“You little shit,” I howled at him, and he ran screaming from the room, with me close on his heels.
“The neighbors aren’t going to make good character witnesses if they hear you abusing a child!” he shouted over his shoulder. He stopped after rounding the kitchen table in the kitchen, putting it between us.
“I think the neighbors will let this one slide,” I smirked, feinting left but going right. He fell for it, and I snagged his arm and spun him upside down, his feet pointed in my face, his arms dangling, his face red.
“Put me down, you overgrown ape!” he screamed at me. “This isn’t how someone wearing a tie should act!”
“It is if the person wearing it has an annoying little brother who thinks he’s so damn funny!” I yelled back, holding both his legs with the crook of my arm as I reached down to tickle his exposed stomach.
“Oh, real civilized!” he huffed out between screams of laughter. “I’m sure you’ll knock ’em dead for sure. Should I pack my bag now for when they come to take me away?”
This stopped me cold. Every fear put into one short sentence, uttered in the laughter of a child.
I set him down carefully, putting his feet on the ground, and knelt before him. He was still giggling quietly to himself, tears streaming down his scarlet face. I reached up and brushed the hair from his forehead. “You know I’ll never let that happen, right?” I murmured.
He smiled and it was beautiful. He jumped into my arms and said simply, “I know.”
There was a knock at the door.
“You may want to answer that,” he said, letting me go.
I went to the door, expecting Mrs. Paquinn, but not expecting Anna and Creed. So of course, all three were there. “We all set to go?” Creed asked, a grin on his face.
“We?”
He pushed his way inside, knocking me back, making room for Anna and Mrs. Paquinn, all of whom were doing an excellent job of ignoring my flaring nostrils and that vein pulsing out of my forehead.
“Well, yeah,” he said succinctly. “You did realize that you weren’t going by yourself, right? Don’t be stupid, Bear.”
“Yeah, don’t be stupid,” echoed Anna and Mrs. Paquinn.
“Yeah, don’t be—”
“Kid, don’t you dare say another word,” I snapped. I turned back to the others. “I made it very clear that I was going by myself. I told you this all specifically. Was there something that didn’t quite sink in with those words?”
Mrs. Paquinn rolled her eyes. “Don’t be daft, dear. Wasn’t it you that said those lovely things about us being family and some such? I remember being moved to tears because of it. Didn’t you, Anna?”
Anna nodded and looked me in the eyes. “Of course, Mrs. Paquinn. And he told us how much he loved us and that he needed our help. Right, Kid?”
Oh so now she wants to help me, I thought darkly.
“Right,” the Kid said, and I wondered if this whole thing was scripted, because it sounded a little too perfect. “And since, really, it’s all about me, I think I should have a say in who goes.”
“And?” Creed asked.
“We all go,” he said, grinning.
“And Creed said I get to drive!” Mrs. Paquinn cackled.
“Did you know she used to race stock cars?” Creed asked.
She beamed.
“YOU’VE got quite a cheering section, don’t you?” Ms. Erica Sharp of Weiss, Goldstein, and Eddington said to me, looking over my shoulder at the Kid, Anna, Creed, and Mrs. Paquinn, all seated behind me in her spacious office.
I grimaced. “You could say that.” I neglected to tell her that when the secretary called my name and motioned for me to Erica’s office, the others had all stood like their damn names had been called too.
I knew they were all smiling like idiots at the back of my head.