Tox quirked a brow, pointing to himself and then her while mouthing, I bumped into you? Calliope ignored him.
The incessant click-clacking on Twitch’s keyboard paused. “Interesting.”
“Not interesting. The opposite of interesting. Mundane, in fact.” Stop talking.
“Okay.” Twitch resumed her typing with the trademark twinkle in her voice.
Twitch already knew most of it, but Calliope explained for the benefit of the men in the car.
“Farrell Whitaker, my crazy editor, has me pulling the threads on another of his conspiracy theories. He thinks Phipps Van Gent, the hedge fund billionaire, is up to something.”
“Crazy like a fox,” Twitch responded. “The Feds are on him like chrome on a bumper. Lots of chatter. I’d like to take a peek at what you discovered tonight.”
Steady saved her from having to explain the computer nightmare.
“First things first, Twitch,” he admonished.
“Right. Sorry. Got distracted. This one was almost too easy. No fun at all. The client’s ex-husband has a nanny cam routed to his phone and laptop. The little boy is at the father’s country house. Already got the location. Nathan’s in town for a board meeting, so he’s handling the extraction with Ren.”
Calliope fingered the flash drive in the bottom of her now nearly empty messenger bag. Most of her makeup and sundries were scattered on Broad Street. A wave of dread washed over her. She felt her keys, but not her wallet. The conversation in the car faded as her ears started to buzz.
“What’s wrong?” Tox laid a hand on her shoulder, sensing her distress.
“My wallet. It fell out of my bag when I dropped it.”
Steady chimed in. “Forget it. It’s gone by now. Do you have your bank’s app? You can block your cards right now.”
“Yeah, I’ll do it when I get home. This work phone had a fight with the sidewalk and lost.” She held up the shattered phone with two fingers.
Tox squeezed the shoulder he was still touching. His hand was so big his fingers touched her spine. “It’s just a thing, Cal. Things can be replaced.” He spoke like a man who had lost something that could not.
Calliope loved her name. She always corrected people when they shortened it or mispronounced it, but the endearment coming from this fierce giant warmed her as much as that big paw on her back. God, that hand felt good. She sighed.
“I know. It’s just another inconvenience in a very inconvenient night.”
Tox retrieved the cylinder that had once again rolled out of her bag and flipped it over one-handed. “Let me guess. A map to the secret vault where Phipps Van Gent has hidden billions in gold and the nuclear launch codes.”
“No motherfucker named Phipps has nuclear launch codes,” Steady grumbled. Chat chuckled. He was proving the irony of his nickname tonight. Other than answering Twitch’s call, he had not uttered a word so far.
“Nothing even remotely that exciting,” Calliope clarified as she took the tube. “Phipps got scammed in a poker game. He won what he thought was a valuable painting but turned out to be nothing.” Calliope handed the cylinder back to Tox. “This is trash. I meant to put it in the recycling, but I got distracted.”
Tox turned the tube over in his hand, then banged it on his thigh. “Mind if I take this? I have a leaky pipe in my kitchen and this might just do the trick.”
“Sure thing. Glad to assist with your pipes.”
Steady coughed into his closed fist. Tox gave her a look that nearly ignited her thong.
As they pulled up to her home, Chat spoke to her for the first time. “Calliope, do you have a security system?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Make sure it’s armed.”
“Okay.”
Tox gave her shoulder another comforting squeeze—although Calliope was beginning to think comforting wasn’t quite the right word—and lifted his other hand in a motionless wave.
“Thanks for the ride guys.” She addressed all of them but locked eyes with Tox.
Their black SUV idled at the curb until Calliope had climbed her exterior stairs, let herself inside, and waved through the glass sidelight.
Inside, Calliope turned to see her rottweiler, Coco, engaging in her wake up stretches: butt up, paws out, followed by back legs out behind her in a sploot. Coco produced a squeaky yawn and followed Calliope to the back of the house. Calliope lifted one foot in front of the other, suddenly overcome by profound fatigue. She aimed for the checkerboard porcelain tile floor of the kitchen. Depositing her cumbersome bag on the island she grabbed a bottle of water and headed for the stairs, the clittering of Coco’s nails on the hardwood reassuring, the old stairs creaking as she mounted them.
Coco stopped on the landing and growled. Calliope noticed a strange, flickering light at the end of the upstairs hall. She stepped carefully, quietly, making her way toward the second-floor window overlooking the street. She finally breathed an inaudible sigh when she saw that a plastic grocery bag had hooked the neck of a streetlight, disrupting the beam each time the wind kicked up. She scratched Coco behind the ears as her trusty pet braced her front paws on the sill and gave a stern warning bark to the grocery bag.
“Come on, puppy. Let’s get to bed.”
Coco tossed another bark back at the offending bag and trotted into Calliope’s bedroom. She was a docile, good-natured dog. She had once inadvertently caught a car thief when the perpetrator had misconstrued Coco’s enthusiasm for a car ride as an attack. Coco’s uninterrupted barking and pawing at the car door had delayed and distracted the man and caused such a ruckus, the car’s owner came out to investigate. She napped in the sun, begged for belly rubs, and greeted visitors with a happy spin and a wet lick. But woe betide anyone who threatened Calliope while Coco was around. She may have been a sweet dog, but when it came to Calliope she could be a werewolf.