife, and his fake fiancée. “Get the damn knife, Oscar!”
“Jeez, OK.” Shepherd heard him stand. “I see where you get your vocabulary from, Lex.”
“Thank you,” Lex replied. “The knives are right here, Oscar, I’ll just—”
Once again, all three adults shouted out, “No!”
Lex swore.
Shepherd had to pee too bad to care.
“So,” Oscar asked, once more behind Shepherd. The ropes pulled as the knife slipped between them and his back. “You gonna tell us, like … what the robbery was about? Did they take your money?”
