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“Gulag. I was in a gulag,” Shae said.
Jenny looked at her. “Of course you were. Anyone else? Maybe, I dunno, Ned, are you being chased by the mob?”
“Not currently,” Ned said. Iris wanted to hit him.
“And how about you, Garrett? I mean, you kill anybody lately?”
“JJ, calm down.”
“Mom. Just, take a breath.” Fraser, and as the oldest, he might be the bravest. “Even I don’t know what’s going on with Iris.”
“Great. Blow it back on me. Listen, I’m not hiding anything. I don’t know what is happening!”
“Well then, let’s figure it out,” said her dad. “Maybe that’s why we’re all back in the same room.”
A siren started to blare, and her mother turned back to the stove to see smoke pouring from the bottom of her scorched batch of pancakes. She scooped them up and dropped them into the sink.
Ned grabbed a towel and started waving it over the fire alarm, but it blared, undaunted.
Finally, Hud reached up and simply disconnected it.
“Show off,” Ned said.
But her mother stood at the sink, staring at her burned pancakes. “That’s…enough. Everybody sit down. We’re going to pray, and then we’re going to eat. And then we’re going to talk.”
Silence, and then everyone headed for the table.
“Do those pancakes have blueberries in them?” Hud said as he sat down next to Iris. “Yum.”
She shot him a look.
“What? I’m starved.”
Her mom set bacon down in front of him. “Thanks, Mrs. M.”
Her father made them hold hands—a tactic he’d used when they were young—but having Hud’s hand in hers seemed somehow fortifying.
An hour later, Hud had finished the retelling of the events—much of what he’d told her dad and entourage when they showed up in Paris, but now Fraser and Pippa, Creed and Imani listened, rapt, especially when Hud got to the part about the boat and then the night in the cave—which he glossed over—and then the death of Abe Bartmann.
“I should have never left you guys in Paris,” he said, which was interesting. “And then Ziggy called me in Germany and told me that yes, Abe’s death was an assassination, and that someone was still stalking Iris.”
“And you let her go out on the field?” Fraser said. And for a second, it looked like he might come over the table.
“I tried to stop her, but—”
“Fraser. I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself.”
“Clearly not!” Ned said, and now Hud put up his hand, becauseshewas going to go over the table.
“Yes, she can. And maybe we’re wrong about Vogel. But it just seemed so coincidental when we found him dead in his flat.”
“How dead?” Fraser asked.
“All the way.” Hud.
“Gunshot to the head.” Ned. “We got out of there with his phone though.” Ned got up from the table and went out to the entryway. In a second, he returned with the phone. “It died on the way here, but it’s an Android. And I’m hoping Coco can get in it.”
“I’ll call Coco after breakfast,” Fraser said.
