Elliot looked like he was going to be sick. “What are you…? What, uh, what are you going to do with them?”
Monty pressed a fat envelope into Elliot’s palm. “Money’s all there,” he said, sidestepping Elliot’s question.
Elliot wandered back to the bed of the truck and stared at the coolers. They’d managed to fit them all comfortably in three, but they’d brought the fourth to keep all the coolers snugly in place as they drove. Something about leaving this parking lot with one empty cooler made the contents of her stomach churn.
Seconds from pulling the plug on the whole thing, she watched as Elliot unloaded one cooler—the empty one—set the envelope of cash inside, and placed it a few feet from the truck. He tightened the strap on the other coolers and stepped back into the driver’s seat. “Get in,” he commanded out of the corner of his mouth.
She did as she was told. “Sorry, gentlemen. This isn’t going to work for us,” he called out, swinging the driver’s-side door closed. “Keep your money, and the cooler is a parting gift.”
The two men sprinted for the cooler. The truck tires screeched as Elliot laid down on the gas and peeled out of the parking lot.
“I’m sorry. I know. I just couldn’t do it to the turtles. They didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll live with them in a cabin. You can live in the other. It’ll be—”
“Elliot!” She laughed. “It’s fine. I was just about to do the same thing. Maybe not so dramatically…”
“I thought about that. I wasn’t sure how well they’d handle uspulling out at the last second, so I figured the element of surprise couldn’t hurt.”
“I guess we’re parents now. Turtle parents.”
She shook her head, smiling. “There has to be a better fate for these animals than us. They’ve suffered enough already.”
“I don’t think the rest of the underground animal-dealing community has much more to offer us than Monty did.”
“I’ve got to have other contacts,” she assured him. “Keep driving. I’ll see what I can drum up.”
Luckily, the second-shadiest person she knew, Gran, responded quickly with an actual solution that wasn’t even so shady: a link to a Facebook page for an aquatic animal sanctuary not far from her senior community on Lake Superior.
Gran, dressed in a long-sleeved chartreuse kaftan as though they’d interrupted her lounging on the lido deck on this unseasonably warm April day, had insisted on meeting them at the animal sanctuary, claiming that “the elderly require frequent interaction or they die.” Lainey suspected it had more to do with wanting to get her eyes on Elliot.
“I used to rehome Gil’s reptiles all the time. If the animals went through all the trouble of escaping captivity, they’ve more than earned their freedom, as far as I’m concerned,” Gran argued while watching them unload the coolers from the back of the truck.
“How did you get here so fast?” Lainey asked.
“They have real Uber over here, darling,” she parried.
Elliot’s mouth turned up in an amused smirk, catching the attention of Lainey’s grandmother. Gran arranged her face into a warm, inviting grin. “You must be the man who tried to evictmy granddaughter and somehow coerced her into a fraudulent marriage.”
If Lainey had been drinking water, she would’ve done a spit take.
The color drained from his face. “I…uh…that’s not how I’d characterize it.”
“Really? How might you characterize it? Please. Explain it to an old woman.”
Lainey was enjoying this, but she was beginning to grow concerned for Elliot’s blood pressure. “All right, Gran. He’s not ready to go toe to toe with you quite yet. Give him some time to prepare talking points for next time.”
“Ooh! A debate. That sounds fun.” Gran looked Elliot up and down. “You’re handsome. I’ll give you that. What a chin!”
Elliot’s head spun between the two Davis women. “Um, thank you?”
“Don’t thank her. She’s not complimenting you. She doesn’t trust handsome men.” Lainey hiked up a cooler on her thigh with a grunt. “Carmen said on the phone that she wanted us to meet her by the outdoor enclosures.”
Behind the commercial building was a slew of natural-looking pools and sunbaked grass, all fenced in for protection from predators. The vet tech, Carmen, was an older woman with dark brown hair and tanned skin dressed in head-to-toe khaki. She lovingly examined each of the thirty-three turtles with gentle hands and a soft, soothing voice.
“Look at these guys,” Carmen cooed. “Thank you for bringing them to us. We’ll take good care of them.”
Elliot, who apparently had no idea what was good for him, volunteered to drive Gran back home, even agreeing to a quick stop at a local convenience store.
“Not this one,” Lainey suggested casually, working hard not to tip her hand. “The one on Peach has Rolos.”
