Page 66 of Happily Never After

“I’m going to check the property.” Luke pulled a gun out of the kitchen junk drawer and tucked it in the waistband of his jeans.

“Luke, you’re going to shoot your buttcheek—hi, Charlie. Listen, is Bill home? Good. Have him check your house immediately. Someone just tried to abduct Mom.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

To Do:

- Call Mom every fifteen minutes

- Re-calibrate motion sensors

- Email that doggy daycare

Claire awoke with a start.Why was it so dark in here? Had the smog of Los Angeles finally completely blacked out the moon? Hang on, was she standing? Oh, boy.

She moved her right elbow and banged into something wooden. Okay, there was a door behind her. At least she was indoors. What was that in her hand? It was heavy and long. She dropped it on the ground. A metallic thud shook the floor. Must be the baseball bat she kept under the bed. And something crumbly was in her other hand. She sniffed cautiously. That was the unmistakable aroma of Mindy’s legendary chocolate chip cookies, freshly stress-baked after both sisters had reported their houses were secure. There was no point in wasting it.

Cookie devoured, she slid to the right like she was doing the Cha Cha Slide.Crash. Something hit the floor. She screeched and jumped backward. The wall gave way behind her, and she landed flat on her back in the middle of Luke’s foyer.

Oof. The impact stunned her lungs. A pinched, shallow breath offered little relief. She glanced up. The folding door to the coat closet stood ajar.

“Claire?” Footsteps thundered down the stairs. Luke, shirtless and panicked-looking, jumped into the foyer. A gun was clutched in his hand, and he swung it from side to side like a cop on TV. “Is someone here? What the hell are you doing? And what are you wearing?”

Claire glanced down. A red, sequined evening gown glittered in the half-light. She had packed it with the intention of wearing it to Bri’s premiere. Now it was sure to be covered in six-month-old dust and dirt.

Luke seemed to be staring at her head. She reached up and felt around. Something was stuck to her head. She wrenched back and forth. A spray of bobby pins pinged out of her hair, and a top hat appeared in her hand. A dozen objects slid out and clattered onto the floor. Zip ties.

“Huh.” She dropped it onto the herringbone tile. Where in the hell had she found a top hat? That wasn’t one of her disguises. “Everything’s fine. I think I was just sleepwalking again.”

Luke swore. “You need to email Dr. Goulding.” His voice was like stone.

“I will. In the morning.” She sat up. Her head throbbed. Was it from the wine or falling through a closet door?

At that moment, Mindy charged down the stairs, hoisting a wooden chair overhead. “If there’s someone in this house, I swear I’ll ram this entire chair up your ass,” she called in a voice much deeper than usual.

“It’s fine. There’s no one here,” Claire said from the floor.

“What are you doing on the floor?” Mindy asked, setting the chair down and helping Claire up.

“Oh, you know. I just thought I’d try to see things from the dog’s perspective. Ouch. What is—” She lifted the hem of her cocktail dress. Her Swiss Army Knife was duct taped to the inside of her thigh.

“You’re insane,” Luke said, disappearing back upstairs with the gun.

“At least my sleepwalking sessions are more tactical now. I had two weapons with me.” Three if you counted the cookie.

Mindy sighed and dropped into the chair.

“Sorry for waking you up.”

“I couldn’t sleep anyway.” Mindy drew her legs up, hugging them to her chest. “I can’t stop thinking about your mom.”

“Me neither,” Claire said. “This is so much worse than when it was just Barney. The worst he ever did was break into Luke’s house and paw print Rosie. Well, aside from then trying to kill me. Where are the dogs?” She sat bolt upright.

“They’re in your room. I already checked.”

“Thank god.” She really needed to stop leaving them alone. They had passed a doggy daycare business five minutes from the house. If they had sufficient security protocols, she was going to have no choice but to enroll Rosie and Winston.

“Well, since we’re up, maybe we should take another look at the murder board,” Mindy suggested. She stood and walked into the living room.

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