“I bought it. I touched it. Nothing happened to me,” he retorts, almost defiantly.
“That is true,” Frank muses aloud. Making me feel like Harry, as well as my bag and even me are more than just ‘assisting police with their inquiries’.
If I didn’t know any different, I could be led to believe that Frank actually thinks Harry is a suspect.
But I’m no cop so what would I know?
All I do know is right now, I’m down one bus ticket home, one bag of my stuff… And minus one million dollars in a winning scratch ticket.
“We’re gonna need you to stay local, Megan. Don’t leave town and for god’s sake get yourself someplace with a lock on the door and stay there.”
“She was boarding a bus for Kansas when I found her, Frank,” Harry chimes in.
“And if you’re keeping my bag as well as my winning ticket,” I protest hotly, “Then how am I supposed to get anywhere, let alone back home?” I ask them both.
Frank seems to know Harry way better than I do, and it only takes a single glance at him before he starts shaking his head.
Harry grins like a maniac all over again. Like he did when he first spotted me. Like he’s won way more than a million dollar prize himself.
“Oh no.No, you don’t!” Frank shouts, holding up a firm finger of caution.
“You’re in too deep as it is, Harry. I can’t just let you… Iwon’t….,” he starts to stammer.
But Harry’s already madehismind up.
“She’ll stay with me, Frank. Think about it. I’m the only one to survive touching the cursed ticket, and I did find her after all,” he says innocently, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
Even on a hot day.
“And finders keepers, right?” he asks us both, cocking his brow again.
Giving me a look I know means that he’s already decided what’s his and what’s not.
7
Harry
Megan surprises me, again.
Not even flinching that much when she learns what she’s peeled off the bottom of her shoe. But more than that, she seems relieved once I make it clear she’s coming with me.
Home that is.
Frank wants her somewhere safe and my place is Fort Knox compared to a cheap motel. And if I’m all that’s between Megan and whoever or whatever the fuck might try and get at her, I don’t think she could be in safer hands.
Or hungrier hands.
Keep it professional Harry… At least until you know what the official investigation turns up.
At least until you get her alone…
Even my inner dialog is at odds with itself.
One part of me sounds like Frank. And the other?
Well. That’s a side of me I never knew I even had until today.
The caveman. The animal in me that doesn’t need words. He just needs to breed.