After taking a few screen shots, I sent them to them.
The one with my brother was funnier.
Johnny: Blaise, let’s go get something to eat. I need a break from my kids.
Johnny: Blaise, why aren’t you answering me? My wife went to Target with the kids. She’ll get back any second and I want to be with you and have you as an excuse not to come home, before she does.
Johnny: Are you alive?
Johnny: Oh my God. It’s been an hour. I’m about to come over there.
Johnny: I see your car in the driveway. What the hell are you doing in there?
Johnny: I can see you sleeping. You sleep really ugly. Your mouth is open and everything. And when did you get that shirt? That’s mine. I’ve been looking for it everywhere.
Johnny: I texted June and told her that you were scared, so now I’m going to sit on your front porch and drink this beer that’s in the outside fridge until you wake up.
Johnny: You’re out of beer.
Johnny: Don’t worry. I went to the corner store up the street and bought more. Good news is your fridge is now restocked. Bad news is, I had to break into your place because I really had to take a shit. Sorry if the smell wakes you.
Johnny: You need a new television. This one blows.
Johnny: I had to take my pants off. Don’t freak-out when you walk out here. They were too constricting after I ate the sandwich that was in your fridge.
Johnny: I gotta go back home now. I checked to see if you were still alive, too. You are. Just an FYI, you should probably get an alarm system. It was way too easy to get in here.
Mom: Johnny, so help me God. I’m working. Shut the fuck up.
Dad: Thank fucking God someone said it. And make sure you have your pants back on when you ride home. You could get arrested for that.
Mom: As long as he’s wearing underwear, I doubt it. Love you.
Johnny: I love you, too.
Mom: Wasn’t talking to you. Not that I don’t love you, because I do, but I was directing that toward your father.
Johnny: That’s just wrong.
Mom: That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Love your child’s parent first and foremost. It makes life so much better. That way he or she knows that they’re first in your relationship.
Johnny: I think that you’re supposed to love your kids more.
Mom: Why?
Johnny: That’s just the way it is. Kids first.
Mom: If you say so.
I didn’t bother to read any more than that, because that discussion had degraded from there.
But I did agree with my mom—at least somewhat.
Though I knew that I’d love my kids, I had a feeling that Sin would always come first with me.
Johnny: Whatever. You should really think about getting a security system.
Me: I do have one now. Remember I’m in the Haunted House?
Johnny: Are there any cold spots? Anything move on its own? What about mysterious sounds?
I ignored him and tossed my phone down to the bed, then shivered as I thought about what had happened in this house.
That was the last thing on my mind for a long time.
CHAPTER 16
Once I get an attitude, it takes 3-5 business days to fix my face.
-Text from Blaise to Sin
SIN
“I’m sorry, but what?” I asked, sorting through the mail as I walked up to the office doors.
“There’s a woman here asking for your services,” my receptionist, the one that came with the job, said. “She’s telling me that you for sure will want to hear her out.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What’s her name?”
I didn’t want to go inside those doors without first knowing who it was that waited on the other side.
“Her name is Linda Ames,” the receptionist explained.
I felt my entire fucking body lock.
“One more time?” I asked, looking around the parking lot of the investigative offices that I’d taken over upon getting out of prison.
“Linda Ames,” Lulu repeated. “Why, she bad?”
I liked Lulu. She was a no nonsense seventy-year-old black woman with six children she raised on a single income, a mountain of grandchildren, and a perpetually bad attitude toward anyone that threatened any of her kids.
And, somehow, I’d ended up being one of her ‘kids.’
So yeah, she didn’t like my being threatened, even when it came to a woman.
“She’s bad,” I confirmed. “I’ll be in in two seconds.”
Then I hung up the phone, placed my phone in my pocket, and tried to compose myself.
This had to be why Blaise’s message had struck me as wrong earlier.
Though she said she was fine, I’d left the office to go check on her. And she was indeed asleep.
Leaving her alone with Sarge as her protector, I’d just gotten back to work when Lulu had called.
Opening the door to my office, I was unsurprised to find Ames sitting on the only couch in the waiting room that faced Lulu’s front desk.