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“I don’t have chores here yet,” he shoots back.
“Sure you do. You’re on egg duty. Crack six into that bowl and don’t leave any shell in it.”
He smiles and gets to work with the enthusiasm he brings to everything. And by the time Aunt Carol shuffles out in her robe, looking none the worse for her ordeal last night, breakfast is almost finished.
I hand her a cup of black coffee. She blows on it forever before taking a sip.
“Did you file the proper permits for this?” she asks.
“Come again, ma’am?”
“This isn’t coffee. It’s an industrial-grade solvent. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how civilized people make coffee. Do you have a coffee grinder?”
“I had one.”
“Well, I’m gonna start a list of things we need from the house, and that’s going at the top.”
“Good idea, ma’am.”
Right as I’m puttin’ breakfast on the table, Linsey comes out in one of my shirts with her hair loose around her shoulders and eases down into a chair. I refill everybody’s coffee, sit down at the head of the table, and bring everyone up to speed.
“Whoever tried to climb through your window at your place last night knew what they were doing. If he wasn’t a professional, he was at least well-versed in crime. That means he’s probably not going to stop. When you don’t come back to the house, he’ll be leveragin’ whatever brain cells he has to track you down.”
Aunt Carol’s hands tighten around her coffee cup. “What are you saying, Sabre? You’re scaring me.”
“I’m not tryin’ to scare you, but you need to understand that things are gonna get worse before they get better.” I glance at Noah. “Do you want to tell them what the military protocol is for that situation?”
“Sergeant Rock says that when you’re being hunted, your best bet is to find a safe place and stay there until you can locate your adversary and turn the tables on him.”
“Then that’s what you need to do. My place is safe. You need to stay here, keep your heads down, and give me and my club brothers enough time to figure this out.”
A short silence spins out in the room.
Then Noah asks, “Does that mean I can’t go to school until we catch this person?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what that means. Your mom and I will make sure you don’t fall behind by bringin’ your schoolwork home. You’ll do every bit of the work, and when this is over, you’ll walk back into that classroom and pick right back up where you left off.”
Noah thinks it over for a few seconds and then asks, “Can I set up a study area? Sergeant Rock says an organized workspace is a force multiplier.”
That doesn’t sound like the Sergeant Rock I read but I don’t point that out. Instead, I answer his question. “Yeah, I’ve got a small empty room at the end of the second floor. I’ll put a table and a comfortable office chair in there for you.”
Linsey’s been pretty quiet this morning. She’s swirling her coffee around in her mug, taking small sips as she listens to me talk.
“What about my job?” she asks. “And my classes?”
“You going to work when your face and name are all over the company website is a really bad idea. It takes two men working around the clock to effectively protect one person in a public settin’. That’s a lot of manpower, Linsey.”
“Sabre, this isn’t just a job. It’s my career. If I lose this job, there isn’t another one in this small town.” Her voice is calm, but she’s white-knuckling her coffee mug. “And the owner’s been good to me. I can’t call her this morning and just walk away from all of it.”
“I’m not asking you to walk away, just step back until you’re safe again.” I reach over and put my hand flat over hers until the mug stops turning. “The Fig survived the banquet shutdown, and it’ll survive this. After what happened at the mayor’s banquet, your employers aren’t gonna want to risk your ex showin’ up with yet more unhinged fuckery. Just tell them the truth.”
She looks at our hands for a long moment. “You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. I’ve spent most of the night thinkin’ about how to keep the three of you safe, and this is the best way.”
She turns her hand over under mine and laces her fingers through mine, squeezing once. Then she reaches for her phone. “Okay. I’ll call the owner and see if I can take a leave of absence. Then I’ll draft the post for the class pages saying classes are temporarily postponed.”
She steps away from the table to make her call. I hate that her food is getting cold. But she comes back smiling. “They totally understood when I asked for a leave of absence. It took some convincing when I asked for a job carve-out. I convinced them it would save the rest of the team a lot of time and energy if I took over planning their upcoming menu updates, tracking and ordering stock, which is all electronic, and managing incoming catering requests. They finally saw the light. It’s not a full-time job but it’s a work-from-home opportunity that keeps me employed while we sort this all out.”
