Page 14 of Fire for Effect

“Language!” Mary and Tyler reprimanded in unison.

“Rude!” Goose chided his kids.

“Show ‘em,” I said, trying to put the absent member of our team out of my head and nodding at Top’s cards.

He flipped his cards to reveal an Ace and a Queen, and rolled his eyes, picking up all the cards in the middle. Top was shit at this game. He couldn’t bluff, and he was rarely good at knowing if one of his friends lied. The man could read an enemy combatant with frightening accuracy, but once you were in his inner circle, then he had no instinct whatsoever.

Charlotte leaned down to give me a one-armed hug from behind. She kissed my temple and whispered, “He’ll call.”

She was right. He always called on my birthday. When he first left for his new career, he told me he’d call on my birthday, and he did. He did the year after as well. I had no reason to think he wouldn’t this year.

Except that the last time I saw him, he’d gotten shot in the thigh while protecting me. We fought like hell the whole time he was healing, and the day he left, he barely said a word to me. There were two reasons why he wouldn’t call – the first, and most likely, he didn’t like me anymore. The second, because he was gone.

Charlotte got up and went back to the kitchen, pulling a lasagna out from the massive five-range stove. She waved the kids over, and made them get plates of food, which they ate happily on little tv trays on the couch, keeping their noses planted in their electronics.

“Thank you!” Goose said, loudly, as a way to reprimand his kids for their bad manners.

When his kids yelled back, “Thanks, Mrs. McClanahan!” he shook his head.

“One ten.”

He dumped a single card on the deck, and no one questioned it. Goose was a shitty liar.

“When are you going to move into the cabin, Taz?” Top asked, eyeing his growing stack of cards with dismay. “You don’t have to be out there in the damn trailer. Hell, keep the trailer, and just move into a solid building.”

I shook my head. “I’m good where I am.”

“Paying rent for land that doesn’t even have electricity?” Top snorted. “Between the hellish winters, and the high winds we’ve been having, I’m surprised your trailer hasn’t tipped over and crushed you.”

“The trailer is more than I need.”

“You could have a house on my property for free.” He shook his head. “Veder’s already crashing in the barn–”

“He’s doing great renovations on it, so it’s not crashing!” Charlotte called over her shoulder. “He’s such a good help around here.”

“– We could arrange the same for you.” Top kept on talking, even through his wife’s interruption. “You were an Engineer. Hell, you might be more helpful than VD.”

Top’s property was hundreds of acres, largely undeveloped. The old farmhouse was grand for its age, seated on top of a hill, deep into the wood line, and unseen from the major road that was right at the end of his two-mile driveway. The house was held together by spackle and duct tape. The guest cabin was in slightly better shape.

Once Goose’s kids were fed, Charlotte came by to hover over her husband, placing her hands on his shoulders.

“What we’re saying is we’d like you to be here. We’d love it if you lived in the cabin!” Then she smiled, tenderly. “I know Griff wouldn’t mind coming back to this place.”

I glared at her.

Ever the Mama, she was always trying to set me and Griff up. If she could, she’d be locking us up in broom closets and throwing us out to sea in a rowboat without oars, just to see if we’d finally give her more “Grandbabies”.

“You’ll be the first stop when he’s finally home.” Charlotte smiled, completely unaffected by my molten stare.

“Bullshit,” I snorted. “He hates me half the time.”

“Really?” Charlotte said, wiping the back of her hand over her brow that had begun to sweat as she slaved over the stove. “Doesn’t seem like it. After all, he sent us all an email to make sure we were doing something for your birthday tomorrow.”

“We’re not supposed to tell her that!” Top said, leaning back in his seat and shooting his wife the approximation of a reprimanding look. But he loved her too much to ever be stern with her. “That was a secret.”

Charlotte gasped, placing her hand over her lips. “Was it?”

She wasn’t appalled at all. She, like Griff, was a spook. She was one of the best, in fact. She had taken down a major Arm’s Dealing Network and got stabbed in the gut for her efforts. So a leaked secret was, most definitely, intentional.

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