Jude ignored the jab as he watched the egg simmer in the pan. He’d already buttered toast, which waited on a nearby plate along with a few sliced oranges.
“What if I just keep feeding you? Will you reconsider? You should never kick your boyfriend out of the apartment on an empty stomach.”
At the wordboyfriend, I felt my toes tingle. We’d actually done it. We’d moved in together. In Chicago. Jude was thriving at his new job at the Cheese Council, and I’d gotten an apprenticeship at the Lawton and Warne Agency.
I’d need to work three years as a private eye before I could apply for my own license, but Kate Warne, my new boss, said I was one of the most promising candidates she’d ever seen.
And that meant something, considering Kate helped form the agency after she retired from the Chicago PD and nearly single-handedly foiled a plot to assassinate the mayor a few years back. She was an icon.
I grabbed the bread and bit into the buttered toast. “You’re right. I should never make big decisions hungry,” I mumbled, mouth full of crumbs. It was hard to believe I was settling into domesticated life with Jude, but I was.
“You’ll never be hungry on my watch,” Jude promised me. A sizzle from the pan drew his attention back to the stove. “Ah! Time to flip!”
He flicked the pan with his wrist, and the solid circle of omelet flipped perfectly around in the pan. He leaned over, grabbed some shredded cheese, and tossed it in the middle before he folded the beauty in half.
My phone pinged, reminding me that I had a meeting with Kate this morning, so I couldn’t be late.
“Is that omelet ready?” I glanced at the time. “I think we’re both cutting it close on time. We could be late.”
“I don’t know—that sounds like an awful lot of ‘we’ you’re using,” Jude teased.
I gave him a playful punch in the abdomen.
“I could always move back to Lake Sanguis,” I offered.
Jude laughed. “You would never.”
It might not be a place I really wanted to live, but I had actually made peace with it. I no longer saw the nickname Thin Ice as a taunt, or believed Lake Sanguis was the place where karma took a permanent hiatus.
Russo was in jail, and so was Tammy.
Tammy had a court date soon, that I knew. Oscar wasn’t on top of it as much anymore, since she’d been transferred to the county jail months ago to await trial. I’d been expecting more follow-up from the prosecutors on both cases, but so far had received minimal information from them.
Russo still had an annoyingly large group of fans that seemed to be growing every minute, with all kinds of conspiracy theories about Tammy being a patsy. Despite the facts, no one wanted to believe Tammy was the Canceled Killer. In fact, she all but disappeared from the news, proving we did, actually, ignore women of a certain age.
Meanwhile, the hashtag #FreeRusso trended nearly every day on every platform.
“Omelet’s ready,” Jude said, handing me my piping-hot plate. “Wasn’t Tammy supposed to have a court date today? Do we know for what?”
“I’m not sure. Her lawyer is probably trying to have evidence thrown out,” I said as I shoveled in a big bite of delicious egg. Tammy had been denied bail, but her indictment was sealed, so I wasn’t sure of the extent of the charges against her. In fact, the federal prosecutors were being annoyingly close-lipped about the whole case. Neither Russo nor Tammy had gone to trial yet, and the wheels of justice seemed to be moving very, very slowly.
“Russo’s trial is when?” Jude asked.
“They haven’t set a date yet,” I said. But the sooner they did, the better. I’d testified during the bail hearing, and thankfully, the judge denied him bail, too. He was absolutely a danger to me, Jude, and anyone else in my orbit.
My phone dinged with an incoming news alert.
I dropped my fork.
“Tammy escaped,” I said, scrolling through the single paragraph of news.
“What?” Jude rushed over to my side to look at my phone. We both read quickly. She’d somehow walked out of prison five days ago. I felt a shiver of fear run down my spine. The woman had been free for nearly a week.
“Clericalerror?” I read aloud, and Jude and I exchanged a glance. “Another inmate was scheduled for release, and somehow, they confused the names?”
“That can’t be right,” Jude said, and then he kept reading. “Oh, actually, apparently this is the third time this year that has happened at this particular jail. I guess not Wisconsin’s finest.”
“She did this somehow; it wasn’t just luck—or incompetence,” I said. “This is all Tammy.”
