Page 55 of Fangs and Fudge

She was quiet as she typed the texts.

My phone buzzed again a minute later.

“Cross is headed to our house now,” she said.

“Anything from–”

My phone buzzed.

“They want to meet at a club tonight at ten. Let me look where it is.” She was quiet for a minute. “It’s across the river. Twenty-five minutes from Blur and it’s open until four am. I’ll tell them we’ll meet at two instead.”

Part of what I’d loved about working at Blur was the earlier closing time. We were almost always out of there by one-thirty. Now that I knew what Shepard and his guys did, the hours made more sense.

“As long as Cross goes with us, it sounds like a plan,” I said. “But you know ditching Doc is going to cause us problems, right? Especially after telling Shepard about Cross.”

“Why did you change your mind about telling him?”

“Seeing Sierra like that and knowing how much you’re worrying about Anchor. Not that I’m not worrying. I just didn’t realize how much you liked him.”

I glanced at her and saw her head tipped down toward the phone.

“I didn’t know how much I liked him until he was gone,” she said softly.

“We’ll find him, and you can tell him,” I said.

She lifted her head and gave me a sad, crooked smile. “Does that mean my V is ungrounded?”

“Only because you’re exceptionally pathetic right now. But not when I’m in the house. You need to give me a heads up before you launch all your muchness at Anchor.”

“Deal.”

I pulled up in front of our house and caught movement in my rearview mirror. With a frown, I watched the truck park a block down, just on this side of the curve in our road.

Vena saw I was looking back and turned in her seat.

“Is that MC’s truck?” she asked.

“Let it go,” I said softly. “We have a few hours before our shift starts. You can watch some reruns of The Other House while I whip you up something sweet.”

When we got out of the car, I noticed Doc’s little electric number a block down in the other direction.

“Still want to let it go?” Vena asked.

“Yep. I dropped a bomb on Shepard, and he’s freaking out. Do you know what he wanted to do?”

“What?”

“A strip search for bites.”

Vena cackled so hard that she stumbled.

“Figured you’d enjoy that,” I said.

“The man is devious. You still haven’t said how you ended up lip-locked with him. It looked impressive, by the way.”

I unlocked the door as I rolled my eyes at her.

“Don’t ask.”

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