Page 87 of Talk Birdie to Me

She didn’t even feel guilty about making him wait on those. With all of his previous stalling, he could wait another day. Or longer, if she was back to square one with figuring out who took Gary.

“A little busy evacuating animals. I’ll get to it when I get to it.”

She didn’t wait for a response and ended the call with a hard stab at the screen.

“That sounded intense.” Taylor met Geena with carriers full of small kittens in each hand as they walked to the front together. “If you’re grilling that jerk of an ex, I take it there’s no word on Gary yet?”

“Not yet.” Geena placed her orange cat on the porch lined up with the other carriers. The rain fell in sheets on the roof above them, making it hard to hear anything. Geena raised her voice to a shout. “I thought for sure he’d know something since Gary’s owner had been a client of his.”

Sierra placed her carriers in line and looked at Geena with wide eyes. “Seriously?”

Geena nodded.

She wasn’t sure what else to say. She’d run out of breadcrumbs to chase, and the police weren’t helping at all. They gave the impression they couldn’t care less about a stolen bird.

All she could hope for was that Cody had thought of something. Or someone.

But she couldn’t call him now. The rain was too noisy, and they had too much work to do.

“I’ll worry about Gary more later,” she said.

It was Sierra’s turn to nod as Austin returned to the porch along with Marc, Sierra’s boyfriend, who had also shown up. “Go grab whoever’s left with Taylor. We’ll get these carriers loaded.”

Geena gave a silent salute and headed back inside to help her sister finish clearing the shelter.

22

The next morning, Geena parked in front of the bank’s ATM and rolled down her window, grateful for the covering that shielded her from the rain. She pulled out the debit card for her and Ricky’s joint account and inserted it into the machine. The account was supposed to be used only for shared bills, but since Ricky had been using it for dates and all kinds of nonessentials, she figured she was owed a bit of money from it as well.

Not that she was doing anything frivolous with it. With all the rain and flooding that week, she wanted to have some extra cash on hand, just like she did before hurricanes and any other potential natural disaster.

The screen asked for her PIN, and Geena punched in the four-digit code. The machine then changed to ask how much money she wanted to withdraw, but Geena could only stare at the screen, frozen with a sudden realization.

Could it be?

Someone behind her honked, jolting Geena back to the present moment. She typed in the amount she wanted, then grabbed the cash the machine spit out.

Before she left, she sent a quick text to Cody. Her phone rang seconds later, and she answered it through the car speaker.

“I think you might be right.” Cody’s voice had a nervous edge to it that mimicked the tension of her thoughts for the last minute.

As she exited the bank, Geena shouted over the rain once again pelting her car roof. “How could we miss that?”

What she meant was, How could I have missed that?

“He made a lot of noises,” Cody said. “We weren’t looking for clues like that until he was stolen.”

Geena already couldn’t forgive herself for Gary’s abduction. This miss only fueled that guilt fire.

It also made her even more suspicious of a certain jerk who claimed to not know anything about the parrot that had left a hole in her life with his disappearance.

Ricky would have heard those beeps over the phone. And he knew Anthony had a lot of off-the-books payments since he was getting paid that way. It wasn’t a stretch to believe he might know about Anthony’s potential offshore accounts or wherever he was stashing money. Those beeps and boops could easily lead Ricky to figure out Anthony’s PIN for those accounts.

Cody said something else, but Geena was having trouble hearing him over the strengthening thunderstorm pounding the roof of her car.

“I’m on my way to work,” Geena said. “I’ll call you at lunch. Or you call me when you get a break.”

She knew it was easier for her to step away from her desk than for Cody to answer his cell while he was at the zoo. She was pretty sure she remembered him mentioning he kept his phone in a certain room or locker.

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