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“Talking, huh?” Noah raised an eyebrow, glancing at Archie, who nodded. “It looks more like you’re planning a heist during a rainstorm.”
I expected them to laugh, but Archie was nervous, and Laurie was talking, his chin tilted just like his uncle Quinn’s. “We need to talk to Mr. Mason,” he exclaimed. They wanted to talk to me? My spidey senses were on overload—was this something to do with Quinn? I motioned for them to sit down.
“Go on, then,” Noah encouraged. “You want some hot chocolate?”
They exchanged glances. “We don’t got the money for that,” Laurie announced.
“My treat.” I gestured to Noah, who raised a hand in acknowledgment. He’d know better than me what two boys would want to drink or eat on a rainy day. They scrambled into the booth opposite, Laurie sitting down, Archie on one knee, rooting in his bright red raincoat pocket.
“This is for you,” Archie announced as he dumped a pile of bills and coins on the table between us. Laurie reached over and helped to shuffle the coins around in tidy piles. At first glance, there looked to be about twenty dollars or so, but why it was for me wasn’t obvious.
The boys were quiet, and I played the long game, waiting for one of them to spill. Our mutual silence was interrupted by the arrival of mugs of cocoa and a plate with two cookies.
The boys waited until Noah left, and we went back to silence. As a former SEAL sharpshooter turned PI, I could outlast anyone in the staring-quietly stakes, but the boys were wriggling, and then Laurie elbowed Archie in the side, and Archie squirmed before adding a watch to the pile, placing it with care as if it were important to him. It wasn’t flashy, a Timex with a worn leather band and a scratched face, and the second hand was stopped, so I guess it didn’t work.
When I stared at it, Archie nudged it closer. “Look,” he demanded.
I picked it up and checked the back. Some initials were engraved there, but I couldn’t make them out.
“Whose watch is this?” I asked, wondering if the boys had helped themselves to it at the ranch.
“My dad’s,” Archie murmured. “My real dad. It’s mine,I didn’t steal it.” He was red in the face now, an unfortunate by-product of his pale skin, and I thought maybe he was about to cry.
“I know you didn’t,” I said, and he rubbed his eyes. “It’s okay,” I added.
He glanced at me, unsure. “Is that enough?” he asked, keeping his hand close to the pile of coins and notes as if he couldn’t bear to let the watch go.
“Enough for what?”
The boys exchanged a furious conversation that I could barely make out because it was so fast and full of unfinished sentences.
“You said?—”
“Just tell him?—”
“What if he?—”
“We can’t do that?—”
“Boys!” I interrupted after a minute of them bickering again. They snapped their attention to me. “Start from the beginning.”
It was Archie’s turn to elbow Laurie—they were doing that a lot, as if they had a script they’d rehearsed.
“Momma said you were likeMagnum,” Laurie blurted. “The new one, not the old one with the ‘stache who momma said isn’t as sexy.” Laurie sank into his chair—clearly, his first part of the speech was over. There was a newMagnum? I’d watched reruns of Tom Selleck with his mustache as a kid, but who would spoil an outstanding PI drama by remaking it? And what was the connection betweenMagnumand me? Oh… wait…
“You mean I used to be a private investigator.” My being a registered PI ceased after I learned my sister hadnever made it out of the Brothers of Chiron compound. I’d only gone into the PI business to find her and give myself something to do after retiring from the Navy and no longer being a SEAL. It was never my end-plan in life, hell I still don’t know what my end-plan was after the search for my sister had taken me to multimillionaire Quinn, who’d lost his brother to the same cult.
“Yeah. A PI.” Laurie tilted his chin again.
I wanted to reach over and ruffle his hair, but I didn’t because the boys were serious, and I needed to respect whatever they were trying to do.
“Is that enough?” Archie said with an anxious tone.
“Enough for what?”
“Can you find my sister?” he blurted, and his eyes were filled with so much hope that the kids could have left me three bottle caps and a trading card for a lower league baseball player, and I would have said yes to whatever they wanted.
Still, I took a moment to think things through. Archie had a sister? I had assumed it was just him and his mom, and I knew he was living with Micah and Daniel now, with his mom having moved into long-term care six months before. I’d done security checks on his birth dad and his mom, but widening it out to a non-blood-related sister, the daughter of his mom’s old ex, hadn’t been dug deep in the dossier I had on people at the ranch. “Your sister?”
