AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I offered him my cone. “Here.”
His eye lit up. He snatched it from my offered hand and tossed the treat in his mouth, swallowing it whole, just as he had the other.
“Better?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“I was asking you about your time in Inorog so far,” I said. “What did you find?”
“Bad man.”
Well that sounded promising.
“You know who stole the amulet?”
He stared at me, seemingly unsure of how to answer.
“Take me to the bad man, please,” I said.
He rolled off the bench and down the street. I ran after him. He stopped in an alley and pointed up the ladder of a fire escape. With no legs to speak of, it couldn’t have been easy for Fernando to climb this before.
“Is this the B&B that closed thirty years ago?” I asked.
Fernando shrugged, then lifted his hands in the air at me. I picked him up. He climbed around to the back of my head and held tight.
I climbed up the first flight. I asked, “Here?”
“No.”
I climbed up the second flight and paused on the small landing. “He—”
The word dropped from my lips when I saw who was inside the window. Silas Huxley.
He was sitting on the edge of a bed, writing something in his field notes journal on the nightstand…wearingnothing but atowel.I slammed my eyes shut, knowing it was oh-so-wrong to spy on Silas while he was in a private space, practically naked.
The image of him lingered on the inside of my closed eyelids, with just a glimpse searing him there. I could still see his wide naked shoulders, the thick pop of his naked bicep, the trim cut of his sides carrying down to the towel barely clinging to his hips.
I forced my eyes open and away.
“You think Silas took the amulet?” I asked Fernando, genuinely surprised.
He climbed down me onto the awning and pointed in the window. “Bad man.”
“Well, I can’t say I completely disagree, as he’s not my favorite person either. Why exactly do you think he’s bad?”
“Make Lily upset.”
“You think he’s bad because he makes me upset?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very sweet,” I said. “Thank you, Fernando.”
Movement and sound, super close by made me turn. Silas opened the window.
“Ahh!”I fell back in surprise and banged my tailbone on the metal landing.
Silas said, “If you wanted something, you could have come to my door.”
