Page 89 of Jagged

"What's her name?" asked Mrs. Silva, her expression gentle.

"Clementine." I gulped when her name left my lips as the anxiety over the situation spiraled. Clem had already met my friends; it was Frankie that worried me the most.

"Is she tall? Long blonde hair?" asked Frankie suddenly, her interest peaked.

"Yeah…why?"

"She comes to the salon. Or she used to when I worked there more." Frankie tapped her lip thoughtfully. "Stylish. Pretty hot. A little weird though."

"She's not weird—"

"Not too friendly, if I remember."

"That's not true, Frankie. Stop it." Wyatt nudged her with his elbow. "This is why you end up with people yelling at you constantly. Just stop goading everyone."

That seemed to do it and Frankie settled down. Wyatt's normally calm, easy-breezy demeanor seemed to fade suddenly with a hint of passion I hadn't seen from him save for skateboarding or his affection for Tati.

Mrs. Silva rolled with it, and turned to me. "If you're comfortable, invite Clementine to family dinner on Sunday. We would love to meet her."

"I'll think about it…"

The front door opened suddenly, and Zay rushed in, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on me.

"Jags."

"Yeah?"

"We gotta go," he said, waving me toward him.

"Okay…" I broke away from the small pack and snatched my phone off the desk. "Later."

"Think about it!" Mrs. Silva called after me.

"I will."

"Why didn't you answer your phone?" Zay pressed right away as I hopped into the passenger seat of his car.

"I was busy. What's going on?"

"We got a lead."

"We always have a lead. To nowhere."

"Maybe. Remember those demo companies we were looking at? The inquiry you sent to one of them down in Tacoma got back to us. They do demolition but they also have a lot of land where they bring stuff back to sort through it for scrap. Apparently, they found skeletal remains a few years back when they were digging around one of these areas. I sent in for the reports on it, but haven't gotten anything back yet. We need to head down there."

"All right. You driving?"

"Yeah. Feds are gonna meet us there."

It took a tad over an hour to get there, maybe more, in the rush hour traffic. Zay chatted my ear off about the case. His excitement over the potential lead didn't match mine at all.

"You're quiet," he burst forth mid-sentence. "Why?"

"I want tacos—"

"I already fed you tacos."

"More."

---