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“But Ma…”

“I bet we can find a way to do chores and go on a goose chase,” Doyle said, standing as well. He folded his arms across his chest and waited for Sadie to offer either permission or a better excuse. She had ‘overprotective mother’ written all over her. He knew the look well since his own mother was the same way.

“All right,” she whispered, pure love in her eyes as she focused on her son. “Just stay close to the house. Not a step past the barn, you hear me?”

“Sure!” Teddy ran for the back door.

“A word first, Wally.” Sadie’s hand on his arm stopped Doyle in his tracks.

“I’ll be right out, Teddy,” Doyle said, eyes locked on the hazel ones in front of him.

Instead of releasing her hold, Sadie stepped in closer. “Keep your eyes on him, please. Teddy…he’s different than normal boys. Sometimes he has episodes.”

“What sort of episodes?” Doyle asked.

Eyes swimming with unshed tears, Sadie sucked in her bottom lip. Doyle placed a hand over the one she held his arm with and waited, determined to give her the time she needed.

“Sometimes he can’t catch his breath,” she said. “It usually happens when he’s outside and gets too excited. There was a time or two, when he was nothing but a tiny tike, when he turned blue and I thought I was gonna lose him.”

Suddenly, Doyle understood the overprotective tendencies this strong woman showed toward her son. Sadie’s gaze lowered toward their hands, and Doyle lifted a finger to capture the single tear drifting down her face.

“Sounds like asthma,” Doyle said gently. “I carry a tablet for that myself.”

He realized his mistake when Sadie’s gaze snapped up toward him filled with questions. Questions that probably included, who the hell is this man, and Is he speaking English? He wanted to smack himself in the face, but that would probably make it worse.

“I’m not a medical doctor,” Doyle said, clearing his throat and shuffling his feet. “But I have a good one back in…Washington, and she told me all that. She gave me this to help when I feel like I can’t breathe.” He pulled an emergency micro-tab out of his pocket and held it up in the palm of his hand.

“What’s that itty bitty thing supposed to do?” Sadie asked, pulling away from him and cocking her hip to the side to place a hand upon it.

“It’s medicine. Maybe a doctor can do something for Teddy is all I’m saying.”

“The doc in town didn’t do a damn thing. Wait a second—did you say you had a female doctor out there in Washington?” Sadie narrowed her eyes at him.

Doyle bit the inside of his cheek. He’d done it again. Idiot. This was exactly why he believed the engineer should stay with the machine.

“Teddy must be waiting for me,” he said in answer along with an awkward smile and left her there to stare after him.

When the back door creaked closed, Doyle found Teddy poking at a spot in the dirt with a stick.

“Hey, bud. What’ve you got there?”

Teddy looked up and froze with the stick in mid-poke. “Just trying to figure out what this is doing here.”

Doyle’s pulse sped up when he saw the silver glint on the ground. Could Teddy have already found the cloak? He felt both extremely lucky and weirdly disappointed as he hurried over to examine the finding.

It wasn’t the cloak. Doyle supposed he should’ve figured that out immediately by the size, but he’d let his excitement get in the way of logic.

“It’s a badge,” Doyle said, picking it up and holding it up to the sun. It was a tin star, just like in the movies, only this one was the real deal. “Is your dad a sheriff?”

“My pa is dead, but don’t tell no one. And no, he wasn’t a sheriff,” Teddy said with a furrowed brow that drew in his constellation of freckles like a swirling galaxy. “That’s a volunteer badge, not a sheriff’s badge anyhow. I thought you were smart.”

Doyle reeled back from both the revelation and the accusation. Maybe Sadie’s current husband wasn’t her first, or this kid’s dad. “I’m smart at putting parts together to make things, maybe not so smart when it comes to things like sheriffs and cowboys.”

Teddy laughed, and Doyle realized two things at once—that his smile was genuine, and that he hadn’t heard a laugh like that in a long time. He pocketed the star and rose to his feet.

“Whelp, wherever it came from, you’ve proved you’re good at spying strange metal objects, and that’s exactly the kind of help I need. What I’m looking for is about this big,” Doyle motioned with his hands to show the size of the cloak, “and looks kind of like a thick stick of metal.”

Sniffing, Teddy rubbed his nose with the back of a hand. “What’s it do?”