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Chapter Four
Atherlittlehouse,Chloe turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. She and Josh had decided that takeout at her place would be best, so Poirot wouldn’t be alone.
Josh walked in behind her with Poirot in his arms.
“His bed is over there. He probably shouldn’t be up on the couch.” She shook her head. Keeping Poirot from jumping on the couch would be a joke. He always chose the couch over his comfy bed, though it was right there next to the couch.
She walked down the hall to the back of the house, set the takeout on the island, and dumped her pack in the kitchen so she could reset her supplies later. “Wanna sit at the table or couch?”
Josh had followed her. “I’m fine with the couch. Poirot might appreciate the company.”
They pulled the food out of the bags and went to the living room. She loved that Josh was okay not filling the quiet space with words. She didn’t doubt that he was an extrovert, or at least more so than her, but the silence between them was always comfortable.
She grabbed a special treat for Poirot, and after she turned on some music in the background, they settled in the living room, with Poirot surprisingly asleep on his bed.
Five minutes of silent eating seemed as much as Josh could take. “You know what I don’t know about you?”
She paused with her fork in her mouth. Despite the fork-full of chow mein, her mouth went dry.
“Why did you join SAR?”
She slid the fork from her mouth and poked at her food. “In high school. Got lost hiking.” That’s all she was going to say about that.
Josh was studying her.
She squirmed.
“There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
She shrugged. “What got you involved?”
His lips scrunched close in a smile. “I see what you did there.”
She concentrated on her food and tried to get a piece on the fork.
“It’s okay. While I’d love to hear the whole story, I won’t push. There are times you remind me of my sister. I’ve learned the hard way to not push her to talk about things she isn’t comfortable with.”
“I’d still like to meet her. She’s the detective, right?”
He nodded and took a bite of his food and then a swig of soda. “Hurricane Katrina. I went down to help with disaster relief.”
“I always forget you are that much older than me. I was barely in high school when that happened.”
“Just call me an old man. I can deal with it.” He winked at her.
“You aren’tthatold.”
He moved his fork toward her dish. She leaned it toward him and let him take a bite. This wasn’t their first time getting takeout. But something was different tonight. She wasn’t sure what it could be. Maybe it was just Gabe’s words resounding. Maybe it was because she cried on Josh’s shoulder this afternoon. Or maybe it had to do with the way Josh kept looking at her.
She filled her fork again. “Tell me about Katrina.”
His expression shifted as he looked out across the room but didn’t seem to see anything. “It was intense.”
She took her bite and waited for him to formulate his words.
“There was this one family we tried to rescue. We took a boat into the neighborhood looking for people who still needed to be evacuated. They were on the roof. A woman wept. Looked like she’d been crying for hours. Her father, a seventy-year-old man, had slipped off the roof when the waters were rushing around them.” Josh swallowed.
Chloe couldn’t take another bite. Josh’s stillness told her this story wasn’t going to end well.
