Page 13 of Out Of A Fix

“Bye, Dar. See you Tuesday,” Teddy bid him.

“See ya, and thanks for letting me sleep over, Mrs. Moore.”

“Anytime, Dar, you know that.”

Once they left, Darwin put his backpack and his small duffel on the dining-room table before walking over to me.

“You guys are going to the store?”

“Yeah, Tatum wants an omelet for breakfast.”

He took a breath. “Could we stop and eat and then go to the store after?”

“Sure. That sounds good. Is there a place you like?”

“My mom—” He gasped as soon as the word was out of his mouth.

“It’s okay,” Tatum apprised him quickly, crossing to him and taking firm hold of his hand. “I’m not sad, I promise. Not even a bit.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling at him. “We can talk about her whenever you want.”

“Are you positive?”

She nodded.

He exhaled sharply. “Okay, that’s good.”

“I was afraid you’d be upset if we talked about her,” she confessed, her voice soft.

“Same,” he disclosed.

“But Nash said we can talk about her all the time, and he knows all about WITSEC, so we can ask him stuff.”

His eyes were wide as he looked up at me. “You know all about the marshals?”

“I do.”

“How?”

“I’m a fixer, that’s my job, so we have to know about law enforcement, plus I handed quite a few people over to the marshals, back when I was a police detective.”

“So you used to be a cop and now you’re a fixer?”

Wasn’t that what I just said? “Yes, and before both of those, I was in the Army.”

“Where?”

“I was stationed all over, but when I was a homicide detective, I lived in Houston, in Texas.”

“Where do you live now?”

“In Chicago,” Tatum chimed in.

“Okay,” he said, exhaling sharply.

“All right, so we have to get Griffin first, and then we’ll eat. Now, is there an alarm or⁠—”