Page 7 of Keeping Penny

Even today, he wasn’t picky. Would eat pretty much almost anything. Didn’t care if the potatoes were instant out of a box or made from actual vegetables.

He tuned out his teammates’ complaints, and not for the first time in the last few hours, Pyro’s thoughts went back to Penny. How long had she been in Africa? What did she do for work? Was Bowie’s father in the picture? He was well aware he was obsessing, but he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the mother-daughter pair who’d been a calming presence in a sea of chaos on his mission.

“Heard you transported a blind girl today,” Chaos said.

Pyro froze with his fork halfway to his mouth and stared at his friend.

“What? What’s wrong?” Chaos asked, frowning.

“How the hell did you hear that?”

“I think Casper mentioned it.”

“You think?”

“Okay, he did,” Chaos said, with a shrug and a grin. “During our break earlier. I asked why you were acting so weird, and he said he thought it was because of the blind girl. So, I said what blind girl? And he proceeded to tell me all about how she’d walked across the roof toward you like a boss while everyone else was freaking out. Wish I’d seen it.”

Pyro nodded and relaxed. He shoved the forkful of roast beef into his mouth, chewed and swallowed before responding. “Her name’s Bowie.”

“Interesting name.”

Pyro nodded again.

“You’re gonna go find her, aren’t you?” Edge guessed.

As if his friend’s question gave him permission to do what he’d been thinking about for hours, Pyro simply said, “Yes.”

“It can’t be easy to be blind in Gabon,” Chaos observed.

“Is it easy to be blind anywhere?” Pyro countered.

His friend looked a little embarrassed. “True. That was a stupid thing for me to say. All I meant was, Gabon isn’t exactly disability friendly. In the States, we’ve got things like talking crosswalks, braille menus…stuff like that. At least in some places.”

Pyro knew what his friend meant, and he felt a little bad about calling him out on his choice of words. But he’d been on the receiving end of pity too many times growing up, when people found out he was a foster kid, that he was especially sensitive to it even now.

“I know, sorry. And you’re right. But there’s something about Bowie that makes me think she could manage no matter where she lives. She’s fearless and trusting. And also cute as a button.”

“I want to meet her,” Edge said.

“Me too,” Chaos agreed.

For some reason, Pyro wanted his friends to meet her too.

“Her mom came in with her, right? Is the dad coming on a later transport?”

Edge’s innocent question made Pyro’s belly clench, and the food he’d just eaten suddenly made him nauseous. He’d assumed Penny and Bowie were on their own, but maybe they weren’t.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment.

“You guys done? I want to meet this girl, but I also need an hour or so of sleep.” Sighing, Edge took in the expansive mess hall. “Walking around this ship, seeing anew just how huge these things are, it makes me think about Zita and her situation. I can’t believe we were able to find her so fast,” Edge muttered.

Pyro nodded. Frankly, he was surprised as well.

Obi-Wan’s girlfriend had been kidnapped recently and taken to an abandoned shipyard. There, she was hidden on a decommissioned carrier just like this one, which had been gutted…and was a week away from being towed out to sea and sunk to make an artificial reef.

“Thank God for Fred,” Chaos said as they exited the mess hall, sincerity clear in his tone.

Fred was a search dog, brought in to see if he could sniff out Zita among the thousands of rooms. And he had, in a remarkably short amount of time.