Page 4 of Frisco

“Get this aisle cleaned, and you’ve got ten minutes to do it.”

With that, I went to update Otis.

He was more than open to staying in his office and hiding for another thirty minutes, and Red Demons who? No Red Demons had been in his store.

I hit call on my phone.

He answered right away. “Daughter! How’s it going? Tell me something funny that happened to you today.”

I told him about the soup cans. And about Viola and Mrs. Johnson.

My dad laughed so hard he had to hang up. “Excuse me, my daughter and love of my life, but I went and almost had an accident. You got me laughing so hard.”

2

KALI

The bikers left the store within minutes, but they didn’t leave the parking lot right away. I steered clear of the front, content to finish up the inventory list we needed done by the end of the weekend, but I knew the Red Demons were outside because of their bikes. Trust me. You can’t not hear a Harley, let alone twenty of them.

This group sounded like fifty. Once they left, everything settled down in the store. It was almost boring.

Wait. No. It wasn’t almost boring. It was boring, but I was not complaining.

Noah begged off an hour early.

I sent Ben right after.

It was Sunday night. We usually had the church rush, but after that people were home for the evening, hoping to catch up on their sleep before work or school in the morning. That’s why I loved working on Sundays. A slow shift was peaceful to me. I said boring before because that’s the deflated feeling I got from those still in the store. Two Red Demons fighting had given everyone a rush, and now we were on the other side of that high.

“Kali.” Macy Rodding, the last checkout worker, came up from the back, her purse and keys in hand. In a way, she wasn’t so unlike me. In her forties, going through a divorce herself, but she had two little ones at home to feed, and I knew it was all on her shoulders. Her husband was the town’s lawyer. It wasn’t going to be a fair settlement. Everyone knew what Phil Rodding was like. If he’d been in the soup aisle earlier, I would’ve figured some way to accidentally deck him with a can. I had a feeling Viola and Mrs. Johnson would’ve backed me up.

She came the rest of the way down the aisle to where I was working the only register still open.

She frowned. “I bet you could close early. No one’s going to be coming in. Or I could stay, if you want? I don’t mind. Gets lonely in here when you’re the only one working.”

I was shaking my head before she finished. “I know Natalie and Oliver are waiting for you, and you know it too. No way they went to bed at their bedtime.”

She grinned, softening. “I know. They’re so damn cute. Little buggers, but cute.”

“Go home. I won’t be long behind you.”

She perked up. “You’re going to close early?”

I gave a nod. “I’m thinking Otis won’t get mad—not after today.”

She gave a hearty laugh, and her cheeks flushed. “You can say that again. I knew those bikers were in town, but they’d not come in before. You handled them well.” She cocked her head. “Any other time and Otis would’ve been having a fit at the loss of product. What’d you say to him? You know those bikers?”

I shrugged, deciding then and there to close up, as she’d suggested. “I gave him a little lesson about the Red Demons, and told him if he didn’t say a word about the damage, they wouldn’t burn down the store.”

She gasped, her eyes getting big. “They’d do that?”

I gave another shrug. “Who knows? Maybe. Probably not. We’ll never know now.”

She chuckled and nodded toward my register drawer. “I can stay a few minutes. Walk out with you?”

“Nah.” I locked my door. “Go. Seriously. I got this.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow?”

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