The Fix Is In (Torus Intercession 4)

“You know, saying things like that out loud is only invi––”

I was stopped mid-sentence by a huge boom of an explosion.

The sound was deafening, and an enormous billowing ball of fire erupted from behind Mrs. Chen’s house and floated up into the overcast sky. It was beautiful for a moment, before my brain kicked in.

Grabbing the guy I was there to take care of, I put Benji on the ground and shielded him with my much larger frame. Funny that in the midst of me covering him, I noticed that his hair smelled like apples.

Seconds later, splinters of wood filled the air, right before the rain started coming down in buckets. Getting to my feet, I put Benji on his, much more gentle than I normally was. I tended to be rough. Growing up with six brothers and then going directly into the Marine Corps at seventeen—two months later I was eighteen—hadn’t made me gentle in any way.

“Oh,” he sighed as I put an arm around him, clutched him close, and then covered us with my umbrella, which was now acting as a shield as pieces of wood bounced off it before hitting the ground. “I do see the benefit of having a bodyguard, Mr. James.”

He tipped his head up and seemed to want to nuzzle into my chest, as I stared down into all that blue. “Sian is somewhere safe, I hope.”

“Yes, of course. She’s actually a few doors down delivering Mr. Goldstein some homemade cookies. They have THC in them, and he gives them to his wife when she can’t sleep. She’s fighting cancer, so she needs her rest.”

“Okay, so you should go back to the car while I go check out whatever’s left of the workshop.”

“You think that’s what blew?”

“Without a doubt,” I affirmed, unable to keep myself from pushing his hair back from his forehead. It was so dark it was almost blue-black. “I hope no one was in there when it blew up.”

“You know, if I hadn’t been walking with you, I could have been in there,” he said matter-of-factly.

Before he fixated on that, I said, “I hope there weren’t any animals in there.”

He gasped. “Mrs. Chen has a cat.”

“White with a black spot on his tail?”

“Yes,” he whispered loudly, staring at me with wide eyes. “Do you see him, Shaw? Are you able to see spirits?”

“No,” I grumbled, “he’s on the porch.”

He turned to look over his shoulder. “Ah, yes, I see. It’s smart of him to get out of the rain.”

Smarter than the two of us, that was for certain.

I insisted Benji walk to the SUV with me, and then I drove back down to the Chen home, surprised that there weren’t people on the street or a police car of some form. I warned him against getting out of the car.

“But I need to make sure Mrs. Chen is all right.”

“I’ll check on Mrs. Chen and her property,” I told him. “If you get outta this car, we’re gonna have a problem. I don’t want us to have a problem.”

“I don’t either,” he agreed.

I smiled at him. “Excellent.”

Getting out of the car, I darted around the side, went up the steps that led from the sidewalk to the path to Mrs. Chen’s porch, and continued toward her front door. Before I got there, it was thrown open, and an older woman rushed out and into my arms.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” I asked, checking her over and deciding she was fine, at least physically. She had to be scared to death.

She nodded furiously, shaking like a leaf.

“You weren’t outside, were you?”

“I was in the kitchen,” she whimpered.

I gave her a hug, because she looked like she needed it, and told her to call the police. Then I walked to the right end of her porch, dropped the three feet to the ground, and went around the side of her house.

The decimated workshop that had stood behind her home was farther back than I thought it would be, which was extremely lucky. If it had been any closer, it might have caused some damage to the home. As it was, the bulk of the charred remains were a good fifty feet or so away. It was interesting that the shed seemed to have exploded straight up, apart from the bit of ashy debris that had rained down on us, leaving two of the four walls still standing, something I had never seen before. The windows on those walls were blacked out, but not from the blast; they’d been painted, and given the smell that was evident even over the smoke, I was fairly certain I knew what the cause of the explosion was.

Returning to the front of the house, I found the older woman there with her cordless phone that she thrust out to me before rushing back inside.