Page 114 of Until Joy

“What you can do is go holler for Jerome. He’s watching the news, and his biscuits will get cold unless you can pull him away.”

“Yes’m.” I went down the hall to the small living room and found Mr. Wylie in his recliner watching the news. They were doing a sports recap. “According to your wife, if you don’t come to the kitchen soon, your biscuits will get cold.”

He looked up at me and grinned. “She always says that, but that woman has been making sure my biscuits stay hot for over forty years.”

I laughed. That was the life. I wanted to be able to say the same thing about Joy forty years down the line. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He winked at me, and I wandered back to the kitchen.

Miss Laverne pressed a cup of coffee into my hands, and I sat down at the kitchen table. I loved this part of my day, with these thirty minutes of normalcy, surrounded by people who reminded me that good still existed in the world.

“How's our Joy doing?” Miss Laverne settled into the chair beside me at the table.

“Better today. Sleeping in for once.” I sipped the coffee, feeling some of the tension leave my shoulders. “She's been having nightmares since the SWATing.”

“That poor child.” Delilah shook her head as she loaded a plate with scrambled eggs and bacon. “What kind of monster terrorizes an innocent girl?”

“The kind we're going to catch,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

Miss Laverne studied my face with those sharp blue eyes that missed nothing. “You look tired, sweetie. Are you taking care of yourself?”

“I'm fine.”

“That's what men always say.” Delilah set the plate in front of me with motherly authority. “Eat. You're too skinny.”

I chuckled. I couldn’t think of a time since I started playing football in high school that somebody had called me skinny.

For the next twenty minutes, I let myself pretend this was normal. Just a man having breakfast with two women who'd become family, talking about everyday things. Jerome came in and told us all how the Tennessee teams had done over the weekend. Miss Laverne updated me on her quilting project. Delilah complained about her physical therapy exercises. Nobody mentioned stalkers or death threats or the weight of keeping everyone safe.

My phone buzzed with a text from Joy.

JOY: Missing you. Z says you better bring donuts when you come back.

Smiling, I typed back a quick response, when my phone rang.

Unknown number. I had a bad feeling. Not a telemarketer bad feeling. A Spidey sense bad feeling.

“Excuse me, ladies. I need to take this.”

I stepped onto the front porch, swiping to answer.

“Wallace.”

The voice coming through the speaker wasn't human. Digitally altered, robotic, terrifying in its mechanical precision.

“Time's up, Navy man. I'm done waiting. I'm done playing games. I will have Joy today, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.”

The line went dead.

I was already moving, my heart hammering against my ribs. My fingers flew over my phone screen, hitting Z's contact.

He answered on the second ring.

“I want maple bars,” he answered.

“Cut the shit. I just got contacted. He plans to take Joy today.”

“Well, he can’t have her.”