A Cord of Three Strands

Toni could feel the knot between her shoulders loosen as she settled back into the booth. One of the benefits of--it wasn't exactly dating, but whatever it was they were doing--knowing. One of the benefits of knowing Gary Hobson was that it gave her a place to hang out that wasn't infested with cops. After a long week, it was nice to have a drink and talk about something other than arrest records and court dates.

Even if it wasn't with Gary, who was currently out saving Chicago from itself.

Marissa, fresh from a run-in with an overly inebriated regular, slipped back into her seat in the booth and took a prim sip of her wine. "Do you know when the baby's due?"

"Late October."

Marissa raised her glass. "Congratulations, Aunt Toni. You're going to love it."

Toni made a face as she clinked her tumbler—whisky, rocks—against Marissa's glass. "I don't know what to think. Marcus was always the least responsible of my brothers, and now all of a sudden he's going to be a parent. I'm a little worried about how he'll handle it."

"Do you trust his wife?"

"Actually, yeah. She's the one who talked him out of a huge wedding and a house they can't afford."

"Sounds like they'll be okay," Marissa said with a conspiratorial grin. Your job is to swoop in every now and then, be the cool auntie, and leave them to deal with the fallout. Give the kid a drum set or karate lessons for Christmas, take them out for ice cream for dinner, that kind of thing."

"That's your MO?"

"You sound surprised."

"I guess I figured you'd be the responsible one."

"I have to be, around Gary." Marissa's faint grimace, there and then quickly erased, told Toni two things: first, it was exactly as much of a pain in the ass to keep tabs on Gary as a friend as it was as a…well, as someone who knew him and may or may not have been dating or about to be dating him; and second, that the competent, practical persona Marissa displayed around Gary and the bar they ran together was only part of her M.O. "I let loose around the actual kids. That way they know they have a release valve when things with their parents get intense." She traced the edge of her glass with a fingertip. "The hardest thing about being an aunt is that you give your heart to someone when you don't have much control over their well-being."

"Gotta be honest, I don't like giving up control," Toni admitted.

"That makes sense. It's what makes you a good detective."

Toni nearly admitted it was what made her an obsessed detective, so much so that her captain had ordered her to take time off now that the Ralston case had wrapped. She was interrupted by a few raucous shouts at a development in the baseball game on the tv over the bar. The White Sox and the Cubs were playing, so whatever happened, half the bar cheered and the other half groaned.

"Can I ask you something?" Marissa asked when the noise faded back to a normal level. "You can say no, it's fine, but right now the only other person I can ask is Gary, and he's--"

"Unavailable?" Toni leaned in. "As usual?"

Marissa gave a shrug. Toni wasn't always sure how to read her, and even though she'd known about Gary's allegedly magic newspaper for a month now, Marissa still could be wary when the subject came up.

"It's more like I don't trust his fashion sense. I have a presentation coming up at a conference. It's mostly other students, but I want to look professional and I need an outfit that says I'm more than a bar manager."

"You want fashion advice? From me? I mean, I'm sure Hobson doesn't know a skirt from culottes, but I've been wearing cop clothes for a long time. I may not be your best bet." Not to mention she didn't have any sisters, or any friends who were women in Chicago. Other than bridesmaid dresses for her brothers' weddings, it had been at least five years since she'd gone shopping for clothes with someone else. She gestured at Marissa's outfit, a bright patterned blouse and dark slacks, with matching jewelry that made Toni wonder how, exactly, she coordinated herself without being able to check the mirror. "You look great right now."

"I look good for a sports bar." Marissa gave a wry smile that wavered at the edges. "This is a conference for the American Psychological Association."

"You nervous?" Toni couldn't think of a time she would have used that word for Marissa Clark.

"A little, yes." She sipped more wine. "You project confidence. I want to do that, too. I don't care if they're cop clothes, I want to wear something that'll make my colleagues take me seriously. Something that will help them look past this." She touched her white cane, folded, at the back edge of the table. "Or my dog."

"If you really think I can help, then sure. Tomorrow work for you?"

"Perfectly, thank you." Marissa grinned. "And if you need help finding a baby gift, I can help with that."

"It's a deal." Toni polished off her drink and waved her empty glass at the bartender. "Should I get them a drum set?"

Marissa tilted her head. "The kid's not even born yet. Maybe start with a xylophone."

* * * *

The twin homing beacons of McGinty's neon sign and Toni's car parked at the curb gave Gary the will to stumble the last few yards to the front door. Toni could make the long, harried day fade into memory before he had to face another one. Still, he had to dredge every last ounce of energy from his muscles to get the door open and walk into his bar.

She was tucked into a back booth, laughing with Marissa over drinks. He could get used to this.

"Hey ladies," he said, earning a start from Toni and a slow smile from Marissa, who'd probably detected him out on the sidewalk with her unique brand of radar. "What's going on?"

Toni looked up with a crooked half-grin that caught his breath in his chest, and his bad day fell away. "I've given my testimony so I'm done with the Ralston case. Celebrating with a drink with my friend."

"Friends, plural," he said, angling himself so he could slide in next to her. But she didn't move. Marissa's smile turned a little smug, as if she knew exactly what was coming. "I'm done for the day, so I can--" He waved his hand at the booth. "--join you."

"Not until you take a shower." Toni wrinkled her nose. "Preferably a hazmat-level one."

"What are you talking about?" Gary tried to slide in next to Marissa, but she wouldn't budge. Not even Reilly, who was curled up just under the table, made a move to let him sit.

A pair of customers walked by. The man grimaced and the woman must have made some kind of noise, because Marissa said, "You're driving away the customers. What have you been up to?"

Now that he'd been in the warm bar for a few minutes, Gary had to admit there was a lingering odor—a faint one—emanating from his jacket. "Semi full of pigs on the way from Ohio to Iowa rolled over on an entrance ramp to I-80. Some of the pigs tried to make a run for it out onto the highway."

"So you had to save their bacon?" Toni asked.

"He does not smell like bacon," Marissa said. "Not even close."

"Yeah, well, neither do live pigs, especially when they think they've been busted out of pig jail," Gary grumbled. "Can I please sit down for a minute?" He nudged Toni's arm with his hip, but she pushed back.

"Not a chance. Can't you smell yourself?"

"Sort of. I think I'm getting a cold. I've been running around this city for four days now with hardly any break."

"Then make it a hot shower," Marissa suggested, shooing him away. "The steam will clear your sinuses. Go."

"I'm not sure I trust the two of you alone."

"I'm not sure that's up to you," Toni told him pointedly.

"Fine, but save me a place." He turned, but the bartender, Tim, appeared at his elbow with the handset from the cordless phone.

"Oh, hey, Mr. Hobson. Your mom's on the phone."

At least one woman in his life wanted to talk to him. He reached for it, but Tim extended the phone across him--his nose wrinkled, too--to Marissa. "She wants to talk to Ms. Clark."

Warning bells sounded in his brain. This could not be good.

"Hi, Lois," Marissa said, a question in the tone of her greeting. Gary watched her expression shift from perplexed to amused and a bit determined as she said, "Yes, of course, how can I--oh, congratulations! Well, I agree, that would be ideal, but you know what he'll say."

Toni coughed and flashed another smirk at him, oblivious to his frown. What was his mom up to, and why the hell was Marissa going along with it?

"I'd be glad to help, and I think it's perfectly doable," Marissa went on. "Congratulations again. Here's Gary." She held the phone out to him. "She's about to ask you to do something. You're going to say yes. We'll make it work."

"What do you mean, I'm going to say yes?"

There was another subtle change in Marissa's expression, a hardening to the set of her jaw. She wrapped her hand around the mouthpiece to mute what she said next. "What I mean is, this is your mother, and while I know what your first response will be, you need to get past it and agree to do what she asks."

If there was such a thing as fight-or-flight, he was inclined to fly right that moment. Two of the most indomitable women in his life--three, if the slightly arched brow Toni shot his way was any indication--were aligned on something. Probably something he wouldn't want to do. He took the phone with the sinking realization that the battle, whatever it was, was already lost.

"Hi, Mom." He shifted and caught another whiff of pig sweat. Fly, the voice in his head suggested. To the shower. "What's up?"

"Gosh, son, it's good to hear your voice, too," Lois said sarcastically, as if she wasn't the one who'd initiated whatever the hell this was. "Honey, your dad and I are lining up a little shindig. It's our thirty-fifth anniversary this year, and it falls on the same weekend as the Hickory Rodeo Roundup. With the parade and the carnival and all, we think it'll be the perfect weekend to throw a party! We want you to be here for it."

"Well, yeah, I can come down for the day." He shot a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one else was listening, then added, "As long as the paper doesn't get in the way."

Lois's voice took on a slightly harder note. "I need you to make sure it doesn't. And I need you for more than a day. You know how your father is."

"Don't listen to her, Gar!" Bernie shouted. Belatedly, Gary became aware of the mechanical whine, a drill, in the background on his parents' end. "I am perfectly capable of throwing a party!"

"I told you to let me handle this," Lois said. "If you had your way we'd be marching in that parade and bringing the whole band back to the house for a barbeque."

"What's wrong with that? The band director's in my posse."

"He's on your bowling team," Lois said dryly.

"They're my posse."

Lois let out an elaborate sigh. "Do you see what I'm dealing with, Gary? I want something elegant. A dance and a nice dinner at the supper club. Something personal. You run a bar. You're used to events like this. I need your help to plan it."

Gary ran his free hand through his hair. "We don't get a lot of anniversaries at McGinty's. You can't really believe I'm going to be more help than Dad."

"That drill he's using on my china cabinet would be more help than your father."

Did she honestly expect him to party plan? "What's this really about?"

"Aw, c'mon, Lo," Bernie said at the same time.

"Okay, fine, I want you here. Is that so wrong? We haven't seen you in months. And Marissa says she can handle the paper while you're gone."

"That's not how it works."

"I think it works however you want it to work. Who's in charge, you or the cat?"

Gary snorted.

"Don't you dare say the cat."

"It's just--there's a lot going on right now."

Marissa, who now had the cat on her lap, whispered, "There is not." She reached over and put her hand on his arm. "Gary. They're your family. Say yes and we'll work it out."

He was too tired to fight. "Okay, fine. When?"

Lois didn't even try to hide the delight in her voice. "The party will be Saturday, so we need to start planning right away. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Tomorrow was Tuesday. "But that'd mean I'd be there almost--" He broke off as he realized Marissa and Toni were having a quick whispered conversation, while his dad chortled indistinctly about rodeo clowns and carnival rides. "What are you two up to?"

"I want my son home for a few days, being part of our lives and helping us instead of strangers for a change," Lois said plaintively, inducing guilt as only she could. "It's the only gift I want."

"I didn't mean you," he said sharply, frowning at Toni, who continued to look at him with that discombobulating grin.

She waved a hand, as if brushing off his objections. "We've got this, Hobson. Go have fun in Podunk."

He didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. But he was exhausted, his head weighed a ton, and he smelled like pigs. Not even his father was going to save him from being backed into a corner by the three most intimidating women in his universe.

"Gary?" Lois prompted.

"C'mon, Gar, it'll be fun," Bernie piped in. "I'm going to be a rodeo clown!"

"Bernie, I told you, no clowning!"

"Okay!" Gary snapped. He couldn't take another long-distance argument, though God knew it would be worse when he was smack-dab in the middle of it down in Hickory and it all happened in stereo. "Okay, fine, I'll come down tomorrow."

"Thank you, son. We love you!"

"Love you, too. G'night." He hung up the phone. "Happy?" he asked Marissa, then realized, thanks to her full-out smile, that yes, she was. So was Toni. "Both of you are way too happy about this."

"More like impressed," Toni said. "She played you like a pro."

"She is a pro," Marissa said. "Her exact words were, 'If he doesn't come and help us, we may not make it to our thirty-sixth anniversary.'"

Gary groaned.

"I have some time off this week," Toni told him. "Like Marissa said, we'll make it work. Go take a shower. Then we'll talk."

"I can't talk. I have to pack for Hickory."

"Then I'll come up and talk to you once I've finished my drink."

"At least you'll blend in with the rodeo, the way you smell," Marissa said cheerfully.<

"Couple of traitors," Gary muttered as he headed for his loft.

* * * *

Toni arrived back at McGinty's the next morning, bright, early, and so confused she was on the verge of being pissed.

Yes, she had time off. Yes, she had agreed to help out with Gary's paper while he was party planning with his parents. She was looking forward to learning more about how it worked, and frankly, she enjoyed seeing him off kilter about it. For as much as he complained about the demands it made on his life, he didn't seem all that eager to leave it behind. So she'd gone to bed ready for a few days of messing with his magic—and his head.

What she hadn't been ready for was a loud meow and a plop outside her door before she'd had a chance to grind her coffee beans.

She hadn't been ready for the future to show up on her front porch.

"Don't forget there's another crosstown game this weekend," Gary was saying when she walked into the kitchen. "Tell the kitchen staff to order wings and that dip—"

"Blue cheese dressing and celery." Marissa sat a little slumped on a stool at one of the prep tables. She looked half awake, or maybe Gary was putting her to sleep with the minutia of bar running, something he never seemed to pay much attention to otherwise.

"You really need to lock your doors, Hobson. This is Chicago. Anyone could walk in and rob the place before you got the lunch prep done."

"Toni!" He turned pleading eyes to her. "Please tell me the paper came to you."

Marissa sat up straighter.

"It did." Toni dropped it on the table like the hot potato it was. "You want to tell me why?"

He blinked at her, as if he was waking up all over again. "I guess it knew it's your job today."

The newspaper knew? "How exactly would that happen?"

"It's because Gary did the right thing, agreeing to take a break," Marissa said. "This is the paper's way of telling us that." She wasn't quite as chipper as Toni would have expected after her eager agreement to this arrangement last night.

"Well?" Gary asked, looking at her expectantly.

"Well what?"

"What are the stories? What do you have to do?"

"I haven't read it yet."

"That's the first thing you have to do! What if there's something you need to deal with early? Or right now?" He started paging through it, his eyes tracking headlines at what had to be some kind of record speed.

"Relax, Hobson." Toni went over to the ever-present, ever-filled, coffee maker and poured herself a cup. "Exactly how stupid do you think I am? Of course I read it." She turned back to see him staring at her incredulously, with both hands braced on the table. "I skimmed it. There's nothing to worry about until midmorning."

Gary bit his lip. Definitely uneasy. She could use that to her long-term advantage. She shot him a cheeky grin to throw him off a little more. "Go help your mom make canapés and centerpieces. We've got this."

She reached for the paper, but he slid it closer to himself, flipping pages back and forth. "Okay, yeah, you're right about the time."

"I'm right about more than that."

Marissa snorted. Lost in his world of needlessly frantic planning, Gary ignored them both.

"There are four stories you need to take care of, and the first is a few hours away. So you have time to figure out your schedule. But you have to keep an eye on it." He closed the paper and jabbed at it with a finger. "It changes sometimes."

Toni sputtered coffee onto the prep table. "It what?"

"You didn't know?" Marissa asked her. "You didn't tell her?" she asked Gary.

"It hadn't come up yet," he said with a shrug, as if it were no big deal.

"You have to tell people these things!"

"I'm telling her now." He turned to Toni, ignoring Marissa's exasperated huff. "The paper changes sometimes. New stories show up, or the ones that are here first thing get worse."

"Or better," Marissa chimed in.

"Usually worse."

"How are you supposed to keep track of that?" Toni asked. "Doesn't it make all your planning useless?" Though it did, she supposed, go a long way to explaining how flustered he usually was when he showed up at her crime scenes.

He started ticking things off on his fingers. She didn't mind. His hands were among his best features. "Okay, so at eleven twenty-five, you have a delivery van jumping a curb and driving into the Potbelly's in Andersonville. They didn't have a name for the driver as of press time, but if you clear out everybody from the shop right beforehand, you'll limit the injuries to the driver. He has air bags, so it should be fine. Then you gotta get back to Lake Shore Drive, where that Porsche is going to jump the barriers and hit some kids skateboarding in Lincoln Park. It'll be best to clear the kids off the path instead of trying to stop the car, of course." He blinked at her, as if that deserved a response.

"Of course." Toni folded her arms over her chest and held steady.

"Yeah, so the other thing you can do is maybe find the driver's phone number, since his name is listed, and give him a call. Tell him to slow down, or try to keep him out of the area."

"Or I could call my friend Carla in Traffic Enforcement and have her set up a speed trap to catch and ticket the guy long before he jumps the barrier."

"You can do that?" He looked a little baffled, as though his brain had just caught up with his ears.

"I can do a lot of things that might surprise you," she said dryly.

"Okay, but then, you'll have to high-tail it back to the Loop--"

"From Andersonville?"

"From Lake Shore Drive."

"If the speed trap works, why would I have to go there? Let the kids skateboard in peace."

"I was thinking you might want to be at the park to make sure nothing else happens to the kids."

"Wouldn't that show up in your paper, too? Hobson, do you really—what am I saying? Of course you do."

"I do what?"

"Show up at every single little thing that's going to go wrong in Chicago, even if you've fixed them from a distance."

"Gary likes to micromanage," Marissa offered. "Make sure everyone's doing their job."

"Not me. I'm good with delegating." Toni couldn't quite hide her smile at the twitch in Gary's jaw. "So, the robbery?"

"Yeah, it's at--"

"She can read it for herself," Marissa cut in. "Weren't you hoping to get out of town before traffic gets too busy?"

"I have to make sure she knows the best way to handle this stuff. And there's still the kid who gets lost on the L. She gets off at the wrong stop after her dad falls asleep. They aren't sure which stop, and no one can find her. Poor kid's still missing tomorrow morning. Now that one, you really do have to be there. Get on the train, find the girl and sit nearby so when her father falls asleep you can wake him up."

"How am I supposed to know which kid it is?"

"You go to the Brown Line stop at Sedgwick, northbound platform. Be there at least fifteen minutes before the time they think she went missing. Look for the tired dad with a girl who seems to be--"

"I got it." She didn't bother to point out that the girl's name was in the paper, and with her contacts she could call the father ahead of time and tell him to have a cup of coffee. As much fun as she'd been having teasing him, it skirted the edge of cruelty to point out the obvious ways this newspaper gig could be so much easier for her. In the future, though, they were going to have a serious conversation about more efficient ways to be Chicago's civilian superhero.

"She's wearing a blue shirt." He picked up his coffee, turned the cup in his hands, and put it back down without taking a drink. "Look, maybe I should stay today. I can tag along with you so you can see how all works, and then tomorrow--"

"No," Marissa said it at the same time as Toni. "Gary, I promised your mother you'd be down there today. Toni obviously knows what she's doing, and she does have a resource who understands almost as well as you do how the paper works. Me," she added, when he didn't immediately acknowledge her. "I'm talking about me."

"Well, I know that, Marissa."

She arched an eyebrow. "But?"

He glanced from her to Toni and back. "It's just, that one time you tried to help, you got hurt."

"That was one time. Once. And it certainly wasn't the only time I've helped you out."

Gary seemed about to say something, but Marissa's expression darkened, and he must have thought the better of it. Lucky for him. "Uh, right. No buts. I'm going." He nabbed a set of keys from a hook on the wall behind Toni, picked up a duffle bag that was no doubt crammed with plaid shirts and jeans, and started for the door. Then turned back. "The thing is, the timing of the robbery and the girl getting lost, it's tight. And you haven't told me how you're going to stop the robbery." He looked expectantly at Toni.

"I'll stop the robbery, Hobson. You would have come to me anyway, right?"

"Uh, right." He turned to Marissa, whose arms were still crossed, whose mouth was still tight. "I guess you can handle the last one, Marissa, if you don't have class."

Her jaw worked. Toni wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but the tension was thick enough to slice. "For a lost little girl," Marissa finally said, "I will skip class."

"Good," Toni said before Gary could object. "That will give me time to check in at the precinct."

He cut her off with an irritated noise straight from his throat. "You said you have the day off."

"I won't if I'm nabbing a bunch of jewel thieves, will I?" She set her coffee mug on the prep table with a clonk. He could be so thickheaded about what police work entailed. "Unlike you, I'll have to fill out paperwork and process those yahoos, partly because that's my job, and mostly because I don't want them to try it somewhere else."

"Okay. If you're ever not sure what to do, look for Cat. He can show you the way. Sometimes."

"Like when he showed up at my front door this morning? Maybe you should take that as a sign that the paper's in good hands."

"What did you feed him? He likes tuna. I mean, I'm guessing you don't have cat food."

"I didn't feed your cat. That was never part of the bargain."

"I will take care of it," Marissa said. "Now stop micromanaging and get on the road. Don't forget your suit."

"Okay, yeah." He stepped into the office and emerged with a garment bag. "I guess I'll see you both on Sunday. Unless you need me for something. It's just a few hours, so don't hesitate to call, you hear me?"

"Actually, your mom invited us to come down for the party," Marissa said.

"When did she say that? When you were selling me out?"

Toni had only met Lois Hobson once, and it had been enough to convince her that Gary's mother was as pushy as her own, albeit in a small town, WASPish way. Emphasis on the W.

"She called while you were getting dressed to make sure you're coming," Marissa said. "And to ask if you'd bring some wine glasses."

"Some?"

"Her exact words were, 'Several dozen.'"

"But that's—" He slung his luggage over his shoulder and pulled two boxes off the top of a high shelf. "How many people is she inviting to this little shindig?"

"I didn't get a head count. But if you ask me, we have the easier job here."

"You're not kidding." He reached to pull a third box off the high shelf, but the two he was carrying started to wobble. Toni darted over and braced them while he nabbed a third box. Together they rearranged the stack so he could carry it. He looked at her over the tower in his arms—over and down, he was that much taller—and managed, finally, to look a little sheepish. "Thanks."

"Trust us. Go."

"All right, I, uh--" There was an awkward beat when she thought maybe he was going to kiss her, breaking six dozen wine glasses in the attempt. Not that she would have cared about the glasses until she had to clean them up.

But one of them had to keep everything under control. "Call us, okay?" she asked. He gulped and nodded and was out the door she held open for him with one last good-bye. She turned back to Marissa, who was heaving a sigh—of relief, Toni assumed, though a faint scowl was still etched on her face.

"I don't have to leave for Andersonville for a few hours. Want to go shopping first?"

"Sure." Marissa stood, holding herself a little stiffly. She was peeved, and there was a ninety-nine percent chance it was with Gary, but Toni wasn't entirely sure why. "I'll need to get everyone started on prep here first, but the kitchen staff will be here right before the stores over on Michigan open."

"That'll give me time to call Carla and take care of the Porsche driver." Toni refilled her coffee. "If Hobson thinks I'm going to hang out on Lake Shore Drive looking for speeders, he's got another think coming."

"That's true about a lot of things," Marissa muttered as she led the way into the office. "You can use the phone on Gary's desk."

"Thanks." Toni sat down, but instead of picking up the phone, she regarded Marissa over the rim of her coffee mug, waiting until she'd settled into her seat and turned on her computer to ask, with timing born of a hundred interrogations, "So what happened that one time?"

* * * *

Marissa usually felt a sense of relief talking with Toni about anything to do with the paper. Even though she'd only known about it for a short time, she approached it practically, as a job that needed to be done, and she accepted the demands it made on Gary's time in a way that Erica never had. Still, it wasn't easy to tell Toni what had happened during the citywide blackout. Gary always talked about how good she was at being a cop—and at saving the day. As she admitted she'd nearly gotten herself killed because of a mistaken belief in her own competence, Marissa braced herself for Toni's approbation, or worse, pity.

Instead, Toni listened to the whole thing without interruption, then asked, "This happened how long ago?"

"Almost two years ago." The back door opened, and she heard Andy and Jenn punch the time clock
out in the kitchen, chatting amicably. Andy called good morning, and she answered. The sounds of unloading, chopping, and pouring provided a familiar undertone to their conversation.

"You saved those kids' lives," Toni said. "He's still holding it against you?"

"Not so much me as the paper," Marissa hedged. "He's trying to protect me from it, which is why it's so hard to talk to him about it. He said we were partners afterward, in the bar anyway, but I think deep down it reinforced his conviction that he has to take care of the paper alone as much as possible." It was only now that she said it out loud that she realized how true that was. Gary had certainly relied on her for advice and occasional assistance since that day. But he only asked her to take full responsibility as a last resort when he was in the most desperate straits. Even then he made sure she had someone sighted, someone male, or, in Toni's case, someone in law enforcement.

"If he thinks he's on his own, or that he should be, he's wrong. You helped him on a day when everything went to crap. You and I both know that's not the only time that's happened."

"He knows it, too," she acknowledged. "But he stays focused on one thing that went wrong, instead of all the things that went right."

"Then this isn't about you, specifically," Toni said. "He'll figure it out, especially since there are two of us on his side now, and between us we can handle anything the paper throws our way. Let me make a couple calls and we can head to the shops."

Turning down Toni's help with the paper would make her no better than Gary, especially when the paper had chosen Toni to take lead during his absence. That still stung, but she was inclined to keep it to herself. So she merely nodded.

She paid a handful of invoices and made sure the morning crew was on track while Toni called her friend in traffic enforcement andtracked down a number for Sam Jaworski, the father of the little girl who was going to get lost on the L early that afternoon. The story about the skateboarding kids getting hit by the Porsche disappeared, but Sam Jaworski didn't answer his home phone, and his little girl, Annie, was still going to go missing.

"Like I said, I can work on that one while you handle the robbery," Marissa said.

"Sounds good to me," Toni said without a hint of hesitation or a single question about how she planned to do that. She just recited Mr. Jaworski's number so Marissa could enter it into her cell phone, then asked, "Ready to do some damage to your bank account?"

She told Toni about her APA presentation on the importance of early detection of clinical depression in teenagers and effective intervention strategies while they walked over to the stores on Michigan Avenue. "I like it," Toni said. "You're keeping those kids out of my hair. I'm glad we're on the same side."

It didn't take long to find a dress that they both liked; a scoop-necked fitted bodice with cap sleeves and a pencil skirt that hit her at the knee. Toni claimed the soft yellow color worked with her skin tone and hair. Marissa liked the way it felt—dressed up and adult, with a fit that would allow her to move her arms while she spoke. "You know the single woman's trick with that back zipper, right?" Toni asked as she pulled it down so Marissa could change back into her own clothes.

"I have a ribbon on a safety pin in the top drawer of my dresser for exactly that reason."

"Atta girl. Now, shoes?"

"I have wedges. I'm not going to risk falling on my face in front of all those people."

"They're the ones who'll be falling down, because you'll knock 'em dead," Toni assured her. A few minutes later, as Marissa handed her credit card to the saleswomen, she asked, "So you're good? Because I should get going. Much as I hate to admit it, I think Hobson was right about needing to be in Andersonville to do what I can about that accident."

"We're better than good." Marissa took the dress, safely encased in plastic, from the saleswoman, and Reilly's harness from Toni. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate this."

"It was fun, especially since it's not my money. And you—look, I don't mean to sound like Hobson, but you're okay with the kid who gets lost on the L? Because if you need help I'll figure something out."

"No, I've got it. I'll check in at McGinty's and try to call her father again. If I don't reach him, I'll go up to Sedgwick and take care of it there. Good luck with the accident. And the robbery—be careful with that one."

"Unlike some people, I know how to call in back up, and actually have a cell phone to do it with. I'll let you know how it all goes as soon as I get the chance."

"Same here."

A few hours later, with the lunch rush winding down, Marissa tried calling Sam Jaworski one more time. There was still no answer, so she harnessed Reilly and made her way to the Merchandise Mart, where she took a Brown Line train north to the Sedgwick stop. She spent the ride planning several possible strategies for finding the girl, and then trying to decide what would be the best thing to do once she did. In the end, she knew, she'd have to introduce herself into the situation and follow her best instincts from there—something she'd learned from Gary. Maybe admitting that to him would ease some of his worrying about letting her, or anyone else, deal with the paper.

The paper had said the girl and her father got on the L at Sedgwick around 1:45, headed north. She reached the stop at 1:20 and got off the train, pacing up and down the platform and listening for a child's voice. Two trains came and went without any sign of Sam and Annie Jaworski, and even though she knew the time in the paper was an approximation given by a distressed father, she started to worry she'd missed them. Reilly seemed to be wondering what was happening as well; he kept trying to lead her to the steps down to street level each time she looped around toward them.

"Where are they?" she asked, unsure if she was asking Reilly or the universe. It certainly wasn't as if she could ask the paper.

Shortly after a third train rumbled away from the stop, a set of footsteps approached. A cautious female voice said, "Hi, excuse me? I'm with the CTA. Do you need any help?"

"I'm fine. I ride the L all the time."

"Of course. It's just that—I saw you get off a northbound train a while back, and if you wait here, that's all that'll come through, are the north trains. I'm not trying to kick you off," the woman added hurriedly. "Just want to see if there's anything you need."

Marissa forced a smile. She must be projecting impatience to everyone. "Thank you, I'm okay. Just waiting for a friend."

"Okay, great." The woman started to walk away, but then it hit Marissa: maybe the paper was sending help the only way it could.

"There is one thing," she called after the woman, and the footsteps halted. "If you see a little girl in a blue shirt, can you let me know?"

"There's one who just came on the platform now. She's with a man. Is that your friend?"

"I think so." Better to hedge that bet, if the woman overheard her introducing herself to a stranger. "Thanks so much." She walked slowly toward the entrance, not wanting to miss the Jaworskis. "Okay, Reilly, you're up," she said in a low tone. "Do your cutest tail wag."

Reilly couldn't understand her, of course. But he must have known something was up, because he slowed his walk instead of trying to get her down the stairs. Marissa heard a high, delighted gasp just to her right.

"Puppy!" Right on cue.

"Annie, no, that dog's at work," a man said, sending a jolt of relief through Marissa with the little girl's name. "Sorry, ma'am."

"Oh, no, it's fine. Happens all the time." Marissa turned to face the tracks, to signal she was waiting for a train. "She's welcome to pet him while we wait. Can you let me know if the next train is Brown Line or Purple? I need to get to Irving Park."

"Uh, sure. Sure." Whether out of politeness or unthinking acceptance of the request for help, he didn't point out that the trains were announced on the loudspeaker.

"We're going home," Annie chirped up. "Our stop is the one that starts with P, right, Daddy?"

"No, baby, Addison. It starts with A, like your name."

"That's right. We learned about P in preschool today. Puppy starts with P. Yours is so soft!"

Reilly's tail thwapped against Marissa's leg. He was a sucker for kids. "Thanks so much," she said to Sam Jaworski. "I don't always know who to trust, but I figure if you have your little girl with you it must be okay."

His chuckle sounded tired. "She's a little too friendly for her own good sometimes, but I'm glad we could help. Here's a Brown train."

"I'm four," Annie said over the rattle of the incoming train. "We're having mac and cheese for supper. What's your dog's job?"

They boarded the train and sat together. Marissa answered Annie's rapid-fire questions about Reilly and being blind and where she worked and what she was having for dinner as they rode north, drawing Sam into the conversation when she could. A couple times, when his answers were either slow or startled, she thought he might have been close to drifting off. Annie certainly didn't need a response to keep going, and Marissa could see how Sam might have fallen into a deep sleep if he was already exhausted, lulled by the rocking of the train and his daughter's stream of chatter.

"Is this the A stop?" Annie asked when the announcement came that they were approaching Addison.

"Good listening," Marissa told her.

"That's what Mrs. Evers says. I am a very good listener in preschool. Let's go, Daddy. Bye, Reilly!" Annie gave the grateful dog one last pat on the head and jumped up as the train slowed to a stop. "I hope you have mac and cheese for supper, too. Reilly told me it's his favorite."

"Thanks for talking to her," Sam said. "You gonna be okay?"

"Yes. Mine is the next stop. Take care, you two." She scratched behind Reilly's ears as they rode to Irving Park, where she'd be able to catch another train back to the Merchandise Mart. "Good job, boy, but I don't know about mac and cheese. Maybe an extra treat."

* * * *

"So you just went up and talked to the guy on the L platform?" Gary twisted the phone cord around his fingers as he paced around the end table in the living room where he'd grown up. His parents hadn't switched to cordless. Why should they, Bernie always said, when the yellow rotary phone worked just as well as it always had? "You're lucky he didn't think you were about to nab his kid."

"Maybe if it was you," Marissa said. He couldn't tell if her voice sounded higher than usual because of the long distance connection, or because she was annoyed with him. "He didn't have any reason to be suspicious of a blind woman asking for his help."

"What if he was? He might have called the police."

"The police," she deadpanned. Definitely annoyed. "Like, say, Toni Brigatti?"

"Why didn't she handle it in the first place?"

"She's taking care of other stories, one of which requires her to do paperwork. She can't just save-and-dash like you. She's at the station now, processing the jewel thieves and trying to explain to her captain how she just happened to stumble on a robbery attempt in a store full of stuff she can't afford on her salary."

"Shoot, I never wanted to get her in trouble. Do you guys need me up there?"

"Gary. We are fine. We handled the stories in the paper, and now she's handling the paperwork and I'm handling the dinner rush." Marissa drew in an audible breath, a sound that meant she was calling on reserves of patience he probably didn't deserve. "How are your parents?"

"Same as ever." He glanced through the archway to the kitchen table, where his mom and dad were arguing about a bag of crepe paper streamers. Lois kept saying they weren't classy, not to mention they were the wrong colors. "I think my mom's been arranging this for months. My dad went to K-Mart for decorations, but she already had what she wants stashed away in the attic. She has me running up and down the ladder while he tries to tell her crepe paper streamers are the height of elegance."

"They are!" Bernie boomed. "I got purple and blue, her favorite color and mine."

"This is not about our favorites, Bernie. It's about our theme!"

"Sounds like they need you to referee if they're going to make it to their anniversary," Marissa said. "Go help them out, Gary. The paper and the bar are both in good hands."

"Okay. Thanks," he added, but he wasn't sure if she heard it before she hung up.

"Where are you getting sunflowers this time of year?" Bernie was saying as Gary headed back into the kitchen.

"From the florist." Lois's exasperated tone suggested just how many questions she'd parried that day alone. She pushed the bag across the table to Bernie and pulled a photo album out of the box on the chair next to her. "They special ordered them from a greenhouse in Georgia."

"How much is that gonna cost me? C'mon, Lo, we've got tulips coming up in the front yard." He snapped his fingers. "That reminds me, I'm supposed to help Birdie Eledge clean out her flower beds today. She wants to put in zinnias but she can't spend as much time kneeling on the ground as she used to."

"I don't want tulips. I want sunflowers. You can return those streamers on your way to Birdie's. Bring me back a bottle of chardonnay."

"Just one bottle? You had me bring six dozen wine glasses." Gary slid into the chair Bernie had vacated.

"That particular bottle is for me. It won't last me the afternoon if he keeps this up." She drew a computer printout out from under a stack of little cards with people's names written on them in her precise handwriting. "Bernie, stop at the high school on your way and drop off this list of music for Mr. Hefner. He's putting together a small group from the high school jazz band to play standards at the dance."

Bernie turned from the hook by the back door, shoving a baseball cap onto his head. "I thought we agreed on my barbershop quartet. Bill's getting his banjo tuned!"

Lois made the face she usually reserved for food that had too much salt. "I never agreed to that at all. No one can dance to a banjo. Besides, they won't be a quartet without you. Just a trio."

"Who said I wasn't singing with them? Wait 'til you hear the number we worked up, Gar. It's gonna blow the doors off this party." He left before Lois could comment on that, humming a song that sounded like a parade march from World War I.

"I swear he does that just to put me on edge." Lois slid the stack of cards over to Gary. "Fold these in half, nice and neat. I don't want wobbly name cards on my tables."

Gary gave a dutiful nod and started folding, careful to line up the corners. "You sure he's gonna drop off your list?"

"I already emailed it. I'm just trying to keep him out of my hair."

"You've been planning this for a long time, huh?"

"A couple months."

"Why'd you wait until this week to spring it on us?"

"Because I knew how he'd be about it. You, too. Besides, if you want something done right, it's best to do it yourself."

A squiggle of guilt wormed through his chest. He smoothed the fold he'd just made a few times. "I guess I could've—should've—put something together at McGinty's for you guys."

Lois blinked up from the photos she was studying. "Don't be silly, Gary. Our friends are here, and family's on the way. Your Aunt Jane and Uncle Dave are coming up from St. Louis. Jane was my bridesmaid." She pulled a photo from its plastic page and handed it to him. She and Bernie smiled from the steps of a church, with Aunt Jane and Bill Gibson, who'd been Bernie's best friend and best man, standing just behind them. They were all squinting a bit into bright sunlight. "I think that one will work, don't you?"

"For what?"

"I'm making a photo collage for the table with the guest book."

"Yeah, it's great. You're really going all out, huh?"

"There were a lot of things I couldn't have at that wedding. I'd planned on a fall theme with sunflowers and yellow bridesmaids' dresses, but we had to push it up while I could still fit in my grandmother's wedding dress." She pointed to her bouquet. "And we did use flowers from my parents' front yard."

Gary had only found out a year ago that he'd been conceived while his parents were engaged. "So I, uh, I guess that's my fault, huh?"

"Don't be silly. It's not as if you had a say in it." She traced her outline in the photo with a fond smile. "I've always been glad that you're in our wedding photos."

"Okay, well, I just—I'm realizing…" He trailed off, tapping a card on the table, while he searched for words to name what he was feeling. It wasn't guilt, which his mom was a pro at inducing when she wanted to. This was different. "I know I was a surprise, and I threw off the plans you had. Not just for the wedding." He spread his hands wide. "For everything. I know how a surprise like that can upend your whole life."

Lois nailed him with a shrewd look. "I suppose you do. Marcia didn't give you any warning, did she?"

"I was thinking more of the paper."

"That's a much better comparison."

"What makes you say that?"

"Gary." His name was affectionate and wry. "You were the kind of surprise that upended our life in the best possible way. Like the paper did for you."

"I don't think—" He rubbed the back of his head, remembering all the times he'd complained about the paper. And a few of the times it had made his life better. "Maybe you're right."

"Of course I am. You don't think I see these things, but I know when my own child is happy. And you might need to give yourself a break like this more often, but overall, Gary, you're happier now than you ever were with Marcia." When he didn't respond, she added, "Can you see yourself putting on a tie every morning and working in an office again? Because I certainly can't."

"No. No, that's not going to happen if I can help it. I mean, if I was still working at Strauss, I wouldn't be able to help you out like this, would I?" She beamed at him, and all of a sudden he was twelve, relishing the look on her face when he'd won the Sun-Times essay contest.

He picked up the photo again. His mom had been younger than he'd been when he married Marcia. "This was Grandma's wedding dress?" It was simple, white with a high neck and long sleeves, and a skirt that hung straight down from the waist to her ankles. "It doesn't exactly look like your style."

Lois shrugged. "It was the best option. My mom had worn it, too, and it wasn't as though your father and I could afford a new one, especially on short notice."

"Are you wearing it Saturday?

"I haven't been able to fit into it since two weeks after that wedding," she said with a rueful chuckle. "And as lovely as it is, you're right, it never was my style. Don't frown at me like that. We made the best of it, and I've never regretted marrying your father or having you."

But for all her protestations, or maybe because of them, he suddenly understood what this fall-themed party in the middle of spring was all about. He stood and dug his keys out of his pocket. "What's that place in Fort Wayne you're always talking about? Bailey's Boutique?"

"Bella's."

"Okay, Bella's." He held out his hand to her. "Let's go."

"What for?"

"To get you a dress for Saturday. Something you choose for yourself."

Lois's snort was the same one she'd used when he'd asked for an Atari system for his fourteenth birthday. "I can't afford a pair of socks from Bella's, let alone a formal dress."

"You're not paying for it, Mom. I am."

"But Gary—"

"No buts." He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. "I want to do this. I was the one who upended all your plans, after all."

"That you were." She beamed again, a full-on MomBlast. "Thank you, son."

"For the dress, or for upending your life?"

"A little bit of both." She kissed his cheek. "Grab that box of extra craft supplies from the attic. We can drop it off at the Boys and Girls Club on our way out of town."

* * * *

Chapter 2 Chapter Text

What life with Gary's newspaper boiled down to, Toni decided over the first half of the week, was the full and uncontested realization that people were ridiculous, Chicagoans doubly so.

Possibly triply.

After several rounds of near-disasters and preventative policing, she couldn't decide which was more crazy-making: Gary's insistence on reversing every story with an unhappy ending that showed up in his particular edition of the Sun-Times, or the fact that so many of the people involved would never have made it into his newspaper in the first place if they weren't so damn stupid.

Case in point: the distracted mom driving her teenage daughter to band practice Wednesday afternoon. Whether she was distracted by her daughter playing her flute in the car or by one of her other kids wasn't clear. What was clear was that she nearly ran a red light and slammed on her brakes mid-intersection, which launched the flute like a missile through the windshield. It wound up embedded in the forehead of an unfortunate cyclist. Or it would, if Toni didn't find a way to stop it.

Then there were the caretakers who lost track of an elderly man during an outing to the Shedd Aquarium, forcing Toni to search the South Side lakefront for him. Between that and the kid on the L Tuesday who would have been lost if not for Marissa, Toni was ready to start handing out leashes randomly on the street, in the faint hope that someone would use them and save Team Magic Paper the time and effort it took to track down lost citizens.

No wonder Gary stumbled home frustrated and messy more times than not. He clearly cared about people, but she could see how the frustration of dealing with their accidents and carelessness frazzled his nerves.

Marissa, on the other hand, didn't seem nearly as irritated by the people she helped as Gary--or as Toni herself. She listened to the stories as Toni read them, offering possible explanations and sympathy to the people Toni was happy to file under "idiots left to their own devices." After she stopped the little girl on the subway from wandering off, she dropped a gift card for a nearby coffee shop in the mail to her father afterward. The next day, while Toni was finding the man who'd wandered away from his caretakers, Marissa prevented a fight in a Lincoln Park deli over whose turn it was to order that would have required police intervention and a trip to the hospital for at least two of the participants. When Toni asked her how she'd done it, over a dinner of burgers in the back booth at McGinty's, she shrugged as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

"I got there a little early and listened to the people around me," she said. "The woman who started it was on the phone arguing with her husband when the server called her number. They were going to skip over her, so I gave her a nudge and told her it was her turn. She didn't even think to ask how I could see which number she was holding, just went and ordered her salad. Walked out of there still fighting on the phone, but at least she wasn't trying to take down the nurse who had the number after hers. Most of the people who end up in the paper don't have bad intentions. They're just having bad days."

Now that she had time and distance away from her irritation, not to mention an incredible cheeseburger and a beer, Toni could see what she meant. The driver of the minivan, for example, was not a careless woman preoccupied with talk radio, but an exhausted mother of four trying to get all her kids to lessons and practices. Instead of yelling at Toni for pulling her over a few blocks before the accident would have happened and stopping her--instead of giving her irritation right back to Toni--she had been almost embarrassingly grateful, and made sure all instruments and sports equipment were safely stowed behind the backseat before she drove off to the next lesson.

"So how do you think Hobson would have handled it?" she asked Marissa after describing the encounter. "I slapped a light on top of my car and pulled her over, but if he tried something like that he'd get arrested for impersonating an officer."

Marissa tilted her head, considering, while she dragged a French fry through a little tin cup of aioli. "He'd probably stand out in the street waving his arms and hope she hit the brakes before she went into the intersection."

"But then wouldn't the girl's flute have hit him instead of the cyclist?"

"Probably."

Maybe Gary and the idiots deserved each other.

But the thing was, Chicago needed him, or someone like him. Toni was starting to understand his reluctance to leave it, and the paper. It was the same as the pull of her own job. "Maybe I should try to convince Marcus and Steph to move here," she said. They'd emailed her a photo of the ultrasound; a blurry peanut with a couple of nubs that might have been arms or legs. She didn't exactly feel a connection to it, but then she thought ahead a year or so to who it would become, and what could become of a kid in a world where the simplest moment of carelessness could lead to disaster. "That way I'd know there's someone watching out for that baby once it makes its appearance."

"I'm sure Gary would be happy to take care of your family." Marissa's smile was quick to appear, and almost as quick to fade. "That's one thing he makes sure the paper understands."

"He…makes it understand?" Toni mumbled around the bite of burger she'd just taken. She case a sidelong glance at the Sun-Times, which she'd pushed to the back of the booth table, then at the Cat, perched next to Marissa and watching Toni with its mysterious stare. She swallowed quickly so she could ask, "Does he have some kind of control over what shows up in that thing? Because the way he talks, it's it controlling him."

"I'm not sure. I have theories, but he's never been very interested in them." Marissa shook herself, and her smile reappeared, albeit more forced. "Maybe he's right, and the why doesn't matter as much as what he does with it."

"Or what we do with it, this week."

"Mmm." Marissa hid whatever it was she was thinking by taking a huge bite of her burger.

The clinking of glasses and silverware and the not-so low murmur of voices around them made a comfortable soundtrack as Toni considered what Marissa's life must have been like over the past few years. She was good at handling the paper, but she wasn't as good as she probably thought she was at hiding her feelings about it. She obviously liked helping—liked people. Even the idiots. But a thread of weary irritation, different from Gary's but there all the same, ran through all their conversations about it.

It was time to talk about something other than shop. "Did you hear Hobson took his mom dress shopping yesterday?" she asked. "I wonder what prompted that. A couple days ago he was acting like they were asking him to donate a kidney instead of wanting him to spend time with them."

"He does love his parents," Marissa said. "But he gets impatient with them, and their expectations. There was a time around the divorce when he hardly saw them at all. I think it was because it felt like a failure, instead of the step in the right direction it turned out to be. Maybe him going home for more than a few hours is helping them all loosen up a little. What?" she asked when Toni snorted out a laugh.

"Nothing, just…I'm going to start coming to you every time I need a suspect profiled. You are scary good at sussing people out."

"It is what I do," she acknowledged with a little shrug.

"What are his parents like, anyway? Other than extremely curious about what their kid is up to with his magic newspaper." Every time she'd talked with Gary this week, she'd sensed Lois and Bernie in the background, hovering so close she could almost hear them breathing while the listened.

"That's right, you've never met them." Marissa held up a hand and a server—James, Toni remembered--appeared at their table with new drinks. The woman had her own kind of magic. "Lois is the definition of down-to-earth. I think she invested a lot of her hopes and dreams in Gary, which is normal for an only child. Once he grew up and got a life of his own here, she directed all that energy at her community. She runs a garden club, a book club, and the women's group at their church, and those are just the ones I know about. She can be kind of intense, but I think her heart's in the right place."

"What about his dad?"

Marissa took a sip of her wine, considering. "You remember Chuck?"

"How could I forget?" Chuck Fishman's wedding to one of the most notorious jewel thieves to ever come through Chicago—twice—had been a narrowly averted international incident. "Hobson says they've been friends since they were kids. I'm still trying to figure that one out."

This time Marissa's wry smile lingered. "Let's just say I understood their friendship a lot better once I met Bernie. A couple years ago Gary went missing for a few days, and the two of them tried to handle the paper."

"Oh, God."

"That about sums it up."

"That sounds like a recipe for—wait, why'd he go missing?"

"You want the long version?"

Toni glanced at the paper one more time. The headlines they'd revised held firm—a proposal for a new freeway and the shenanigans of aldermen. "I'm all ears."

* * * *

"What's in the paper today?"

"Good morning to you, too, Hobson."

Gary took a deep breath, twisted the phone cord around his fingers, and tapped them on the kitchen counter. Out the window in the back door, he could see his dad messing around in the flower beds. "Just was wondering what's up. Making sure you got it all under control."

"It's not even seven in the morning. I haven't had time to read it, let alone get it under control. Isn't this supposed to be a break for you? Maybe you should relax."

"I don't need to relax."

"Yes you do." Lois slid a cup of coffee under his nose. "Whichever one of your harem that is, she's right."

"I don't have a harem!"

"Mm-hm." She patted his shoulder and went over to the stove to scramble eggs.

"I would build on that opening, but I'm not awake enough yet." Toni let out a yawn. "Need to work an Intellgentsia Coffee run into this paper's schedule."

"You can always get coffee at McGinty's, if you're heading that way."

"'If'? You think I'm doing this without Marissa, you got another think coming, buddy. And nothing against your coffee, but unless and until you get yourself an espresso maker, I'm going to need the good stuff from an actual coffee shop at least twice a week."

"Just wait 'til Crumb gets back from Montana. He knows how to make strong coffee."

"Crumb makes cop coffee. Which is more like diesel fuel."

"So, the paper?" He could hear its pages being turned over the phone, and wondered if this was the frustration Marissa sometimes felt when he didn't read stories out loud to her.

"Is going to keep us busy again today. You know, this week was supposed to be my break, too." There was a pause, and her voice dropped to the lower register she usually reserved for the rare times they were completely alone. "You owe me a trip to the islands after this."

He shifted closer to the door, as if he could keep his mom from overhearing. "Which islands would those be, Brigatti?"

"Anything with a sunny beach and umbrella drinks."

"Sounds like you should go shopping for a bikini."

"What makes you think I don't have one already?"

The fantasy that he'd ever have time for an island vacation burst like a balloon when Lois cleared her throat and called out the window, "Bernie! Breakfast is ready!" Toni snorted.

"So how's Cat doing?" he asked.

"Aw, Hobson, you miss that little furball?" She was still laughing, enjoying his discomfort.

"No!" He kind of did—he'd picked a bit of tuna off the salad his mom had made yesterday before he remembered Cat wasn't there. "Just wondered."

"About your cat, or the paper?"

"Both."

"Yeah? Well, I've made an executive decision, Hobson. I'm not going to tell you. Just rest assured that we have it under control."

"But—"

He was interrupted when his mom brushed past him and opened the door. "Bernie, put down that shovel and come eat your eggs!"

"Say hi to your mom for me," Toni said, and the line went dead. He hung up the phone with a huff of frustration.

"Something wrong with your paper?" Lois asked as she went back to the stove to dole out eggs.

"Not as far as I know. Which isn't very far at all. Brigatti's more stubborn than Marissa, which is saying a lot. What?" Lois was staring at him from the stove, spatula raised.

"Are you dating the woman or not?"

"I guess you could call it that."

"You guess," Lois scoffed. "Well, if you are, you ought to start calling her by her first name."

"She still calls me Hobson. You're gonna burn the eggs if you keep looking at me like that."

"How're you looking at my kid?" Bernie asked as he strolled in from the backyard.

"Like someone who should have a few more social graces when it comes to the women in his life."

"Hey, I bought you a dress."

"Yes, you did, and it's beautiful." Lois scooped eggs onto a plate and held it out to Gary. She kissed him on the cheek again when he retrieved them. "Now we just have to work on how you treat the other women in your life. If that was your idea of flirting, I need to get you some lessons, son."

"I could help--" Bernie started from the sink, where he was washing his hands.

"No thanks, Dad."

"I was teasing him." Lois handed Bernie his plate, gesturing with her spatula as if she wanted to smack his hand, but thought the better of it. "A little. You can do this, Gary. You just need to make your social life a priority."

"What social life? Thanks to the paper, I haven't had one in years."

"Oh, so that's why you're on the phone three or four times a day?" Bernie nudged his elbow as he sat down next to him. "Seems to me like having the paper—and those friends of yours—is what's making you social at all, son."

"Your father is right." Lois motioned at the coffee maker, and Gary jumped up to bring the pot to the table.

"Dad's right?"

"It happens once every thirty-five years or so." Her own plate full, Lois joined Gary and Bernie at the table. "Let's talk about today. I need to call the caterers and make sure they have everything ready. I had a dream last night that they came without any serving utensils."

"Would that be such a big deal?" Bernie asked.

"How are they going to serve the pasta salad in the buffet line without the proper tongs?"

"Lo, you gotta take your own advice. Trust the people you hired to do their jobs."

"What if they don't?"

"We'll make do! There'll be plastic spoons for the cake, right? We can use those to serve pasta."

"That is the most ridiculous thing you've suggested in at least a month."

"From Dad?" Gary asked. "I'm sure there's something more ridiculous than serving pasta with—" Spoons. There was something he was supposed to remember about spoons. "Excuse me." Gary gulped down a mouthful of eggs and headed back to the phone. "Gotta make a call."

"No social life, huh?" Bernie asked as Gary dialed McGinty's.

* * * *

Marissa hit her wall Thursday morning. Or maybe that was when she finally realized she'd hit it back on Tuesday, when Gary had decided that Toni was the best choice to take point on the paper.

Toni, who barely knew how it worked; Toni, who had a job of her own that was all-consuming and exhausting; Toni, who hadn't walked through life with the paper for more than a few weeks, while Marissa had been helping with it for four years.

Once again, the paper went to Toni's house. Once again, Gary called her that morning as soon as she got to the bar to remind her to order more flatware because they'd been short a dozen spoons in their last inventory. might as well stock up on straws and toilet paper while they were at it, he added, as if she hadn't already taken care of all three. Once again, he didn't mention anything about the paper to her. "So, we'll see you Saturday night," he finished.

"Sure." It came out snappy and annoyed, and even over the phone, even a guy as clueless as Gary could sometimes be should have known something was up.

"You still want to come?"

"I said I'd come. I'm coming."

"Okay, seriously, what's wrong?" Maybe he wasn't as clueless as she'd thought. "Marissa? It's me. We're partners, right? Tell me what's up."

Partners. She drew in a breath. "If we're partners, why is the paper coming to Toni?"

"How should I know?"

"You do know the paper better than anyone." Or at least, he should have.

"Do you want the paper to come to you? They don't make a Braille version. And after—I mean, with everything else you have going on, do you have time?"

It had come to her once, and she'd needed a complete stranger to read her the story that had led her to save his life, along with Chuck's, and Crumb's. But Toni could read it to her, and they were both involved in solving the problems it brought to their doorstep. Common sense told her it didn't matter who got the paper, and she felt petty for bringing it up. On the other hand, it had been a point of irritation all week, and it was getting more difficult to hide that irritation every time Toni called to say the paper had shown up on her porch.

"I'm not entirely sure what I want," she admitted, "other than to know what it means that whatever, or whoever, is in charge of the paper doesn't think I'm qualified to take care of the stories inside it."

"It's not like that. Toni had the week off, so it just makes sense."

"I'm sure she would have liked to spend some of that time relaxing and enjoying herself. The fact she's doing this instead says a lot of good things about her. I hope you know I'm not begrudging her a role in your life, or in your—your mission with the paper." The space between them fizzled with their shared frustration.

"I do. I just—I want you to be happy, too, you know."

"I know." And he did, of course he did. That was what made it hard to stay annoyed at him.

"So I'll see you Saturday?"

"Yeah. Yes, of course."

As they ended the call with the more serious question unresolved.

Cat jumped up on her desk. "Tell me you trust me, at least," she said as she smoothed his fur down his back, but he didn't answer with his usual purr. Maybe he didn't think she could handle the paper, either. Maybe this went higher than Gary. Maybe there was a reason for it.

She was shaken out of her funk by a knock on the back door. She navigated the kitchen and opened the door for Toni, who was accompanied by an aroma that was more than, stronger than, richer than coffee. Some kind of nectar of the gods, maybe.

"I stopped for the good stuff. Hope you're not offended," Toni said as she handed over what felt like a vat instead of a cup.

"Are you kidding? This is amazing." She took a long, slow sip. "And powerful."

"I had them add a couple extra shots. We're going to need them today."

Cat settled into her lap, purring as she listened to Toni read out the paper's to-do list. She might not have the first clue as to what all Cat's, or the paper's, more subtle signals meant, but she knew how to work through a schedule that came from the future, and until whoever or whatever sent it told her straight out to stop getting involved, she wasn't about to back off.

* * * *

"How'm I supposed to control who gets the paper?" Gary muttered as he hung up the phone. He was so used to talking to an unresponsive cat that he started when he turned to find both his parents watching as they ate breakfast. "What?"

"Did you really just call your business partner to remind her to stock up on toilet paper?" Lois asked.

"Well, yeah, we can't run out."

"And you don't think Marissa knows that?"

"Of course she does. She knows everything about McGinty's. I wanted to let her know I haven't forgotten either." He plopped down and started back on his eggs, which had gotten a little chilly.

"Gary, that's ridiculous. You have to trust your friends to handle the bar and the paper."

"Look who's talking. You don't even trust Dad to buy the right streamers!"

"Maybe I was wrong about that." She turned to Bernie, who'd been watching their exchange with avid interest. "I've been thinking, honey, and you're right. Let's get streamers." She held up a hand, forestalling any crowing. "Yellow and orange, maybe some green for contrast. Fall colors."

Gary rolled his eyes. "Well played, Mom."

"When you've been married for thirty-five years, you learn how to compromise. And to let other people help. Now let's make a plan." She pushed her plate to the side and grabbed a notepad and pen from the center of the table. "We have two more days to pull this together, and I have a Rotary Club meeting at noon."

* * * *

Thursday was not a divide and conquer day, Toni explained. There were no overlapping stories in the paper; rather, there was a series of calamities in which the intervention of a compassionate civilian would be more effective than that of a cop who was long overdue for some real time off.

"What isit with these people?" she asked between loud gulps of espresso. "Road rage, food fights, grilling in the sink? How does he get through a day without punching some idiot in the nose for wasting his time with this crap?"

"It's not a waste of time for Gary, or the people he helps." Marissa knew she'd said it too archly as soon as it came out. She added quickly, "Though I can see how it would sound that way to you, given your career."

"I don't understand why people let things get out of control like this. Honestly, I'll feel a lot more confident in my ability to handle these stories without losing my own self control if you come with me."

"That's what I'm here for. What's first on the list?"

They started out by preventing a road rage incident centered around the etiquette of a four-way stop. All it took was the two of them parking a block away and crossing the intersection on foot, Toni just behind Marissa and Reilly. That changed the timing of the traffic so the two most confrontational drivers didn't try to enter the intersection at the same time. On its own, the shouting match that would have ensued wouldn't have been worthy of mention in the Sun-Times, but thanks to the resulting traffic snarl, an expectant mother would have delivered her baby in a Honda Civic instead of at the hospital.

Next up was a mid-morning convenience store robbery attempt in Humbolt Park, which would leave the thief in critical condition when the manager shot him, and his young son abandoned in a car parked a block away for several hours. "So we get the kid to CPS, right?" Toni asked as she drove toward the store.

"Or we stop his father from committing the robbery entirely," Marissa countered.

Toni made a hesitant noise, a kind of half-gulp that was eerily similar to one Gary made when he tried to work up the courage to say something uncomfortable. "Look, I'm all for eliminating bloodshed, but do we need to get in the middle of some asshole's bad choices?"

"Didn't you say he's shot because he stops on his way out of the store to grab a box of Twinkies for his kid?"

"Gives the owner time to get his gun out of the safe."

"That doesn't sound like an asshole. It sounds like he loves his son and wants to make him happy. What if he's robbing the store because he's desperate to take care of the very child he's going to lose over this? Does he have an arrest record?"

Toni called it in while they idled in the convenience store's lot. "Nothing," she finally reported.

Marissa raised an eyebrow, eliciting a sigh.

"You do-gooders are going to put me out of business. Okay, what's your plan?"

Having learned from some of Gary's more successful exploits, Marissa was ready with an answer. "Give me a set of winning lottery numbers. Something in the four or five-figure range."

Inside the store, Marissa bought a box of Twinkies and a lottery ticket. The store's front door beeped just as she finished her purchase. "That's the guy from the paper," Toni whispered. "Straight down the aisle. He'll be on your left."

"Forward," Marissa told Reilly. When he tried to guide her to the side, she swerved into the man.

"Lady, you need to get out of here," he said as they untangled.

"No, you do," Marissa said under her breath, pushing the bag with the ticket and Twinkies toward him. "Take these to your son and go home. Please."

"I—how did you—" He smelled like milk and bananas and sweat.

"Trust me, what you're planning won't work," Toni added from just behind Marissa. From the loud gulp that sounded from the man, Marissa guessed that Toni had flashed her badge.

"You want to check that lottery ticket tomorrow," Marissa added.

"Thanks, but how—"

"Go!" Toni commanded, and he obeyed. "I don't know if I like rewarding that kind of behavior," she groused when they were back in the car.

"Look at it this way. The kid still has a father, and they're going to be able to pay the next few months' rent on what he makes from that lottery ticket. Maybe he'll find a job in that time. If nothing else, the state of Illinois won't have to pay for his medical care and prison stay. Not to mention we kept the store manager from being robbed and shooting someone."

"Okay, fine, you're right. Happy?"

Marissa couldn't hide a grin at how much she sounded like Gary. "Did you flash your badge at him?"

"Are you kidding? I'd never live it down if anyone found out. I just gave him a look that implied the badge."

This time, Marissa laughed outright. "That's entirely believable. What's next?"

"Another convenience store. 'Bad Sushi at White Hen Pantry Sickens Eight.'" Toni slapped the paper onto the dashboard. "This is what I'm talking about. People who make stupid choices should have to pay for them. Who the hell buys sushi at a convenience store? How do eight different people eat sushi from a convenience store?"

"You got me. The important thing is that we stop it so they don't get sick."

Toni started the car and pulled onto the street. They'd gone several blocks by Marissa's count before she asked, "He really cares about this kinda stuff? Even when he's seen it for what, three years now?"

"Nearly four. What he sees—" What she helped him see. "—is that it's not always about the immediate consequences, like the fight this morning. One of those people who gets sick from the sushi is a doctor who's needed to perform life-saving surgery."

"I don't think many doctors get their sushi from White Hen," Toni said dryly.

"Maybe it's a single parent who doesn't feel well tomorrow morning, but has to go to work anyway. Maybe after he picks up his daughter at school he nods off on the L train and she gets off at the wrong stop and gets lost."

"I get it. I guess." After another pause that left Marissa wondering what conclusions Toni was drawing about Gary—or about her—she asked, "So what are we going to do, buy up all this deli sushi and dump it in the river?"

"One should be enough."

At the White Hen, Marissa bought a clamshell of spicy tuna roll and opened it just outside the door, then went back in. "This doesn't smell right," she told the clerk.

He snorted, a thick sound straight from the South Side. "You know how sushi's supposed to smell?"

"I have a highly refined sense of smell, to make up for—you know" She paused dramatically and waited for his grunt of acknowledgement. "Please, I think you need to check all the sushi in your case. People could get really sick."

"There's a problem with the sushi?" Toni asked loudly, from near the refrigerated counter.

The clerk sighed and took the clamshell. "Joey! Clean out the sushi. I gotta call the supplier." He stomped away from the register without offering a refund. It was a small price to pay for keeping people out of the hospital.

"Did you give him the implied badge look, too?" she asked Toni as they got back in the car, sushi-less and ecoli-free.

"I'm not saying I didn't." The paper rustled. "Story's gone, so it worked. That's a win for you, for sure. The indoor barbeque in Streeterville is next."

A graduate student in a studio apartment was going to try grilling burgers on a tiny hibachi in his stainless steel sink. Toni seemed hesitant to play along with Marissa's idea for that one, or maybe she was just tired. "Surprise fire inspection," she said, without the same snap in her voice as she'd used earlier, when the door of the fourth-floor apartment opened to their knock. "What are you cooking in there?"

"Just a burger. Why do you have a guide dog with you?"

"He's trained to detect smoke," Marissa answered quickly.

"But I haven't even started—"

"Exactly how are you cooking this burger once you do start?" Toni asked.

He sighed. "It's such a nice day, I was thinking beer and burgers from the balcony. You can see the very top of Wrigley Field from here, but they won't let me have a grill outside. So I thought I'd improvise."

"And poison all the apartments around you with the fumes instead? You do know your pipes are connect to everyone else's in this building, don't you? Where do you think the carbon monoxide you produce is going to go?"

"Probably not out the window, huh?"

"You got a couple hours before the game," Toni told him. "Go buy a George Foreman grill or something."

"So I'm guessing he's not going to graduate school for science," Marissa said as they rode the elevator back down.

"God save us from baseball fans and spring fever," Toni said fervently. "We've got one more story to take care of, unless something else comes up. There's going to be a food fight at the Wentworth Avenue Farmer's Market. Something about whether the produce is organic or not. It sends an elderly couple to the hospital when they get caught in the kale crossfire."

"They're injured by kale?" Marissa asked dubiously.

"It doesn't actually say which vegetable is the culprit. You know, this just proves my point that people are idiots. And that I'm glad you're here, because I would have lost it with these people before ten this morning."

They weren't able to stop the food fight; jurisdiction of organic fruit was a much bigger deal than either realized. But they moved bystanders out of the way—with a lot of persuasion and distraction by Marissa and Reilly and a few instances of Toni grabbing radishes and cauliflower out of the hands of anyone whose aim looked accurate--before anyone was seriously hurt.

Their own clothes were another matter altogether. They came back to the bar covered in—well, Marissa wasn't entirely sure, but judging by the smell there was at least milk (unpasteurized, organic), strawberry slushie, and puréed bananas in her hair. God alone knew what was on her clothes.

Toni's cell phone rang as they stood in the office, both of them trying to figure out where it had gone so wrong. "Gary?" Marissa guessed.

"I'm not answering that," Toni said. "After all the grief we gave him about the pigs, he can never know about this."

"Agreed." Marissa drew in a deep breath. "We can take turns and use his shower to clean up, so whatever this is—" She drew a hand over her hip, where something that smelled like both dirt and yeast was congealing on her jeans. "—doesn't stink up either of our own places."

By the time they'd both cleaned up, each of them changing into one of Gary's ridiculously huge shirts while their clothes went through the wash, Marissa had had dinner and drinks sent up from the kitchen, and Gary had tried to call each of them twice.

"I'm tempted to go to sleep right here," Toni said from the armchair.

Marissa nodded, bringing over a couple glasses of water from the kitchen to chase down the wine they'd shared. "It wouldn't be the worst idea. It's going to start all over again tomorrow morning."

"You really know this loft."

She handed over the water with a nod and settled onto the sofa. She could hear Reilly and Cat at the other end, snuggled together and breathing deeply. Reilly was worn out from their adventures around the city, not that he'd minded getting out and about for once, any more than she had. She had no idea what Cat had been up to, or why he seemed as exhausted as she felt.

"Gary made sure I did, and he tells me when he moves things around." She took a long pull of her water and admitted, "He really is a good guy."

"But?"

Loyalty warred with the need to say something to explain how curt and irritated she knew she'd been at him over the past few days.

"Look," Toni went on, "he left us with a lot to do, you more than me. You're allowed to vent. You and I are friends now, and I'm not investigating him. You don't have to protect him where I'm concerned. So what's this all about?"

She delayed answering by taking a last bite of her chicken sandwich, though she was almost too tired to chew and swallow it. "It's petty, really."

"You're not a petty person."

"Thanks." She thought back to what she'd said to Gary that morning, and how he hadn't responded, not really. "I'm worried he doesn't trust me with the paper."

Toni's short laugh was a sound of disbelief, not mockery. "You mean because he brought up what happened during the blackout? Are you sure that's not just him worrying about what happens to you?"

"He does let the protective older brother act go too far sometimes," she acknowledged. "But this is more than that. I've known about that paper longer than anyone except Chuck, and Chuck's not here. I was the one Lois called about taking it off Gary's hands so he could go to Hickory this week. And yet it's shown up on your doorstep every day. I don't mean that the way it sounds," she added quickly. "You've been great, and there's no way I could have handled it all week without your help. I'm not upset with you. I'm just trying to figure out why it never comes to me."

"What does Hobson have to say about it?"

"That the Sun-Times doesn't come in Braille." She took another drink of water, let it run down and cool her throat. "Gary hates thinking about where it comes from and what it means, but I think it's important. I respect his approach to the paper, and that how he handles the stories are his choices to make. And I understand why he trusts you. I do, too. But I've helped him before, when he's let me. I have been through the fire with that paper and that man. So why is it showing up on your doorstep every morning?"

"It's not like I want it. I have a job."

Marissa nodded. "I'm not saying you're the wrong person. It's never done this before with anyone Gary's…dated?"

Toni made a noncommittal noise, and Marissa ducked her head so Toni wouldn't see her eyes roll. "I don't know how much he's told you about where the paper comes from, but I think he has some kind of control over the kinds of stories it shows him and the times he has to delegate. The fact it keeps coming to you means he trusts you, and that's huge. But it also means that after all this time, he doesn't trust me, at least not with the paper."

A few seconds passed, the silence broken only by the ticking of a clock and Cat's low snores. "You want to know what I think?"

"Why else would I tell you this?"

"Okay, this is more like what half a bottle of sangria and I think," Toni said wryly, "but if you ask me, it's probably more a case of him not trusting that paper to keep you safe. He knows I can handle myself in a fight, so yeah, he trusts me in that respect. As for the other kind of trust, the fact that he even told me about the paper—I understand that's a big deal. If it wasn't it wouldn't have taken him so long. But whether he'll ever trust me the way he trusts you? That, I'm not so sure about. He knows if we don't work out he'll get through it, because he's made it though other romantic breakups. His marriage, Blondie…anyone else I should know about?"

"No one else he's had more than a date or two with."

"You've been with him through all that. That kind of friendship is really hard to find. If he loses me, he'll survive. If he loses you, he's lost. So he's extra protective of you."

"Maybe," Marissa said softly, after a moment. She wasn't so sure Gary would survive losing Toni at this point, no matter how much they both resisted naming what they were to each other. "I feel more like his counselor. Or his crutch. And for what it's worth, I don't think he'd so well without you, either." Toni made that half-gulp, half-grunt sound in the back of her throat. "I'm certainly not saying I could have handled this week alone. The truth is, I don't know if I can handle being shut off from what he does with the paper either. I don't only want to help Gary. I want to help the people who show up in his paper every day."

Toni let that settle for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was calm. "I can tell that much from this week. And you are good at it, in ways I'll never be. Ways I kind of doubt Hobson is, either. I still say you're more important than he realizes, but I'm sorry he's so clueless about it."

"Don't be sorry. It certainly isn't your fault."

"That's true." Toni let out a yawn. "I'll put in a good word or two when he gets back. Should we just sleep here tonight? I don't think our clothes are dry yet."

The fact that it might take an outsider to get Gary to acknowledge that he'd done something hurtful, and to do something about it, should have stung more than it did. Maybe it was the sangria cushioning it, or maybe it was the realization that Toni wasn't an outsider. She was really and truly part of the team.

"Sounds good." Marissa stretched out on the couch, toeing the menagerie to the floor and pulling a throw over herself. "You can take the bed." She waited until she heard Toni settle into the bed and snap off the light before she asked, "Why did you believe him when he told you about the paper?"

"I didn't at first," Toni admitted. "But it fit the evidence, and I trusted him, as ridiculous as his story sounded. He gets this look on his face when he sees someone in trouble. I can tell all he wants to do is help. Like you do, by the way. You're two of a kind."

So were Toni and Gary, in a slightly different way. "Thanks," she managed as sleep and sangria overtook her. "Sleep well."

* * * *

Chapter 3 Chapter Text

The allergy medicine she'd taken to deal with Hobson's cat counteracted both the wine and her very real exhaustion. Toni waited until Marissa's even breathing told her she'd fallen asleep, then went out onto the rooftop deck to make a call. The cat followed her at a respectful distance, which she took as a sign that what she was about to do was the right thing.

"You're still up?" she asked when he answered.

"How'm I supposed to sleep while my parents are arguing over napkin colors? Please tell me you need me up there."

"Not a chance." She gave him a brief overview of the day, leaving out the effects of the food fight on her clothes. "I need to tell you something, Hobson." She hoped she wasn't violating Marissa's trust, but in her experience with guys—her brothers, for examples one, two, and three—it sometimes took a sledgehammer to get the point through their skulls. She outlined Marissa's frustrations over the past few days, finishing with the big blow. "She thinks you don't trust her."

There was silence for a moment. Toni imagined his jaw working. "That's kind of what she tried to tell me this morning," he said finally.

Surprised by the note of admission and regret in his voice, she asked, "Is she wrong?"

"Of course she is!"

"Did you tell her that?"

"I guess I didn't, huh? Or if I did, it didn't get through."

"To Marissa?" she asked dubiously.

"Yeah, no. If she didn't get it, I guess I wasn't clear." He sighed, but she wasn't ready to let him off the hook for clearing such a low bar. "I don't understand how she can think I don't trust her with the paper. Or that I'm controlling any of this."

"Think back to the day you left. You hurt her feelings with that crack about how you couldn't have asked if it was just her."

"That's not what I said."

"It's definitely what you implied."

"I didn't mean—" He broke off with a sigh. "That's what she thought I meant, isn't it?"

It was certainly what Toni had thought at the time. A light spring breeze toyed with her hair and the hem of the shirt she'd nabbed from his wardrobe. It smelled like him: something outdoorsy, or maybe the hint of the lake that he always carried with him, even in the heart of the city. "Look, Hobson, you're the one who brought up the blackout. I understand there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, but it seems like you're still holding on."

"I'm not, I swear."

"Then why is your paper coming to me? If that really is up to you, you should be able to change it."

"How?"

"I don't know. Ask your cat." Who was currently nudging her ankle. Thank God for antihistamines.

"He's with you, not me."

"Look, Hobson, all I know is, next week I have to go back to my job. Which I am very good at doing. And if you don't want to wind up a hot mess covered in pig slop at least once a week—if you want to have time to do things like eat dinner somewhere other than your bar or go to movies, perhaps with a date—" She paused to let him snort, which he did. "--you could do worse than ask Marissa for help with more than the bar. She's good at the kind of stuff we did today."

"What about the robberies and shootings?"

"For those, you should come to me, but this is not going to be my full-time job. I should be an occasional contractor. But Marissa wants this. As appealing as your stellar personality may be, I think the reason she's stuck with you this long has at least as much to do with that paper as it does with you."

"That makes sense." He paused, and an L train rattled by on the other side of the building. "But I don't think the Sun-Times prints a Braille edition."

She lowered her voice on the off chance Marissa might hear. "Is this about her being blind?"

"No! No, but I mean—"

"For crying out loud, Hobson. It isn't as if your paper comes right off those presses in the basement, is it?"

"I'm not underestimating her."

"But."

"But even if she got a Braille edition, she couldn't do everything on her own, could she?"

"Neither can you, Hobson. That's kind of the point here." She let that sink in. To his credit, the noise he made in response sounded more reflective than argumentative. "Look, when you come back, can you at least act as though you think she's an important part of this newspaper gig of yours?"

"She is!"

"You need to show her that. I'm not going to be your crutch if you drive her away."

He lowered his voice. "That's not what I want you to be. Marissa either, but you…"

She waited, but he didn't finish. "But I what?"

"You mean a lot to me, okay? And I really appreciate—I guess I've come to see this week that I did need a break, and the help I needed has been here all along."

"Yeah, well, that's only because I'm sacrificing my time off for you. Normally, I have my own job to do. And I want you to do yours with the best possible back-up. Someone who can handle the things that take a lighter touch than mine. I would not have been able to change everything we did today without Marissa. I don't have her patience. Or her insight."

"I'm glad there were two of you, then. And I know she can handle a lot more than most people think. Than I think, sometimes. But it's not like I'm in control of the paper."

"The one person in the world who knows as much about it as you do thinks you might be." She looked to the sky for an answer to the weird puzzle that was Gary Hobson and his magic newspaper, but only the lights of the skyscrapers shone back at her. "I'm not saying you are. But think about it, okay?"

"Yeah, I will. Toni? I miss you."

They'd were in that space again, where she'd said so much and maybe there was more to say, more she could say here than anywhere else. Starting with "thank you," because if Marissa's theory about Gary's control of the paper was right, he really did trust her, even more than she'd thought.

"You need to get back here ASAP," she said instead, "because your cat is a pain in the ass." Said pain in the ass was currently curled up on her feet, purring. She would have kicked it away, but she wasn't sneezing.

"Thanks for calling. I think."

"Hey, I did this for the citizens of Chicago. If you're not out there doing your job and doing it as well as you possibly can, too many of them are going to end up being my problem, or the problem of the city's other first responders. We don't need that kind of headache." The cat butted its head against her ankle. "And Hobson? I miss you, too."

* * * *

It was well after ten when Gary hung up, but he could hear his mom banging pots and pans in the kitchen. He went down to find her boiling lasagna noodles in the Dutch oven and stirring oregano into a simmering pot of tomato sauce. Out in the living room, his dad was snoring on the couch in front of the local news.

"What's with all this?" he asked. "Did you have a dream where the caterers didn't bring enough food to the party?"

She laughed ruefully. "No, not this time. George Farris fell and broke his hip this afternoon. The church organized a meal train for him and Betty, and I'm making lasagna to stock their freezer. Can you reach up to that cupboard and get me one of the foil pans?"

"No problem." Lois kept an entire shelf full of disposable pans of all shapes and sizes ready and waiting for the food train calls. When he was a kid, they'd come at least once a month.

He handed her a pan, and she narrowed her eyes as she looked him up and down. "If you need something else to do, you can start cutting that ribbon." She pointed with her wooden spoon at several spools of wide yellow ribbon on the kitchen table. "Cut them two feet long. They're for the sunflowers Saturday. We'll tie them around the vases if Jenny Holmes remembers to bring them over from the church tomorrow."

Gary dug a pair of scissors out of the junk drawer and sat down at the table. How long was two feet, anyway? He eyeballed it. "You really like sunflowers, huh?"

"They're big and showy, like your father." Lois sprayed the foil pan with oil and spooned some sauce in, then started layering noodles, sauce, and cheese. "Something's eating you. You want to tell me what?"

He didn't bother to protest. His mom would know better. "Toni called. She seems to think I've been underestimating Marissa. But I don't. I think she's amazing. She runs the bar and goes to school and she's doing all this extra psychology research. Not on me," he added at his mom's look. "She's giving a presentation at a national conference."

"Doesn't sound like you're underestimating her."

"That's what I said."

"But?"

He opened and closed the scissors a couple times. "Toni thinks I'm trying to keep her away from the paper. Or the paper away from her. Actually, it's more like Toni thinks that's what Marissa thinks."

Lois gave him a sidelong look as she sprinkled cheese over the top of the lasagna. "Marissa can't do everything you do."

"No, but…well, it's been pointed out to me more than once that I shouldn't be trying to do everything I do all by myself, either."

Her eyes twinkled. "Whoever pointed that out to you must be pretty insightful."

"I already ask her for so much."

"Maybe it's not a matter of how much, but what. She is the one I called on Monday, after all. And I know how it feels to be kept out of the loop about your magic newspaper."

He bristled at the note of bitterness in her voice. His mom was an Olympian grudge-holder. "That was years ago. Marissa's never been out of the loop. For the last couple years she's been the whole loop." Which was true, so why had he gone straight to putting Toni in charge? The paper had done it first, to be fair, but was that on him somehow?

"I just want you to be happy, Gary. I want you to have a social life. To have time for things like dating, if that's what you're doing with Toni." There was a bit of emphasis on the name, as if to say she'd noticed he hadn't called her Brigatti in this conversation. "Give Marissa more to do. I'm sure she'll surprise you."

He nodded and started on the second spool of ribbon.

"You didn't answer my question."

"What question?"

She took a couple steps closer to the table. "Is Toni Brigatti your girlfriend?"

"Please don't use that word."

"What word should I use?"

"One that doesn't make it sound like we're back in high school." He snapped the scissors closed on a length of ribbon, then admitted, "I do like her. And we are dating. Sort of. When we can."

"I knew it!" Lois smacked the spoon on the table in triumph and plopped into the seat next to his. Tiny dots of tomato sauce stained the ribbons. "You should see your face when you talk about her."

"Please don't say it lights up."

"I don't know about that." She flashed him a teasing smile. "It goes all dopey. More than it ever did with Marcia, even when you first met her. Oh, and now you're blushing."

"I am not!"

"Your father used to get that look when we were partnered up in science lab."

Winding the ribbon around his hand, he asked, "How did you know he was the one? You were both so young." He had so much more experience than they had then, and yet he still didn't know whether to trust himself with a decision that big. Back in college, Marcia had made the decision for him. She'd done it again four years ago.

"We didn't know. We were far too young to ever think this far down the line. Love that lasts this long, it's a choice, one you have to make every day. Every time something drives you crazy or even really truly hurts you, you have to chose to work through it. To keep coming back to that person."

He ran his thumb over a spot on his ring finger that felt hairless and raw every onece in a while, even now. "Marcia made a choice, too, didn't she?"

"So did you."

He looked up in surprise. Usually when the subject of Marcia came up, his mom hopped right on the bandwagon of "how dare you hurt my son."

"You always say it was a shock, but you could have seen it coming. You chose not to. That's the only reason it was a surprise. So maybe next time—maybe this time—look a little closer when things get rough, instead of looking away."

"Mom, this time is—" It had already been rough, in more ways than one. Some of those ways had been his own fault, his own tendency to avoid anything that would make his life more difficult and complicated than the paper already had. "It's different than Marcia. It has to be, right? I'm older and wiser. Supposed to be, anyway. But if it does get, you know, serious—I swear I'll tell you."

"Okay." With a wink, she got up and covered the lasagna with foil, then stowed it in the refrigerator. "Thank you."

"For cutting ribbons?"

"For letting me in on your life."

"Okay, well, you know." He fumbled with the last bit of ribbon, too short to tie around anything but a pencil. "Thanks for the, uh. The advice."

"It's what mothers do best." She patted his head as if he were five. "Now go wake your father up and send him to bed. I'll clean up in here. We'll need to make an early start tomorrow if we're going to get the hall decorated."

* * * *

The next morning, the plop of the paper arriving woke Marissa from a dead sleep on Gary's couch. It took her a moment to realize where she was, and in that moment, Toni sprang up from the bed and announced, "I've got it."

Marissa rubbed her face and tried to smooth her hair into some semblance of order. "As usual," she said, but she didn't feel the same bitterness that had haunted her all week.
Talking to Toni about it had helped realign her own thoughts and emotions. As a counselor-in-training, she should have known to do that sooner.

"Or maybe not," Toni said after she'd opened the door. She walked over to the couch and plopped what felt like a Braille book—a thin stack of pages, bound in plastic comb—on her lap.

At the top of the first page, Marissa read three words and a date.

"Is that—" Toni asked, sitting next to Marissa.

"Tomorrow's Sun-Times."

"How—" Toni started, gulped, then finished weakly, "How did that happen?"

"That's a good question." Cat jumped into Marissa's lap, head-butting its way under the newspaper that felt and sounded so very different than Gary's version. A tremble ran through her fingers as she skimmed the first few pages, trying to discern the layout. The stories were arranged in paragraphs that ran the width of the page, with several lines worth of flat space separating them. There were two or three stories per page, with no "to be continued"s further in, as Gary told her often happened with the front page stories in his edition.

The texture of those stories under her fingertips--the future, hers to change--raised goosebumps. Cat nuzzled his head against her forearm, as if to soothe them away.

"Did you do this?" she asked Cat. "Were you paying attention last night?"

Toni made an odd, strangled noise and stood. "I'll make us coffee. You want some, right?"

"Yes, please." Pushing aside, for the moment, all her questions about how the paper had come so clearly and specifically for her, Marissa decided to focus on why. That answer to that was most likely in the stories that needed to be changed.

There were only six pages of print; whoever had arranged for her to get a Braille edition had taken pity on her and left out the classifieds and the ads. Along with the more dire stories, there were still some human interest pieces, the minutes of the CPS board meeting, and sports scores, as if to say she still had choices in what to change. Just as Gary always did.

Once the coffee maker started burbling, Toni returned and settled, somewhat tentatively, Marissa thought, on the edge of the sofa. She sounded uncharacteristically nervous when she asked, "So, this is kind of a surprise, isn't it?"

Marissa set the printout on the coffee table, running her palm over the stories. "It is." As far as she knew, no one printed newspapers in Braille. The expense of printing a daily paper that way was beyond even the wealthiest publishers. The contents of all the major newspapers were shared on CRIS, the Chicagoland Reading and Information Service radio station that broadcast readings of the news and other texts through a special receiver. But she'd need a very specialized receiver indeed to hear the news a day ahead of time.

Who or what ever had sent this—or asked for it to be sent—had done so for a reason. So far, she hadn't found that reason in any of the stories. The only one that was truly dire was a bank robbery in northern Indiana, and that seemed more like something Toni should handle. Or, given the location, Gary.

"It's never come to you before?" Toni asked.

"Once, a couple years ago. But it wasn't in Braille. Gary, Chuck, and Crumb were all in trouble. I had to walk all the way to the lakefront before I found someone who could read it to me. It's kind of a long story." One Toni had probably already read in Gary's infamous police file.

"Can't wait to hear it. When there's time, of course."

Marissa scanned the headlines again to make sure there wasn't something as desperate and time-dependent as the explosion on the Rosario's boat had been. The only thing that would even close was the robbery, and that wouldn't happen until late afternoon.

"Do you mind if I—I don't think I've ever seen Braille before, except when you're doing the books when I come around."

"Go ahead." She held the booklet out to Toni, who turned several of the thick pages and ran her fingers—pressing too hard, by the sound of it—over the pages.

"All the news is here?"

"Everything we need to worry about." That much, she trusted. "There are some stories about the city council and freeway repairs, along with one about the presidential election. There are just a couple stories that we need to worry about this morning, and I can handle them if you want a few hours to yourself."

Toni handed the paper back to her. "You don't have to tell me, if you don't need my help."

"Of course I'll tell you. I know what it's like to not know." She frowned, still puzzling over the story she would need help with, and why this set of stories had come to her at all. "It really is an easy morning. Someone out in Oak Park is going to burn his house down tonight because he doesn't fully extinguish the embers in one of those portable fire pits, and there's a pharmacist in Bronzeville who's going to put the wrong pills in a prescription bottle. I can take care of both of those, probably with phone calls. If Gary calls you, you can tell him not to worry about this morning."

"If I'm taking the morning off, it might include phone calls from him as well," Toni said wryly. "Maybe I'll leave my cell here and go get waffles somewhere. Read a book. Take a walk along the river. It'd be nice to have a few hours off for a change." The coffee maker beeped, and Toni stood again. The slight wariness in her tone, the careful way she'd asked about the stories, finally clicked. Over the sounds of the refrigerator opening, mugs clinking, and coffee pouring, Toni added, "It's nice to not have it be my responsibility."

She returned and clinked a mug deliberately on the coffee table in front of Marissa, who waited until Toni sat and took a gulp of her own coffee before she asked, "You said something to Gary, didn't you?"

Toni sputtered. Marissa felt warm coffee droplets hit her wrist. "Jesus, you should be an interrogator. That's great technique."

"So you did?"

Toni's response came out in a rush that sounded like relief. "I called him last night. He was never going to get it on his own. But I didn't think it would work this quickly." Her voice dropped. "This thing is so weird."

"Mmm." Marissa took a long sip of coffee, wondering of how much of what she was feeling—wonder, affection, annoyance—showed on her face.

"I was just trying to get a little time off," Toni said jokingly, then added in a more serious tone, "Did I overstep?"

"Maybe." Marissa set down her coffee and shrugged. "But thanks anyway. I suspect he needed for it to come from someone other than me before he could truly hear it. We're both so stubborn, we would have gone on butting heads about it for years without actually resolving anything."

"I hope it doesn't seem like I'm meddling, or that I don't think you can talk to him yourself. It's clear you can handle what's in the paper today. Hell, you can handle a lot more."

"There's more this afternoon, and I definitely will need your help."

"Of course. But only if you really need it."

What she needed was to understand. Why this story? Why now, and why so far away from Chicago?

"Tell me about it," Toni said.

Marissa turned to the second page of the Braille printout and skimmed the story again. "It may be something that can be solved with a phone call, but it'll probably take someone with more authority than a grad student working at a sports bar in Chicago to convince anyone this is going to happen. I think Gary has a road atlas around here somewhere. Can you look for it?"

"Sure."

While Toni got up and started going through the contents of Gary's shelves and side tables, Marissa told her, "It's a bank robbery, and a guard is taken hostage. 'A man held up the Bank of Linville in northeastern Indiana at four-fifteen Friday afternoon,'" she read. "'The man, unknown the teller, the bank manager, or the residents of Linville who were depositing their paychecks, showed a gun and demanded all the cash in the teller's till. He took fifty-nine-year-old security guard Jeffery Fisk with him at gunpoint to the back of the bank and escaped. Police believe an accomplice was waiting with a getaway vehicle. Some witnesses recall seeing a blue van leaving town at a high rate of speed at the same time as the robbery, but as of press time the vehicle, the thieves, and Mr. Fisk were all unaccounted for. State police in Indiana and Michigan are on the lookout for the van.' They think they're heading for Canada," she finished, "and it looks like they took a bunch of stuff from safe deposit boxes in the back. But no one knows why they'd keep the security guard with them this long."

Toni whistled. "That's quite a jump in intensity from the morning's stories. Found it," she added, and returned to the sofa. "Since when does Hobson's beat cover Indiana?"

"I'm not sure. Once in a while there's a story from Gary or the south shoreline. Can you look up Linville and see how far away it is?"

"Looks like it's a couple hours away, maybe two and a half. It's about twenty-five miles from Hickory," she added, answering Marissa's question before she could voice it.

"Should we call Gary?"

"Oh, no way. He doesn't get the juicy story just because it's close to his parents."

It had come to her for a reason. She didn't know how the paper would change if Gary heard about the robbery, but she suspected it would be for the worse. "Lois would never forgive us if he was hurt, or couldn't help with her party." Marissa was only half joking about the last part. "Could you call the Indiana State Police? Or the county sheriff? I know how they react to phone calls from Gary, and it usually isn't good."

"I can't imagine it would be," Toni said with a half-swallowed snort. "I don't mind at all, as long as you can help me figure out what to say. I mean, it was easy enough Tuesday to tell the robbery division in the Loop precinct that one of my informants had tipped me off to the jewelry store heist. What do I say to someone a hundred and fifty miles away?"

Marissa chewed on her lip for a minute. She knew what Gary would say, and she also knew that it usually didn't work. "Maybe just tell them you heard the town come up in a…a bail hearing or something? Since they don't know who's doing the robbery, they could have come from anywhere. Why not Chicago?"

"I can work with that. You think I should call now?"

"No, go have your breakfast. If you call too early, they might let their guard down by late afternoon., and talk themselves out of believing you."

"Will do. You—uh, you sure you're okay with those other stories?"

"I am."

Despite the assurance, Toni didn't make a move toward the laundry nook. Instead, with the same note of wariness she'd used earlier, she asked, "Are we okay?"

"We're good." They were. Mostly. She might have a few comments about behind-the-back interference once she'd had some time to think about it, but she wasn't going to complain about the outcome. "Enjoy your waffles."

After Toni changed and left, Marissa set to work on the morning's stories. A call to the potential fire victim erased that story from her version of the paper, though he did want to know how she knew he had a fire pit and had used it the night before. "I'm from the manufacturing company," she improvised smoothly—she hoped. "This is a courtesy call we make to all our owners."

"But we paid cash. And how—"

"The warranty has your contact information."

"I didn't fill out a warranty."

"Your wife must have done it."

"It's sitting right here on the counter! And how did you know we used it last night?"

Maybe this wasn't as easy as she'd always thought. Maybe she wasn't as smooth. "Did you use it last night?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Then you need to douse the ashes. Whatever you do, don't put them in a paper bag, and don't stash them under your wooden deck."

"How the hell did you know?"

"Good-bye, Mr. Martin. Have a safe day!" Ignoring his still-sputtering protests, she hung up and waited a second before reading page three, where the story about the fire had been. It was indeed erased, replaced by one about plans for a new dog park on the North Side.

She planned the call to the pharmacy a bit more carefully, waiting until just before the story said Alice Haynes would pick up the wrong prescription. "Hi, this is Cheryl over at Dr. Simpson's office," she said brightly. "We've had a ridiculously busy morning already, and I want to double-check that we called in the right scrip for Mrs. Haynes." Her Intro to Psychiatry class, with its single session on the ethics of handling prescriptions, came in handy as she helped the clerk identify the correct medication for Mrs. Haynes's high blood pressure.

She was just congratulating herself, welcoming the lunch prep staff, and gearing up to deal with the big story if Toni's call wouldn't do it, when her cell phone rang, announcing a number from Hickory, Indiana. This time, she picked up. "Gary! How's everything going?"

"Good. The sunflowers came in."

"Sunflowers?"

"My mom definitely has a plan for this party."

"We should get her up here to helps us rethink the décor at the bar."

His laugh was uneasy. "So, the paper…"

"What about the paper?" She was teasing him a little, but she figured she'd earned the chance to let him dangle for a few more seconds.

"Have you talked to Toni this morning? She isn't picking up her phone."

"She needed a break."

"So the paper just…didn't come?"

"It did." She paused, probably too long, for effect. "It came in Braille."

"It did?" he sounded genuinely surprised. "I guess it really is magic."

"And yet, possible," she added pointedly. They would need to talk about why, rather than how, it had happened, but this was a start.

"Well, of course it's possible, I guess I didn't realize how magical it can be. What do you have to do today?"

"I've already done it. Most of it anyway." Toni was right. If they breathed a word about a robbery half an hour down the road from his current location, he'd take off for Linville without hesitation. "I can handle this, Gary."

His voice warmed. "That one time you got it, it was in print."

"Because I was a last resort. Maybe this time I'm not. Maybe the paper's learned a thing or two."

"Maybe." For once, she couldn't quite read him. He muttered something she couldn't make out. "How bad are things?"

"It's fine. I have it covered."

"I know you can take care of it. I guess what I'm trying to say here is…"

As he stumbled, she thought about telling him that she knew Toni had called him the night before. It might have been the kinder thing to do, but on the other hand, it might be letting him off the hook a little too easily.

"I never thought you couldn't handle it," he finally said. "I don't know why the paper showed up at Toni's place before this, but now that it's yours, I think—I mean, if you want advice on how to handle anything, I can give it to you, but maybe what I—what I'm supposed to see is that—not only don't you need it, but maybe I do. Sometimes. And that help is right in front of me."

She waited a beat. "That took a lot out of you, didn't it?"

"Yeah, it did," he said with the half laugh that meant she'd hit the right note.

"Thank you. It means a lot."

The office door opened. "Hey, Marissa," Toni said. "I—oh, sorry, you're on the phone." Marissa waved her in.

"So what's in the paper today?" Gary tried again.

"Nothing but good news, by the time we're done. No sunflower shortages. Here's Toni now. Cat says hello."

To give them time alone, she went out to check on lunch prep, humming a little with relief and satisfaction. The staff had prep under control, as always, both in the kitchen and out in the bar. By the time she made her rounds and came back the office, Toni was on the phone with the Indiana State Police. She didn't sound happy.

"No—what was your name? Sargaent Cahill. I am a detective and I do have information—Chicago. No, I—my badge number? Seven four three one five, and yes, you should call the department and confirm, but first, you need a squad car or two—whatever you call them, you need to send your people to the Bank of Linville. Why would I be making this up? I'm not—yeah, you do that."

She sounded frustrated and desperate, Marissa thought as she sat at her desk and snapped her fingers to call Reilly to her side. A lot like Gary.

"You can call Captain Thomas Banks at the North Precinct. No, he won't tell you I'm working a bank robbery in Linville, I just heard—Because I'm telling you first! As a colleague. I—Cahill? Damn it."

Toni let out a huff and plopped into Gary's squeaky desk chair. "They're all the same, I swear. Don't say it."

"Say what?" Marissa had no idea what Toni expected.

"That now I know how Hobson feels."

"He has had his struggles getting law enforcement to listen to him," she acknowledged, "but he's also not fighting the patriarchy the same way you are."

"He called me honey."

"Ouch."

"But that aside, I do see more what he's up against on this side of the paper. It must have been hard for you to take this on faith all these years."

"When you trust someone the way I trust Gary—the way you seem to—"

"I don't trust him not to end up covered in pig slop, but sure, I do. I learned. That thing with Savalas, that was a trial by fire. He's been doing this a long time, and so have you. I do trust you. You know that, right?"

"I do. Thanks."

"Cahill's not going to do anything, is he?"

Marissa read the paper again, having already come to the same conclusion. "The story hasn't changed. I'm afraid this is the kind of story we have to go to in order to fix."

Toni sighed. "I think you're right. We were going to Podunk for the party tomorrow anyway, right? Let's take care of this and then surprise them. We'll be in Hickory before Hobson even knows about the robbery."

"We," Marissa echoed. Gary wouldn't have jumped to the conclusion that this was a group project, but Toni seemed to take it for granted. "That'll have to include Reilly."

"Of course."

Cat jumped onto the desk, pawing at the Braille newspaper.

"Not you, buddy," Toni said. "Sorry, but Sudafed only goes so far."

"We still have plenty of time to get there, and if we're going to Hickory tonight, we'll need to pack. You want some lunch?"

Toni laughed. "I'm still full from waffles."

Marissa told the bar and kitchen managers she was leaving a little early for the Hobson's party and went over the closing and opening procedures. After quick stops at both their houses to pack overnight bags and party dresses, they headed out of town.

Toni's car was a department issued sedan that smelled new. "The robbery is supposed to happen a little before five," Marissa said as she buckled in. "We're going to be there well before it happens, right?"

"Time will not be an issue with me driving," Toni promised.

Marissa grinned. "Let me know if you need help with that."

* * * *

"I don't understand," Toni admitted. They had stopped for gas—and a walk for Reilly--outside of Chicago, and she leaned against the car while she waited for the tank to fill. "There has to be more happening in Chicago today. Why is his paper sending us to the middle of nowhere?"

"Maybe if we stop thinking of it as nowhere it'll be easier to understand." Still, Marissa gripped Reilly's harness tightly as she headed toward a grassy spot a few yards away, where Toni directed her. Toni kept an eye on them while she pumped the gas, not so much because she thought something would happen to them; it was more that there was something she didn't know, but should.

She drew in a deep breath of the spring air. The place along the south shore of Lake Michigan where they'd stopped was little more than a town, a small city at best. Out here, with no skyscrapers to stop it, there was room for the sky to press in, hinting at warmth in its humidity. There was a damp scent on the breeze that teased at the ends of her ponytail.

After she went inside to pay for the gas and pick up a few snacks, she returned to the car, fingering her cell phone as she stood waiting for Marissa and her dog to finish. It wasn't any use calling the Indiana State Police again. She'd already gotten an earful about how they didn't need help from the big city and didn't she have enough to take care of up there in her own jurisdiction, which wasn't even in the same state? So much for interagency cooperation.

She tried the deputy sheriff's office in Linville, as she had twice since that morning, and received the same message: Out to lunch. If it's a real emergency call 911. Which would route her call to the State Police, no doubt. She left another message, saying she was on her way because the threat was real, and that she would appreciate whoever got the message warning the bank.

When Marissa returned, a few strands of her hair had teased loose from the neat coil at the nape of her neck and been and stuck to her face by the spring humidity. "Maybe the paper pushed us out here because it wanted us to breathe some fresh air." Reilly's tail wagged happily.

Toni told her about the most recent fruitless call and asked her to check the paper again. "The story is the same as it's been all day. Sometimes this is how it is with the paper, as much as we wish it wasn't. Gary says he just has to be there, and he'll know what to do. I’m hoping that holds true for us, too."

"Great." Toni refrained from pointing out, yet again, that she hated uncertainty, especially when it was centered around a magic device that was supposed to know the future.

"You don't see the cat, do you?"

"Not since the bar." At Marissa's sigh, she asked, "Should I?"

"I'm not sure. Usually if he shows up it's a sign that we're on the right track. Or that something's about to go wrong."

"You realize that's a contradiction."

"So is Cat, most of the time," Marissa said as the all climbed back in to Toni's car. "I know Gary complains, but I think it's a good thing—it kind of humanizes the paper, so to speak."

"That menace really gets around, huh?"

"You have no idea."

Before she started the car, Toni called information and got the number for the bank in Linville. "Before I get us both mired in the testosterone swamp that is small town law enforcement," she told Marissa, "I want to make sure there's no way we can stop this from afar." She called the bank, and asked to speak to the manager, who turned out to be on vacation, so she asked for the security guard instead. When she gave him the same spiel she'd used with the sheriff and state police, about getting word of a robbery from an informant, he let out a resonant chuckle.

"Yeah, Dave March was by, told me to watch out. We have it covered," he said.

"Who's Dave March?"

"I oughta be asking who you are. Dave's the deputy sheriff in these parts. His office is across the street from the bank. He'll keep an eye out, I'm sure."

At least the guy sounded a little bit nervous, and the sheriff had delivered the warning. Maybe someone was taking her seriously at last.

"No heroics, okay? If you see something about to go down, clear everyone out, including yourself."

"I got it, lady."

"What a charmer," Toni muttered after she'd disconnected the call. "I guess we keep going, unless that somehow fixed everything."

"Still no change." Marissa shook her head ruefully, her fingers still on the front page of the paper. "What did you mean about a testosterone swamp?"

Toni started the car. "How much have you dealt with CPD, other than Crumb and me?"

"I've been questioned by them," Marissa said pointedly. She pushed the button to put the window down an inch or so. "And I've gone to them when Gary needed help, or was missing."

"So you have some idea how hard you—or Gary—have to work to get them to listen. Small town law enforcement is worse." At her emphatic tone, born of years of trying to work with people like Linville's deputy sheriff and bank guard, Marissa raised an eyebrow.

"The same kind of worse, or different?"

"A little bit of both." Toni wasn't sure what kind of measuring stick Marissa might use. "They're almost universally men, and they've either been on the job for thirty years or they get assigned to a town they don't know straight out of the academy, and they all think they know better than anyone how crime works in their town. And they do know their towns, which is why they're important in something like this. They can spot who and what is out of place—if they bother to look. But they don't trust anyone from a town any bigger than Muncie, and if it's a woman, forget it."

"They feel threatened."

"As if I'd want their jobs." She looked out at the mostly flat, now that they were moving away from Lake Michigan, landscape, at the farms delineated by tree lines, barns, and houses surrounded by John Deere equipment. She couldn't imagine living in a place like this, let alone working law enforcement here.

"How do you know so much about small town police?" Marissa asked. Her fingers rested on the Braille edition of the Sun-Times. She was definitely waiting for something to happen.

"I worked witness protection—WITSEC—for part of my time with the U.S. Marshals. Most of my work involved temporary protection detail, and most of those people were in the cities, where it's easier to be anonymous, but a few asked to be placed in smaller towns. They saw it as a safer choice, a chance to build a new life, and in some cases, the government let them take it. The cost of living was certainly cheaper. But we always ran into issues with the LEOs in those cases. They didn't want our witnesses adding to the criminal element and making their jobs more difficult."

"A criminal element? In small town Indiana?"

"I don't know about Indiana specifically, but just about every rural state has some sort of drug problem, whether they're growing them, running them between the coasts, or dealing with addiction in the local population. Half the time the LEOs are taking a kickback from the dealers and runners to look the other way. It makes them a real joy to deal with." Toni shook her head, dislodging the crowd of memories. She nudged the sack on the console between them with her elbow. "Can you open me a water bottle? I got one for you, too. And some trail mix if you want it."

They ate and drank in relative silence for a few minutes. Toni kept waiting for Marissa to tell her the other part, whatever it was that she was thinking but not saying, but so far she was uncharacteristically silent about it. It was too much like Hobson and his behavior before he'd told Toni about the paper for her comfort. She'd give it until they were ten miles from Linville, and if Marissa hadn't said anything by then, she'd ask.

In the meantime, she'd work with the information and the experience she did have. "Before we get there," she said as she veered left onto a two-lane county road, following the highlighted line on a map she'd printed and taped to the dashboard, "we should plan out how to play this. Gary's 'show up and figure it out' schtick may work for him, but I think we need a plan. You and I, we don’t exactly blend in."

"True," Marissa acknowledged with a rueful chuckle. "We can say we're passing through on our way to visit a friend, which is the truth, and that we saw or heard something suspicious in the next town over." She didn't sound nearly as sure that would work as Toni would have liked.

"Hobson uses that one a lot, doesn't he?"

She flashed Toni a wry grin. "He tries at least once a week."

Paul had told her about a couple of those stumbling attempts of Hobson's. While her sometime partner remained deeply interested in where Gary got his information, he wasn't as suspicious of him as he'd been in the past. But she didn't have time to build that kind of rapport with a small town sheriff.

"I don't know if we can get away with claiming we're passing through," she told Marissa. "This place doesn't seem to be on the way to anywhere."

"What's the last bigger town we went through?"

"Chesterton, where we stopped for gas."

"Okay, so we heard something at the gas station in Chesteron."

Toni hesitated, trying to put herself in the place of a small town sheriff being asked to believe and act on that story. It wasn't hard; she'd been asked to believe Gary's half-assed explanations for two years before she found out about the paper. Like Paul, she'd had her suspicions, but getting to know Gary as a person had allayed her most dire conjectures before he'd told her about the paper.

"You really think a gang of bank robbers would talk about their plans where anyone could hear them?"

Marissa's mouth twisted for a moment, and she tapped a finger on the Braille paper. "Not just anyone. As you said, we stand out, me in particular. A lot of people believe the myth that those of us who've lost our sight have their other senses enhanced to compensate, especially hearing."

"You don't?"

Marissa shrugged. "I don't really have anything to compare it to. I've been told my hearing is good, but that could be confirmation bias. What's important is that people are more likely to believe my hearing is some kind of super power than that I have a copy of tomorrow's newspaper in Braille." She hesitated, then added, "Maybe I should be the one to talk to the guard. I can convince him to get everyone out before anything happens."

They passed a sign telling them Linville was twelve miles away. Close enough, Toni figured. "Are you going to tell me why you think it should be you? Or whatever else it is that you're not telling me?"

"There's nothing in the story that I'm not telling you."

"But?"

Marissa's jaw worked, a little like Gary's. Finally, she drew in a deep breath and let it out, squaring her shoulders as if she'd made a decision. "All day I've been wondering why the story isn't changing, no matter what we do. The calls you've made, the warnings coming from fellow law enforcement—something should have changed, even in a small way. I didn't even have to get up from my desk to fix two stories this morning." She tapped a beat on the page under her hand. "The only reason I can come up with is that there's more to the story than what's in the paper, and it's going to take one of us going to the bank at or near the time of the robbery to stop it, or to at least keep the guard from getting kidnapped."

"That doesn't mean you need to put yourself at risk. I'm the one trained in law enforcement." She was also the one Gary would blame, should anything happen to Marissa. And he'd be right to do so.

Some of the tension released from Marissa's shoulders. Toni had finally hit on whatever had been bothering her. "If you can fix it, why did the paper come to me today? I know you talked to Gary, and maybe that had something to do with it. But I don't think two phone calls and a ride-along while you solve the worst of the problems in tomorrow's newspaper really count as a reason for whoever sends the paper to print it out this way. I think the only way the story gets better is if I go into the bank myself."

"And do what, exactly?"

"Talk to them. Talk to the guard, maybe to the customers or someone else who works there. Maybe they're more likely to believe me."

The speed limit dropped from fifty-five to forty. Toni tapped the brakes. "You are not going in alone."

Toni wasn't any happier about that scenario than she would have been if Gary had suggested it. But if those two had one thing in common, it was stubbornness. Toni knew better than to push against it. Instead, she pointed out, "If you tell them you heard about it at the gas station, you'll have to explain how you're getting around." She waited for Marissa's nod of acknowledgement.

"That won't explain your earlier calls to the sheriff and the bank."

"Shit." No wonder Hobson had so much trouble convincing anyone. It was impossible to keep a story straight once he got tangled up in the lies. "Okay, you overheard it, you called the Indiana State Police, who put you in touch with me because I called them earlier to tell them about my source."

"Triangulating. I like it." But Marissa's face had become more serious, and she was reading the story again. "What time is it?"

"A quarter after four. We're almost there." The speed limit dropped again as they reached the town proper.

"It still happens at 4:45?"

Marissa nodded.

"Good. We have about forty minutes."

Linville had one main road, which was the highway they'd come in on. There were no stoplights, and only a handful of stop signs on the cross streets as they neared the business district. Toni let the car crawl down the street until the shops turned into houses, getting the lay of the land. A handful of shops and a boarded-up laundromat lined Main Street. One street over was a Safeway with a postage-stamp parking lot and a two story brick building that had to be a school. A small park with a swing set, slide, and two picnic tables marked the end of Linville. Toni turned around and went back to the business district. Somewhere along the line, they'd tried to capture through traffic by placing a divider with trees and newly emerging tulips along the middle of Main Street. There were plenty of diagonal parking spots open. Toni pulled into one a few yards down from the bank and described the layout to Marissa.

"The sheriff's office is across the street and a few doors down from the bank," she finished.

"You should go to the sheriff. The bank is the one place we were able to reach someone, so they should already be on alert." Marissa's brow furrowed. She traced the story with even more intensity.

"What—" Toni starred to ask, but she was interrupted by an imperious meow. In the back seat, Reilly woofed a welcome to Gary's cat, who leapt into Toni's lap.

"Cat?" Marissa asked, reaching for it.

"Oh, no. No." Toni didn't want to touch it, but it settled on her like a weight, and she was forced to lift it so Marissa could take it. Still too close for Toni's allergies.

"If you're here, that means—oh, no."

"What it means is that my allergies are about to go nuclear." Toni rolled down her window. "Can we please get rid of it?"

Marissa grabbed her arm. "Cat is a warning. You can't go into the bank."

She had to go somewhere to escape the itch already starting in the back of her throat. "I can't stay here." The sneeze that escaped punctuated the statement for her. She wanted to bolt, but people were walking by, peering at their car with curiosity.

Marissa kept her hand on Toni's arm for another second. "You have to stay." Her voice choked. "The story changed."

"I don't understand anything about how that thing works, so you're one up on me. But what I do know is police work. Look, I understand the paper is your domain, especially today. But if Gary saw a story like this, what would you tell him to do?"

"To go to you, or the police. To let you handle it. But right now, that's the last thing I can do. The paper did change just now, when Cat showed up. If you go in there, the robbery still happens and the guard's still taken hostage. But there's also a , and you—" She reached out and clamped a hand on Toni's arm, as if to ground herself. "You'll be shot, too."

Toni gulped back a thousand protests and questions as her defenses rose. She glared at the cat. "Anywhere important? As long as I can still use my right hand and my legs, it'll be fine."

Marissa didn't rise to the bait. Serious as ever, she said, "It's you, so of course it's important. 'As of press time, Detective Brigatti was in critical condition after being airlifted to Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne.' I'm not making this up, Toni. You cannot go in there, not the way you're planning to. Whatever that is. Gary would never forgive me."

"It wouldn't be your fault."

"If I don't stop it from happening, it will. It's what the paper is for. And I would never forgive myself."

"I'm not afraid."

"I am. For you. Toni, please. The sheriff will believe you if he sees you. You have to make him believe, and you're good at that. I'll go in and warn the guard." She snuck that last bit in offhandedly, as if Toni wouldn't notice.

"You are not going into that bank." Hobson would never forgive her. But then, wasn't that why they were there in the first place? The cat meowed, staring at Toni as if she was a suspect about to undergo interrogation. "We still have half an hour. I'll try quick to get the sheriff to listen. If not, we'll go in together." She waited a moment, then asked, "Does that change the story?"

Marissa's fingers were still moving over the paper. "Yes. Back to what it was before. Go talk to him."

"Promise me you won't go in there while I'm going."

She hesitated, drumming her fingers on the cat's skull. "I can't do that."

At least she was honest about it. Still, this was an argument no one had time for. "If you think Hobson won't forgive you if anything happens to me, what do you think he'll do if anything happens to you?"

"The paper came to me. It's my decision to make." She drew in a deep breath. "Let me talk to the guard. As far as we know the robber isn't here yet. I have Reilly to guide me, and even with him, I am the least threatening person who'll walk into that bank today. If the guard won't pull the alarm after a minute or two, I'll get out and call 911. You convince that sheriff that you heard what I did—get him ready to move, at least, when the call comes in."

Toni tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. "With the paper like this, I have no way to check if something's going to happen to you."

"There's nothing about me in the story. If there was, I'd tell you. I will go in, warn the guard, and get out. That's all."

Toni chewed on the inside of her cheek, debating. "Okay. Give me ten minutes, and if we don't show, you can go in."

That same stubborn something that had come and gone all afternoon clouded Marissa's expression again. "I don't need your permission."

"I didn't mean it like that. I just—it makes sense, right? We give the safest strategy the chance to work."

"And if it doesn't?"

Marissa clearly suspected it wouldn't. But Toni was running out of time to argue, and this was the way she knew how to solve crimes, even the ones that hadn't happened yet: one step at a time, following procedure. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, and the paper says you'll be okay, then go in and tell the guard what you know. Then get out."

Marissa nodded. "We can do this. We'll be in Hickory in time for supper."

"In time to help Lois hang decorations, more like it." Toni shook her head at the thought that that was the best possible outcome. "One more time—"

Marissa read the front page again. "It's still the same."

Toni shot the cat a glare, hoping it would read what she decided not to say in front of Marissa: take care of her, or I will end you. "Ten minutes," she said out loud, and got out of the car.

* * * *

Chapter 4 Chapter Text

Marissa fully intended to wait the ten minutes she'd promised Toni. But halfway through that window, the paper changed. "Bank Teller Killed, Security Officer Taken Hostage," the headline read. Erin Hastings, age twenty-two, would be shot and killed as the robber escaped, and Jeffery Fisk was still missing as of the morning edition.

The paper had come to her for a reason. She had to go in, and she had to go in now.

Despite that conviction, she hesitated outside the bank, half-tempted to call Gary for advice on how to approach the guard, But she knew what he'd say. He'd tell her not to do it, and probably be in Linville to deal with the situation himself before she realized he'd hung up on her.

That would be a far cry from what had happened the first time a bank robbery had shown up in the paper. That had been a big-city bank, held up by a man who'd lost his job and truly was, well, desperate. At that point, when the paper was so new to Gary that he'd barely figured out how it worked, he'd balked at inserting himself into the situation beyond a halfhearted attempt to tell a police detective it was going to happen. Marissa had been the one to go to the bank and try to talk to the guard. Gary had followed eventually, trying to keep her from harm. Everything that had happened after that—the would-be robber pulling his gun, the rain of dollar bills that had distracted the police and let Frank Price escape and brought Gary to Crumb's attention had been because she'd told the guard to be on the lookout for a desperate man.

Her plan hadn't been the greatest, but Gary had gone in without any plan at all, and he'd kept doing so for four years. Things usually worked out when he did, much to her chagrin, thanks to the power of intermittent reinforcement. The paper kept coming to him, so it must be what it wanted. Her own kind of plans, more careful and grounded, hadn't met the grade until this week.

So she needed a plan, and a better one than she'd had four years ago--or even this morning. Today's robbery seemed like a job by an organized team in a less sophisticated setting. She could understand why no one wanted to believe her or Toni over the phone; why on earth would a team like that choose a bank in such a tiny town? She needed to know more about the bank and the people in it right now. As Toni had said, it made sense to let the professional cops deal with the professional crooks. Her own best bet was to convince the guard and anyone else inside to clear out before they got in the way. Maybe that was the thing she could do that Toni, with her impatience with anyone who didn't listen to her and follow orders, couldn't.

She said a prayer to the patron saint of fast talking. Her grandmother would have known the name, but she figured it was the intent that mattered. "Okay, Reilly. Let's do this. In, warn the guard, out." She pulled open the door and stepped inside.

"Excuse me? She heard feet shuffle and papers rustle, along with a soft exclamation, ahead and slightly to her left. Toni had been right about them standing out. "Hi, I'm looking for the security guard."

"That's me." The voice on her right was that of an older man, with a hint of tension in it. Someone else brushed by her on their way out the door, and the guard touched her elbow. "Let's step out of the way."

Reilly followed the direction change, and they walked a few steps to the right. She tried to keep her voice even and friendly, reminding herself that this man, who had no right to touch her, probably didn't know any better. Not to mention she was here to save him from being kidnapped and possibly killed. "Sounds busy in here."

"Friday afternoon. Everyone's depositing their paychecks. You're, uh—you're not from here."

"No, I'm from Chicago. I'm on my way to see a friend over in Hickory."

He let out a laugh with a nervous edge. "You're not here to rob the place, are you?"

"No, but someone else is. You got a phone call about it earlier."

He lowered his voice. "That was you?"

"That was a police detective from Chicago." She matched his volume, trying to keep her tone as even as possible. "The state police put me in touch with her because I heard the same thing she did, from a different source. There are men coming here to rob the bank, and you are in danger, along with everyone here."

The noise he made was confused. "You heard someone say they were coming here to rob this bank? Today?"

"They sounded dangerous," she added. "I thought I'd better warn you."

"That isn't possible, it's—" He cleared his throat. "Where is this cop, if she's so sure it's happening?"

"She's talking to the sheriff. I thought you deserved another warning."

His voice went higher. "Okay. Uh, you—you'd better get out of here."

"If you believe me, you need to get everyone out of here. Including yourself."

"I'll handle it," he practically growled. "You should go now."

She hadn't brought the paper in with her. However Gary managed it, there was no way to discreetly read the Braille version of the Sun-Times to see if she'd succeeded in convincing him go clear out the bank. But the way he was insisting that she leave, and not anyone else, had her worried that her plan wasn't going to work. The teller would be shot, and this man would be kidnapped—

Wait. Why would the robber shoot a young girl and take this man, who was solid, physically strong, as a hostage? Something was wrong with the story, with what the police and therefore reporters would know in the aftermath.

One thing she was sure about; one life she knew she had to save. She raised her voice. "Erin? You need to get out of here right now. You all do!" Voices erupted around her, confused and not nearly urgent enough. She turned so she was facing the guard. "You're going to need help. Pull the alarm and get the sheriff over here."

"Lady, you need to get out."

"Jeff?" said a female voice from the other side of the room. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. She's leaving." The guard placed a hand on Reilly's harness. Marissa couldn't tell if he was trying to pull it away from her or using it to force her outside, but it scared her into a realization.

"You're part of this, aren't you?"

"No! No, I'm not—"

It was the only thing that made sense. He wasn't going to be a hostage, he was going to make his getaway with his fellow criminal. Or criminals. "If you're part of it, you can stop it," she insisted. "People will get hurt if you don't!"

"Nobody's getting shot!"

Reilly let out a full-throated growl. Marissa wrenched her arm free, though the guard kept hold of the harness.

"Shot?" someone asked, and suddenly there was a rush of people past her, trying to leave.

"Erin?" Marissa called. "You need to leave now!"

She tried to move toward the place where she thought she'd heard the teller's voice, but the group of people trying to go the other way carried her toward the door, until a hand, the guard's hand, clenched around her upper arm and pulled her out of the flow.

"You've made it so much worse!"

"Let me go—"

A new voice echoed through the lobby. "Everybody freeze!"

Marissa could hear the door open again, and a gunshot went off. Instinctively, she dropped to the ground. The guard released her. The room went silent for a second, then the new voice growled, just above the spot on the floor where she crouched, "Lock the door, you moron. Get the blinds down."

"What do I do with her?" the guard asked.

A foot connected with her leg. "Get over there with the others." When she didn't move, he pulled her up by her arm and shoved her in the back. "Move!"

"I can't—I don't—"

"She's blind." That was the woman she'd heard earlier. Erin. "This way, we're on the other side of the counter."

"For God's sake." The robber pushed her again, and her hip connected with the corner of a counter. She followed the edge until it ended.

"The wall's right in front of you." Erin's voice was below Marissa. "Sit with us, okay?"

Her palms and back against the wall, solid and slick, Marissa slid to the floor. She couldn't hear Reilly at all, and he didn't come running to her side. He must have been forced out in the rush to the door.

Out in the lobby, the guard and the robber were talking in tense tones, too low for her to make out what they were saying.

"How do you know my name?" Erin asked.

Answering that question hadn't been part of her plan. "Did you pull an alarm?" she asked instead.

"Yes." Erin raised her voice. "Sheriff March will be here any minute."

The gunman barked out a laugh. "Jeff? You want to tell the lady why she's wrong?"

"The—uh--the alarm's been disabled."

"Fuck," said a man on the other side of Erin.

"Oh, no," Erin breathed.

"It's all right," Marissa told her. "The sheriff knows. Help is on the way."

"Doesn't matter." The robber came closer, breathing so heavily Marissa could feel it on her face. "He's out there, and you three are in here with me. You're my ticket out of here."

"What do you mean, your ticket?" Jeff squeaked.

He grunted and stood. "Fine. Our ticket." He kicked Marissa's shoe again. "One way or another, you're gonna get us out."

* * * *

Gold lettering on the windows of the Main Street storefront announced that it was the office of the TOWN SHERIFF. Toni half-expected to see a saloon with swinging doors next to it instead of the glass door she pulled open. The man who looked up from the desk just inside the door could have been a younger version of Zeke Crumb: tall, broad, with pepper-colored hair that was going to turn salted in a few years, and thin lines where the crags would deepen on his face. On the wall behind him hung a corkboard hosting most wanted posters and ads for town festivals side by side. Deputy Sheriff Drew March, according to the nameplate on his desk, stared at her expectantly, chomping on a wad of gum.

"Toni Brigatti, Chicago PD." She flipped open the wallet that held her ID and star and held it out long enough for him to give it a cursory, bored glance. "I tried calling you earlier about a possible robbery."

"Yeah." He leaned back in his chair, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. She had a feeling it wasn't a "Glad to meet a fellow LEO" smile. "I got your message."

"Have you done anything about it?"

He rolled his eyes. "Been keeping a watch on the bank all afternoon." He nodded toward the window. Toni glanced over her shoulder to confirm that he could indeed see the bank entrance from his chair. A dusty pickup blocked the view of her own car. "You're the only one I've seen who looks like she's up to something."

She wanted to smack the smug, self-assured smirk right off his face. Or the gum right out of his mouth. "Does the bank have an alarm?"

"Our money's just as valuable as Chicago's." He stared Toni down, even though he was seated. "If anything goes down, Jeff or Mike will pull it."

"What if it's an inside job?" she tried.

He snorted at that. "Not likely. The Bank of Linville is a family business. The Larsons been running it eighty years now. The manager, Dave? He's the great-grandson of the founder."

"Thanks for the history lesson. Why don't you call Dave and warn him?"

March shrugged and kept right on smirking, as if he were playing a trump card. "He's out of town."

That made her think more than ever that this wasn't a random robbery. Someone who knew the manager would be gone must have picked today. "What about the security guard?"

"Jeff? He's just putting in time until he retires. He wasn't smart enough to pass the entrance exam to the State Police Academy. No way he's pulling off some kind of plot against the bank. I'm telling you, nothing's happening." March pointed out the window, to the trio of calm pedestrians going into an antiques store. "Totally under control."

For the moment, at least, he was right. She checked her watch. Marissa's ten minutes were almost up. "Then you won't mind coming with me to check on things at the bank."

With a faint chuckle, he shook his head. "Go home, Chicago. I don't know where you got your information, but it's wrong. Take your pretty little star and go chase down some shoplifters on that Magnificent Mile of yours."

She couldn't respond without saying something that would alienate March, along with every other deputy in a ten-county area. Snapping her mouth shut so hard she tasted blood on her tongue, Toni spun on her heel and opened the door, only to hear the unmistakable sound of a gunshot echo down the street.

Turning back, she saw March on his feet, mouth open, a fat wad of dirty pink gum on his desk. No time for told-you-sos. She flew out the door and across the street, only to meet a handful of people stumbling around in the street between her car and the bank. None of them were Marissa.

"Get back!" She waved the little group toward the sheriff, who'd followed her, panting a little as he drew his gun. "Wait!" She stopped a young man in a denim jacket and a John Deer baseball cap. He was holding Reilly's harness. Reilly barked and strained, trying to get back to the bank. "How did you end up with him?"

"The woman told us to run, and we did, and somehow the dog ended up next to me," he said, his eyes wide. "I just wanted to get out, like she said."

"I'll take him. C'mere, boy. Reilly, hey." She knelt next to the retriever. His tail wagged a couple times, but he barked at her urgently. "I know. We're gonna get her out, just be patient." Toni had used up most of her own patience on March. She peered across the divider at the bank, but shades were already drawn. The guy had already shot once. She wasn't going to take any chances until she knew more about what was going on in there.

"The two tellers are still inside," March told her when she picked up Reilly's harness and led him over to the group that had collected on the other side of Main Street. "And your friend, sounds like. Shot was into the ceiling. Nobody hurt."

"Yet. Let's get everyone else out of the line of fire." She waved the group that had come out of the bank, who were quickly becoming indistinguishable from the curious spectators starting to gather, a few doors down. That was standard procedure. So was giving hostage takers room to breathe until the situation was fully understood. But there was nothing standard about Marissa being in that bank. Reilly whined again; she gave his head a scratch. "Call the state police," she told March.

"Didn't you already do that?"

"They didn't believe me. Look, Sheriff, you have a man with a gun in there, with four hostages. You had a chance to handle it yourself when you got my phone messages." She'd had a chance to handle it herself, too, but she'd let Marissa talk her out of it. "Do you really think you can go in there and disarm him without putting their lives at risk? Because I don't. I have been through hostage training and this is how we handle it. Call. Them. Now." She turned to the witnesses, who were part of a growing group of onlookers who'd come out of the diner, beauty shop, and antique shop on this side of the street. "I want to know what happened in there. Who fired the shot?"

"He's wearing a black mask over his face," a middle aged woman said. "I didn't recognize his voice."

"What else did you—you." She'd noticed a man on the edge of the little crowd talking into a cell phone. "What are you doing?"

"Calling Channel 21 over in Fort Wayne. They have a news crew on the way." He actually looked proud of himself.

"Don't do that. No more calls!" Though he was at least a head taller than her, he pocketed the phone sheepishly.

"State Police are on the way," March told her when he joined the group.

"So's Channel 21, apparently." She bit her lip, trying to process the little she did know. "This guy must be after more than what's in the till, if they're willing to go through all this. We have to figure out the rest of his plan. What's the layout of the bank?"

"It's a bank," he said with a shrug. "Front lobby, vault, manager's office."

"What's behind it?"

"Alley and parking. But there's no back door."

"No back—then how did they get away?"

"They haven't yet." March looked confused. "Guess we just wait for the State Police, huh?"

"We need to talk to the gunman. We need—" Toni broke off, staring not at the bank, but at her Crown Vic, over on the other side of the divider. At the trunk. At the cat sitting on top of the trunk. "I need to see the paper."

"What paper?"

She snapped back to herself, ignoring the way Reilly whined quietly as he stared in the same direction she had. "You have a number for the bank lobby? Call it."

* * * *

"Give them what they want and let them go," Erin whispered. "That's what they told us to do in our training." She had gotten up for the brief minute or two it had taken to open the teller drawers and put the cash in a backpack, as the man with the gun had told her to do. Now she sat back down next to Marissa, her voice and her breath shaking.

"Where did he come from?" Marissa asked.

"From the back," the man next to Erin said. "Where did you come from?"

"But he can't have come from he back, not unless he was in Dave's office all night or something," Erin said.

"There's no exit in the back?" Marissa asked. That was one thing that had stayed the same in all the versions of this story in the Sun-Times. The robber and his hostage had left through the back door, eluding law enforcement. If there was no back exit, or at least none that anyone knew about, there would be no reason for them to cover it. But Toni knew about the back exit, if she remembered the story from the paper. Which she would. Which she had to.

"No, there's only the front door," Erin said.

"Isn't that a fire hazard?"

"This building is over a hundred years old," the man responded. "They weren't worried about federal regulations back then. Who are you?"

"My name's Marissa. What's yours?"

"Mike, but look—"

"Shut up, all of you," the robber shouted from the lobby. He lowered his voice. "We're just going to take what I've already got and go."

"I can't do that now!" Jeff said. "The whole point of taking me as a hostage was to keep anyone from knowing I'm part of this. Now everyone's gonna know!"

Marissa didn't have enough background to work out why Jeff had gone along with this robbery, but she could hear in his voice that he was nervous and possibly wavering. Maybe that was why the paper had led her into this situation. Maybe she could still change his mind.

She was working out a script for her intervention, if she could get a chance to talk to Jeff alone, when the phone rang. "Answer it," the gunman snapped.

"But I can't—they'll know—"

"No one out there knows yet, and they won't if you don't tell them. Answer!"

Out in the lobby, Jeff picked up the phone. "Bank of Linville," he said in a shaky voice.

Fear tickled the back of Marissa's neck. If the man with the gun was sure they could keep up the charade of Jeff as a hostage, it meant he didn't plan to leave anyone behind who knew the truth. However he planned to get away, he probably didn't have room for three real hostages. Which meant…

Which meant there were about to be three deaths in the paper, if anyone could have seen it.

She wove her fingers together, praying for inspiration—for something she could do to change this. The question wasn't what Gary would do. It was what she could do that Gary, or Toni, wouldn't.

"Nobody's hurt," Jeff was telling whoever was on the other end of the phone line. "No, he's—hold on. He wants to talk to you."

"You deal with it," the gunman said.

"They aren't going to make a deal with me. I'm not the hostage taker!"

The gunman cursed under his breath, but a moment later, he said, "What? No, I'm not telling you my name. Yeah, I got three—"

"Four!" Jeff said. His voice was closer now, and she could hear his feet shuffling on the cold tile floor.

"Four hostages," the gunman was saying. "What do I want? Don't get me started."

"Jeff?" Marissa whispered.

"What?" he sounded utterly miserable, which gave her hope that she could turn things around.

"There's still time to change this. You can be the hero if you stop that man."

"How am I supposed to do that? He has the gun."

"Don't you have one, too?"

"It's not loaded. Bank policy."

"No one's supposed to know that," Mike muttered.

"But I'm guessing he does," Marissa said.

"The sad part is, people really will believe I'm dumb enough to get caught."

"Why would they think that?"

"I don't think that," Erin put in. "Starting to wonder if I was wrong about that," she added under her breath.

Erin's sarcastic streak reminded Marissa a little bit of Gary's, which came out whenever he got frustrated or felt backed into a corner. Maybe part of saving her was keeping her from saying everything she thought out loud. "That must stink," she told Jeff, hoping sympathy would ease some of the tension. "Going though your whole life having everyone believe you're less than you are. I know a little bit about that."

"Yeah, but in your case—"

"What?"

"You really are blind. I mean, it's not like they're wrong, is it?"

"You'd be surprised. But are they wrong about you? If you stop this, you can prove it."

"How, though? I can't—" He broke off as the robber raised his voice.

"Demands? Yeah, I got demands. Back up an unmarked van to the front door and leave it running. Then get everyone out of the way so I can get out clean. What? I don't care! Make it happen!" He slammed the phone down.

"I thought we were leaving through the—the other way" Jeff said, moving away from the counter.

"I'm just buying us time."

"But they aren't going to give us a van, and the sooner we get out the better, right?"

"Who's in charge here?"

"You are, and you've done great so far. With everything. We got the money and the--let's just go. They won't be able to tell anyone until we're out of here."

"I thought you didn't want anyone to know you're in on it."

"We'll be gone, right? Who cares what they know. Let's go."

"Not yet." The gunman's steps closed in on the group behind the counter. "Not until I know what they know."

Erin reached over and squeezed Marissa's hand. "He's pointing it right at you."

Cold metal grazed Marissa's forehead. "Now she knows." He got so close that his breath on her face made her skin break out in goosebumps. "And she's gonna tell me what else she knows. And how she knows it."

The paper had come to her for a reason. There was something she could do that no one else could. She just wished she knew what it was.

She drew in a breath, hoping to steady her voice into a believable range. "I'm psychic," she said. Dreading a reaction, a denial, she rushed on. "I had a dream last night about this bank. This robbery. People were hurt. They were killed. In my dream. I told my friend about it, she's a police officer. She believed me, so we came here to try to help."

"You got a police officer friend who believes you're a psychic?"

"I've been right before." The key to telling a whopper was believing it. No matter what was pointed at her head. "I was right about this, wasn't I? Look, I don't want anyone to get hurt. Including you. I was hoping I could stop it altogether, but…" She trailed off.

"But you failed. Now you're stuck here with the rest of us." The gunman took a step back, leaving Marissa room to breathe.

"None of us are stuck," she insisted. "You still have time to make the right choice."

"Oh, and what would that be? Did your dream tell you that?"

"Take what you came for and leave us. Get away while you can."

"She's right, Kurt," Jeff said. "We have to—what?" he yelped as a dull thud from the counter echoed through the lobby.

"They weren't supposed to know my name!"

"He didn't tell us your last name," Marissa jumped in, hoping to pull Kurt back from the edge of an eruption. "We promise, we won't tell anyone. Go now, and we'll wait to leave the bank until you've had time to get out of town."

The silence that followed her suggestion was thick and tense.

"Maybe she's right," Jeff finally ventured.

"Oh, now you believe that bullshit about being psychic?" Kurt's came close again. "How much more do you know, and how much of it did you tell your cop friend?"

"I've told you everything, I swear."

"Right." He rose again and spoke to Jeff. "What if she knows our way out? What if they're waiting for us?"

"But they're not, they can't be. The only ones who know are you, me, and—"

"Shut up!" From the counter came another thud. "I need to think this through!"

* * * *

The news truck from Fort Wayne made it to Linville as March got off the phone with the hostage taker. Toni had heard one side of the conversation, but she waited with growing, growling impatience while March recounted the whole thing. "Where do I get a van with no plates?" he finished in a whine.

"You could take the plates off one parked down the street, but we're not getting them a van," Toni said. "You just bought us some time, which is good, but they're not coming out the front door."

"There is no other way out of that bank."

"There has to be." She was distracted, momentarily, by a group of men in yellow vests who came marching up Main Street. "Who are they?"

"Volunteer brigade. They usually come out for fires."

"Great. Real helpful."

"We don't have multi-level departments, Detective. We just have each other." He gestured at the volunteers, all of whom looked to be about Crumb's age. "These guys got us through the tornado a couple years ago, and the fire over at the feed lot last fall."

"You all have a lot of experience in hostage situations, I take it?" Not that she had a lot; hostage situations weren't her thing. But if this had been Chicago, there would have been a negotiator, along with trained snipers on the roofs of buildings across the street, hidden in the alley that probably ran behind the bank. And Gary would have been in there, doing his best to make things better. Just like Marissa was no doubt doing right now—she had to trust that. "Have them herd the news crew out of our way."

If she could just know if Marissa was okay, if they story in the paper had changed, if Marissa--

If Marissa was in there, she was doing someone some good. "We need to trust my friend."

"Your blind friend?" He sounded as dubious about Marissa as Toni felt about his volunteers.

"My friend who's a trained counselor--" Techincally Marissa was still in training, but close enough. "--and who can talk them down from the brink, here. Give her time."

"I'll give her thirty minutes."

"Why thirty?"

"That's how long the state patrol will take to assemble and get down here. You told me to call for help, detective. I know the drill." His raised eyebrow said he wasn't sure if the same was true of her.

She knew the procedure perfectly well. But the cat was still sitting on the trunk of her Crown Vic, staring at her. She half-hated her certainty that it was trying to tell her something. She really hated her conviction, based on zero evidence, that she knew exactly what it wanted her to do. Her car was too close to the bank to just stroll over and grab the paper from the front seat—the paper she couldn't read, because it was in Braille, so what was the point?

But the cat kept staring, and at Toni's side, Reilly kept staring right back.

Good thing her captain wasn't here. Thank God Armstrong and Winslow weren't. Because she could never justify what she was thinking of doing, rather than waiting for the State Police to show up and contain the scene. No one in their right mind would let her duck across the street, making herself a target for an armed, desperate man, because she had a feeling that a stray cat sitting on her car was trying to give her a message from the future.

The only ones who would have, actually, were Gary and Marissa. Gary wasn't there, and Marissa couldn't tell her how to fix this mess. As in her line of duty encounters with Hobson, there was a lot more to sort out with Marissa involved in this mess, a lot of annoying emotions that could get in the way of doing her job. Neither of them seemed to understand that.

As if he read her mind, Reilly whined and pressed against her leg. "Why did you leave her?" she asked. "Sorry, I know you didn't do it on purpose. Why'd she let you leave her?"

"The guard grabbed her," said a woman behind her.

Toni turned to see one of the witnesses who'd been in the bank. "What do you mean? I thought the robber kept her from leaving."

"No, it was Jeff Fisk, the guard," the woman insisted.

"You sure, Avery?" March asked.

She nodded. "She came in and talked to him, and he kept telling her to get out, but then she told all of us to leave, and we did, and that's when he grabbed her. He said something about making it worse right about the time I got to the door. Then the gun went off and I ran."

Toni turned to face March. "He's in on it."

"But—"

"He was trying to get rid of my friend because she knew what was about to happen." Like March, the guard had laughed off Toni's earlier warning, but maybe that had been about more than parochial patriarchy. "And if there is another way out of the bank, who's most likely to have known about it than the guard? Or created it," she added, half to herself.

"Oh, shit," March muttered. I'm sorry, I didn't think--"

"It's good we know," she said, still trying to work out what this meant for the situation. For Marissa. "It tells us who we're dealing with."

"Except for the guy in the mask," Avery said. "Never seen or heard him before in my life."

"You want me to talk to Jeff?" March asked.

"I'm not sure that will help. Especially if he doesn't know what we know." Toni just hoped Marissa had figured that much out, and that she could get through to the guy somehow. Maybe that was the infamous reason for Marissa being part of this story she'd talked about earlier.

Whatever the reason was, if the cat sitting on Toni's car was any indication, none of them had figured out what to do with out, or how it would play out, just yet.

* * * *

"Dad!" Gary called from the kitchen, as he tried to decide how many boxes of wine glasses, centerpieces, and photo collages he could carry in one trip. "You want to help me load up the Jeep?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be right there." But Bernie didn't emerge from the living room.

Gary shared an eyeroll with his mom, who was putting every serving utensil she owned into an old grocery bag. "Bernie, come on," she called. "It's after four-thirty."

"WNIN news time! Gotta stay current."

"Bernard Hobson!"

Gary flinched, balancing the three boxes of wine glasses he'd brought from McGinty's. It was an instinctual reaction. As a kid, he'd seen his parents' bickering through a lens of fear, worrying every time they raised their voices that his family was about to break apart. His own divorce had heightened that fear for a while. But now, after spending more time with his parents than he had since he'd left for college, and after talking to his mom, he understood. Even marriages that lasted had moments of frustration. It was whether both parties chose to work through that frustration that mattered. No one out there was perfect, but some people were worth the effort it took to get past the imperfections.

Like, for instance, Toni Brigatti.

He followed his mom to the living room, where his dad was humming the Channel 21 news theme. "Doot-doot-dootdootdadoot! Time for 21 News!"

"We need to get to the supper club and get it decorated before you run off to join the rodeo circus," Lois was saying.

"That's only a rehearsal."

Gary nearly tripped on the rug. He clamped a hand tight over the top of the box tower. "You want to help me out here, Dad?"

"Hold on." Bernie reached for the remote and turned up the sound. "We got a hostage situation over at the bank in Linville."

At first, all Gary could see was a bunch of people standing around in a small town street. The camera swung around to show the Bank of Linville's brick front, with screens down in two big glass windows. A pair of State Police SUVs were parked on the street. "One of the hostages is believed to be the security guard," the reporter said breathlessly. "It is unclear whether the others are bank employees or customers."

"The day before our party? At least it's not here," Lois said. "Oh, that looks bad."

"You two are experts in hostage situations now, I take it?" Gary muttered.

"We did resolve the incident with that nervous young man in Chicago," Lois said.

"See, Gar, this is why you should move home." Bernie gestured expansively at the television. "You could get the local paper and make a difference around here. What a mess!"

"That's just it, Dad. This isn't my jurisdiction." Maybe it should be. He set the boxes on the coffee table, holding them in place with a steadying hand. He'd been prepared to let—or learn to let—things in Chicago go for a few days. He hadn't really thought about how he'd feel if something happened here. But nothing ever happened in Hickory. That's probably what they thought in Linville, too. But there had been a tornado in Hickory a couple years ago, and it had shown up in Gary's paper. Had this robbery been in another city's early edition? Surely someone in Indianapolis got a paper like his. Maybe even Muncie. "Mine is Chicago, and this week it's being ably handled by—oh, God." Cold rushed down his back, and his ears started to ring. There were a couple of guys in sheriff's uniforms milling around the two squad cars blocking the street in front of the bank. They were listening to a woman in plain clothes with her back to the cameras. She was wearing a jean jacket instead of a suit, but he knew that pony tail. He knew that stance, belligerent and confident.

He moved his hand to point wordlessly at the screen, and the box tower toppled onto the sofa.

Lois jumped over to retrieve the boxes. "You'll break the glasses, Gary!"

"Look at him, Lo, he's white as a ghost."

"Gary?" His mom put a hand on his arm. "What is it?"

"That's—that's Toni," he stammered, willing her to turn around and face the camera. "What's she doing there?"

"Your Toni?"

"She's not—" But she was. "Yeah. My Toni. The one who's helping with the paper." He grabbed for the phone on the end table and started dialing her cell phone. "How far is Linville?"

"Gary, she's a detective," Lois said in a warning tone. "She can take care of it."

"I know she can, but—" In his ear, her phone rang. "Come on, pick up." On the screen, he saw her start, open her phone, look at it, close it, shove it back in her pocket, and move to take something from one of the guys in uniform. A dog's harness, attached to Reilly. Cursing his parents' measly nineteen inch screen, he crouched forward, squinting. "Mom, Dad, you see Marissa there?"

"You didn't get the paper today," Lois pointed out. "Your cat isn't even here."

"What are you saying, that delivering your centerpieces is more important than my friends?" His friends, who were in trouble because he wasn't handling his most important responsibility.

Her mouth tightened. "I'm saying your friends can handle themselves, and maybe you should trust them to do just that."

"My friends," Gary repeated. A sick feeling rose in his stomach. If Toni had Reilly, that meant Marissa might be—probably was—inside the bank. In the middle of an armed robbery. "This isn't like leaving my high school buddies to clean up the locker room. Marissa's my best friend. And Toni is—I don't even know. But they're there because of me, because of my responsibility."

Lois moved in front of the television, blocking his view and forcing him to look at her. The lines around her eyes softened. "I understand. Go, but only because you care about them. Don't try to take saving the day out of their hands."

"I promise I'll come back."

"I know you will." She waved him toward the door. "Take your father. I'll get started at the supper club and you can help me finish once you see that your friends have everything under control."

Gary was already headed out. "I don't need Dad."

"I'll get more done without him. Trust me."

Bernie caught up with him on the front porch. "Let's go, son." He rubbed his hands gleefully. "I know the backroads to Linville."

* * * *

Chapter 5 Chapter Text

There were more phone calls in the next few minutes. Maybe it was hours; Marissa found it hard to tell. Kurt answered one with a snarl, but all he said before he hung up was, "Get that van out front and get rid of the cops!"

"Why are you still talking about the van?" Jeff asked.

"I was trying to distract them. That's what we gotta do. Distract them while we get away. Distract them so I can think."

"Seems like he's the one who's distracted," Erin muttered.

"What'd you say?" Kurt's voice was suddenly clearer, and Marissa tensed. This was what she had to deflect: a moment of conflict that could kill the young woman sitting next to her.

"They're still out there," Jeff reported. "What are they waiting for?"

"They're waiting on us to make a move, you moron."

"I'm the moron? Who told you about the t—"

"Can it!" Kurt stomped around the lobby a bit. "Okay, it's time. Our real ride's waiting."

"You sure he's still there? Main Street is crawling with cops."

"He's not on Main Street. And he's not gonna get scared like some people I know."

"I'm not scared. I'm trying to be smart." Jeff let out a heavy breath. "We can't take all of them with us."

There was a thump on the counter. "Stand up, all of you."

"Why should we?" Erin asked.

"Because I have the gun!"

Another moment, another chance to save Erin's life. To save all their lives; who knew what the paper was saying about the end of this situation now? Marissa stood, keeping one hand on the wall to orient herself. "You don't have to kill anyone," she said. "Just go. Both of you. If you get away before we can say anything, it won't matter what we know or what we tell them. But if you murder us, they'll look a lot harder for you."

"Murder?" Was there a note of hesitation in Kurt's voice? She'd used the word deliberately, hoping to make him rethink the direction this seemed to be going. "No, I'm not--the cops could be out back by now. The only way they'll let us go is if a hostage's life is on the line."

"Finally!" Jeff said. "I'm ready to be the hostage, just like we talked about. Let's go."

"A real hostage. Someone they'll think twice about before they let him—or her—get hurt. I need a real hostage and a distraction. You, smart mouth. The locals out there know you, right? Your one of their own. Get over here."

Erin drew in a breath, radiating angry tension. Marissa stilled her with a hand on her arm. "Take me," she said. "My friend out there won't let them do anything that might get me hurt. And it's not as if I can identify you afterward, if you let me go."

"Why would you—fine." He came around the counter and gripped Marissa's arm, and as he stepped away from the group behind the counter, drew her along with him. "Everybody else head for the door. You're gonna be my distraction. Better keep your hands up, so they know you're not with me."

"With us," Jeff said.

"Not anymore. You messed this up. And you're the only one who knows who I am." Kurt shifted. Marissa knew, as certainly as if she'd read it in the paper, what he was about to do.

"Duck!" she shouted as Kurt knocked her behind him.

The gunshot went off. Her ears rang. Kurt snarled something she couldn't make out, and then he was dragging her away from the others, farther back than the counter had been. "Come with me or I'll shoot you, too."

"Did you kill him?"

"Don't think I won't do the same to you if they come after us." He pushed her into a door with a huge handle that caught her in the gut. "Open it!"

She fumbled, but figured out it was a levered handle. It took most of her strength to push the lever down and shove the door open. She stumbled inside and the door slammed behind her. Behind them. He pushed past her and she heard furniture scrape against the floor.

"Why did you shoot your friend?"

"He was our ticket into this place. He's not my friend." Something on the floor clanged. There was a series of thumps, of several heavy things landing somewhere below where the floor should have been. He grabbed her again. "Under the table." He put a hand on her head and forced her into a crouch. A rush of dank air hit her face. "Down the steps."

"How many?" She slid one foot toward the air, toward the hole in the floor.

"Who cares? Go!"

Half crouched, she started down the narrow steps. She used the cool, rough walls to help keep her balance, until she tripped over a bag or suitcase, something made of fabric, and landed on her knees. The trap door above her clanged shut, and Kurt was on top of her, hauling her to her feet. "Take this." The bag he shoved into her arms was heavy, but it had handles. A duffle bag. He turned her around and shoved her forward. "Go."

* * * *

The arrival of the Indiana State Police—thank God they knew better than to come in with their sirens blaring—gave Toni the cover she needed. Waiting until she saw the edge of one of the window shades move and then go still, she crouched low and ran across the street and the divider to her car. "This better be worth it," she muttered to the cat, who made an open-mouthed yowl in response and pawed at the rear windshield.

Toni didn't see anything in the back seat. Keeping low, she moved to the front passenger door and cracked it open. The paper was on the seat where Marissa had left it—but it wasn't the paper Marissa had been reading all day. This one was in print rather than Braille, and it had two photos with it: Jeffery Fisk's and Marissa's.

"Guard Wounded, Woman Taken Hostage in Linville Bank Robbery," the headline read.

She picked up the paper and skimmed the article, trying to push back the sense of panic that made her go too fast. Just like time was going too fast. "Neither the hostage nor the robbery suspect had been located as of press time. Indiana State Police continue to search…The bank guard who was injured in the robbery is believed to have been an accomplice. Late last night, investigators found a tunnel from inside the bank's safe deposit room to an abandoned laundry…"

Toni went back to the beginning, intent on reading more carefully for better clues as to what the hell she should do, when movement at the bank door caught her eye. The door cracked open, and then closed, and before she could move, a second shot rang out.

Pulling her gun from its harness, she started toward the bank. A man in his thirties and a younger-looking woman met her at the door. "He shot Jeff!" the woman said. Toni took a step inside and saw a man in a security uniform on the lobby floor, bleeding through his shoulder. She turned back to the others as Deputy March and a handful of State Police joined them.

"Who shot him?" March barked.

"His partner. He took that woman with him," the man said.

"She has a name, Mike." The woman turned to Toni. "Marissa. Her name was—is—Marissa."

"Which way?"

She pointed behind her. "Toward the back. He said a driver was waiting for them. But there's no way out there."

And there was no time to waste looking for one. Toni pushed her way through the growing throng of LEOs and a pair of medics and made it back to her car. The cat was sitting on the front hood this time. "Where the hell is she?"

An alley, March had said. An escape route no one knew about. "Laundry," she muttered, answering her own question. She looked down the block and found the darkened storefont, four buildings away.

"Why are you reading a newspaper?"

Toni started at March's voice. "I need to get to the back of that building." She pointed to the laundromat.

"What makes you think—"

"Now!"

He gulped. "There's an alley on the other side of the hardware store."

"Keep everyone away!" she shouted over her shoulder as she sprinted down the block. Slowing her steps once she reached the alley, she crept down it and peered around the corner. A navy blue van with a plumber's logo painted on the side sat idling behind the laundromat.

She approached on the passenger side, staying low enough to avoid being seen in the side mirror. One deep breath, one prayer to St. Anthony that the door was unlocked, and she grabbed the handle, yanked it open, and pointed her gun at the driver.

"Chicago PD! Hands where I can see them!"

The man—early thirties, thinning brown hair, about one eighty and six-one, wearing an unzipped oversized hoodie—stared at her for a moment, then opened his door and leapt out, leaving the van idling. Toni rounded the front of the van and saw him sprinting down the alley, chased by Drew March. For once, she was glad he'd ignored her.

As she caught up to them, March made a grab for the guy, but he only got the hoodie. The suspect slipped out of the hoodie, and March stumbled backward. Toni ran past him and tackled the suspect. They landed with a shuddering impact on the cracked concrete of the Safeway parking lot.

"Stay down," Toni warned as she stood. "Hands behind your back. You got cuffs?" she asked March over her shoulder. He nodded, breathing hard. She took a step back, thoughts spinning. Any minute now, his partner would come out of that laundromat with Marissa in tow. "Get him out of here. I—"

"Toni!"

No. It couldn't be. But she turned to see Gary running toward her from the other side of the parking lot.

"Hobson, what the hell—you have to get out of here!"

"Where's Marissa?"

Coming out the back of the laundry any second now, hostage to an armed robber who was expecting his driver to be in the van. She looked from the man in handcuffs, being led down the alley she'd used to get here, to Gary, then back again.

"Toni, what—"

She kicked the hoodie March had dropped his way. "Put this on."

"Why? Where's the paper?" He slipped his arms into the sleeves of the hoodie. "Where's Marissa?"

"This is not the time for one of your pop quizzes, Hobson."

"It's not--"

"Hobson! You have to trust me. Get in that van. Sit in the driver's seat."

"But why?" he demanded, even as he complied.

"I'm deputizing you, Hobson." She slammed the driver's side door shut on him and moved to the back door of the van, out of sight of the laundry's back entrance. "Be quiet, and be ready."

* * * *

"Move!" Kurt shouted. The sound was absorbed by the rough dirt walls of the tunnel.

"Which way?"

"Forward, damn it."

Marissa stopped instead, trying to buy time forToni to join whoever or whatever was waiting at the end of the tunnel. If Toni even knew where to look for her. "If you want to move faster, you should lead."

He pushed the nozzle of the gun into her shoulder. "Can't keep you in line if you're behind me, can I? Go."

She took two steps toward his voice.

"The other way!" He turned her around. She moved ahead a few yards, cautious despite his mutterings. It wasn't just an attempt to stall; the ground beneath her feet was uneven, and the walls had no guide rails.

What else could she do? Kurt was proving impossible to sway; she couldn’t even induce a slight hesitation in him, the way she had with Jeff, without risk of setting off his anger and putting her own life in even more danger than it already was. Had she fulfilled the paper’s reason by saving Erin’s life? If she had, was her life going to be the trade-off?

No, she told herself as she shuffled forward, that wasn’t how the paper worked. She’d told Gary that more than once. The only failure would be in giving up.

"I know you said Jeff wasn’t your friend, but you didn’t really plan to shoot him, did you?" She tried to work some sympathy in her voice, though in truth she wasn’t sure of the answer. The article that had first appeared in the paper hadn’t said anything about a shooting at all, just Jeff disappearing, so it was her interference that had changed it, first to Erin’s death, and then to Jeff being shot, whether he lived or died. If only she had that paper with her now, so she could know. Over the past four years, she hadn’t fully understood why Gary needed the paper with him all the time. She did now.

"The plan was not to get caught. The plan was to use him to open up this tunnel over the past two months, have him fake being a hostage so we could get away." Every time he said plan, he shoved her forward a little, as if he knew she was purposefully slowing her steps. "The plan was to get away clean, dump him in a field somewhere in Michigan, and make it to Canada before anyone caught up with us."

"Dump him alive, or—"

"How stupid do you think I am? He could have died a hero, but he was about to rat on me instead. I couldn't let that happen."

She came to a full stop. "I don’t think you’re stupid at all. Neither am I. If you were planning to kill Jeff, you’re obviously going to kill me, and so there’s no reason for me to carry whatever this is and go with you."

"Like I said you can't identify me. Long as you cooperate, we'll dump you in a field somewhere, too. Alive, though. They'll find you eventually. Go."

She was out of things to say to him. He wasn't listening. She took another moment to shift the bag she carried, putting the long end out in front of her to serve as a warning before she bumped into anything. After what seemed like a lifetime and also not long enough, the end of the duffle bag thumped into something solid.

"That's it. Let's go," Kurt said.

Marissa shuffled another step forward. Her outstretched hand met with a solid wooden door. "Where are we?"

Kurt shoved the gun into the back of her neck. "Open it. And shut up."

She fumbled for the doorknob.

"Pull, damn it."

"If I'm going to pull, you have to step back."

He grunted, but did so, relieving the pressure on that one spot on her neck. "Up the stairs, go."

She could feel—almost smell—his impatience as he forced her up a dozen stairs and into a room that smelled of bleach and detergent, where their footsteps echoed metallically. Kurt grabbed her arm and half-dragged her through it; she ended up wrapping both arms around the duffle bag, holding it in front of her as a buffer when he knocked her into counters and cabinets. Finally, he reached around her to open another door. A blast of fresh, damp air caressed her face, as did the ozone tang of lightning about to strike. Just ahead, she could hear a car idling.

She listened for the sound of police, or Toni, but they weren't there. Because they hadn't found the tunnel, and wouldn't until after press time tomorrow morning. When she would be long gone, dumped in a field somewhere in Michigan. Alive or not.

Kurt shoved her forward one last time, then reached around her to pound on the idling car. Inches from her face, a door slid open. "We're out," he snarled. "Let's go."

All the work, all the thought and negotiation and stalling, all the choices she'd made over the past hour or so, came down to this moment. If she complied with him, she might have a chance to get out of this alive. But she didn't think it was a good one.

"Get in!" He pressed the gun into her neck until it ground on her vertebrae. "You gotta step up. Higher."

She lifted one foot and dropped the duffle. Kurt swore and pulled back. She braced her foot against the step, determined to push back against him and run as far as she could before he could recover and shoot.

But hands wrapped around her arms and pulled her into the van and slammed her to the floor. Someone landed on top of her.

"Stay down!" that someone—Gary—said in her ear.

At the same moment, Toni's voice sounded from outside the van, higher and harsher than Marissa had ever heard it, and more welcome than a chorus of angels. "Chicaog PD. Drop your weapon! Hands where I can see them!"

New voices joined Toni's, shouting commands, but for a few seconds Marissa didn't move. She couldn't. "Gary?" she finally managed to squeak out.

"Yeah." He sounded distracted. Probably watching Toni.

"Are we safe?"

"I think so."

"Because I'm kind of squished here."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." He shifted off her and helped her to a kneeling position.

"What are you doing here?"

His chuckle shook in the same way her voice did. "I ought to ask you the same thing."

"I was taking care of the paper."

"Yeah." He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed tight. Despite a flash of disappointment that he'd stepped in to save her at the last moment, she leaned into that moment of safety and protection. "Yeah, you were. You okay?"

"I think so. Can we get out of here?" She couldn't shake off the thought of what was meant to happen in that van. Or rather, what Kurt had intended to happen. The paper, it seemed, had different plans.

"You'd better," Toni said from just behind her. "You're messing up my crime scene." Her voice softened as Marissa away from the van. "He's gone now. It's safe. But you'll have to tell me exactly what went down."

Sprinkles had started to fall, and it felt as though the sky was letting loose in relief. "It doesn't matter, as long as—oh, no. Jeff. The guard. Is he—will he make it?"

"I don't know, but I'll find out," Toni said. "There's a news crew out on Main Street. I don't suppose you want to talk to them?" When Marissa shook her head, she said, "Be right back." Her footsteps snapped away, quick and decisive.

"Where are we?" she asked Gary.

"Some kind of alley, behind an old Laundry. A few buildings down from the bank." As the rain picked up, he touched her elbow. "There's an overhang a couple yards to your left. How did you end up here?"

She flexed her fingers as she moved in the direction he'd indicated, itching for Reilly's harness. "Kurt—the robber--he took me through a tunnel. We went into a room in the back of the bank, and there was a trap door, and then the tunnel, and stairs, and—I think Jeff told him about it."

"Yeah." Gary brushed her shoulders. "Little bit of dirt on you. You still look good, though."

"He shot Jeff." She heard the gun blast again, and the thump of Jeff hitting the floor, and shivered. "I tried to stop him. The paper said Erin, the teller, was going to die, and I stopped that, but Kurt shot Jeff instead."

"Marissa—" Gary started.

Adrenaline-fueled, she couldn't stop. "I know, okay? I know I shouldn't have gone in, but there wasn't a choice. Erin was going to die, and even though the guard was in on it, I didn't know when I went in there, and the paper came to me, it was mine to make right. I did the best I could, and I think I did the right thing, but I should have saved Jeff, too." All the emotions of the past hour or so gathered in her throat and behind her eyes, and she wrapped her arms around herself to hold steady.

"Look, I don't know everything that happened." Gary had to raise his voice over the sound of fat raindrops hitting the overhang above them. "Yet. I don't know who Jeff is, or Erin. But it sounds to me like you did what needed to be done. I—we—aren't always going to know the long-term outcome, no matter what the paper says. At least that's what you've told me once or twice."

Marissa couldn't manage more than a nod in response. Toni's footsteps approached again, sounding a little more splashy and accompanied by a familiar jingle. "You guys okay?" she asked. When Marissa nodded, she added, "Someone's been looking for you," and placed Reilly's harness in her hand.

Marissa knelt for a moment, letting Reilly lick her face once to assure him she was all right. She collected herself with a deep breath before she stood. "So what does the paper say now?"

"You tell me." Toni handed her the Braille printout of the Sun-Times.

She had to drop Reilly's harness to hold the printout and read it. He nuzzled her leg, keeping close. "Jeff's going to be okay. I mean, he's in a lot of legal trouble, but he's going to live. The bullet hit his shoulder, and he knocked his head on the counter as he fell. He wakes up later tonight and tells the police everything—how Kurt made friends with him on a church golf outing last fall, and found out about the tunnel. It's some kind of family secret--Jeff's a second cousin to the family that owns the bank. Kurt came to him with the plan and Jeff went along with it. Kurt was in the safe deposit room all afternoon cleaning out the boxes. Was that what was in the duffle bag?"

"Probably," Toni said. "If they could have fenced it, it would have been worth more than any cash they took from the till."

"Jeff thought they were taking him with them, but Kurt said they would have dumped him in Michigan before they got to Canada. But in the heat of the moment he decided—he said he wanted a real hostage. He was going to take Erin, and she was going to fight him. He would have killed her."

"So you—" Gary started.

"I convinced him to take me instead. And he was going to kill Jeff, so he couldn't identify him, but I told him to duck."

"I'm sure it will take the State Police a while to sort out the details," Toni said. "What's clear to me is that you saved Jeff's life as well as the teller's. If you hadn't warned him, he wouldn't have ducked, and he wouldn't have woken up later to tell the state police about the tunnel, and it wouldn't have been in the paper with the article about how Kurt got away with you as a hostage."

She started shaking, and now she was grateful for Gary being there, Gary who knew to wrap an arm around her shoulder and anchor her. "But that's not in the paper, because he didn't get away."

"It was there about twenty minutes ago," Toni said. "It changed to non-Braille format while you were in there. I saw the cat on the car and—" Toni blew out a breath that was almost a raspberry. "You see what you've done to me, Hobson? How am I supposed to explain this to the State Police?"

"We'll help you out," Marissa said. "I came up with a whopper back in the bank. I'm sure Gary can think of something just as good."

"Guess that's all I'm good for," Gary said, but it was a good-natured grumble. "That, and being a decoy."

"I didn't hear a thank you in there, did you?" Toni asked Marissa.

"Not specifically, no."

"Look, you two—"

"Hey, is this a private party, or can anyone join?" Bernie Hobson's voice startled her. "Marissa! What are you doing here? And who's this? Gar, is this her? You're Toni, right? Bernie Hobson, shortcut champion, at your service."

"I—" Toni started, but she was interrupted by the approaching footsteps of what sounded like a full platoon.

"Detective," said a low male voice. "We have the driver and the gunman in holding cells down the street. How the hell did you know they'd come out here?"

There was a pause as all three of them—Toni, Marissa, and Gary--drew in breaths.

Toni got her words out first. "What do you think we do in Chicago, sit on our hands and wait for the crimes to come to us? We know how these guys operate. Last year I had a case—it's a long story, but I took a look at the layout of this town and the alley and had a hunch."

"A hunch?"

"Born of experience. If you check out the safe deposit room, you'll find a weak spot. Here, let me show you."

"I like that one," Bernie said as Toni led the group away from them. "She reminds me of your mother."

"Don't start, Dad."

"Gary," Marissa asked, "if you didn't get the paper, why are you here? Why were you in that van?"

"We heard about it on the news. Toni kinda deputized me after we showed up."

"He didn't need any magic this time," Bernie said with a chortle. "Saw it on WNIN. Just like they always say: 'News you can use with sports and weather too.' Hey, there's a joint on the edge of town that has great fried chicken. Hastings's Hearty Chicken. Who's hungry?"

"I think Marissa has to talk to the State Police before she can go anywhere," Gary said. "I mean, that's usually what I have to do."

She tucked the paper under her arm and picked up Reilly's harness. "I'm happy to help." Now that she had her feet back under her—and Toni backing her up---she was sure she could tell the story in a way that would help law enforcement without revealing anything about the paper. "Toni and I have this under control."

"See, son?" Bernie said as they started down the alley, partially sheltered from the rain by the buildings and the occasional awning. "You're not a slave to that paper after all. You can get out of town, visit us, take a real vacation! You should go fishing with Crumb sometime. Did he tell you he invited me to Montana?"

"He did?"

"Well, not exactly, but it was implied."

"That does't mean he wants me with him."

"He's right," Marissa told Gary with a sly smile. "You can take all the breaks you need. Maybe even go on a date or two."

Gary let out a long-suffering sigh that she didn't buy at all. "What, are you all teamed up against me now?"

"We're on your team," she told him.

He knocked her elbow. "I figure I'm lucky to be on yours."

* * * *

"This is so not my jurisdiction," Toni muttered as she took in the foyer of the supper club. It was tiny, its walls covered in mounted fish. From the main room beyond the door came the sound of excited chatter and the occasional boisterous laugh.

"It's not really mine, either," Marissa said. "Gary and Lois and Bernie are the only ones I know.

"There's a step up here," Toni told her, though she was pretty sure Reilly had that covered. "And what looks like a receiving line right inside the door. Must be the price of admission."

There were several couples already in the line that Toni and Marissa joined. The wood-paneled room that opened up before them was crowded with a bar, a buffet, round tables, and nearly a hundred guests, all with drinks in their hands already. At least the television over the bar was turned off. Otherwise all those people might have been watching news reports about the bank robbery—which was what had made them fashionably late. Marissa had spent most of the evening before, and then today, giving statements to the State Police. She'd also insisted on checking on Jeff at the hospital before they got ready for the Hobson's party in their hotel room. He was recovering, as the paper had said he would, but he hadn't wanted to talk to them.

"I guess we could look at this as a church function," Marissa said. Her posture and expression radiated the same wariness she'd had in the police interviews. "Smile at the strangers and let the small talk wash over us."

"Or a group interrogation," Toni added. "There's probably a few likely suspects for something or other in this bunch."

"Given the setting, I think it's more likely that we'll be the ones questioned."

"We'll just have to keep a low profile." How wasn't sure how that would be accomplished, given the small-town-ness of it all. And the dog. And the events of the day before.

And the guests of honor.

"Our heroes!" Bernie shouted when the guests in front of Toni and Marissa left the line, headed straight for the bar. He grabbed them each in a tight hug while Lois beamed next to him. She was wearing a gold sheath dress with cropped sleeves that made her look like the Harvest Queen of Hickory, given the sunflowers and pumpkins that dotted the tables. It was a far cry from the jeans and flannel shirt—plaid, just like eighty percent of her son's wardrobe—she'd been wearing when Toni had met her the night before. "You ladies are the talk of the town!"

"Dad, I think that's enough, don't you?" Gary put an arm between his father and Marissa before she could get smothered in another hug. "You're supposed to stay on that stool."

Bernie sneered at the bar stool just behind him. "It's just a sprain. Just one lick on an ankle! I'll be fine."

Lois never dropped the welcoming smile, but her tone turned a little dire. "It would have been fine if you hadn't insisted on filling in for the rodeo clown."

"Someone had to step in. It's what Hobson do! Even honorary Hobsons like these two."

"Bernie, you're going to be fine," Lois said pointedly. "You need to sit on that stool until it's time to dance with me."

"Who's Gary going to dance with? That's the real question," said a woman just behind Lois. Her hair was a shade or two darker, but the twinkling blue eyes were the same as Lois's.

"This is my Aunt Jane," Gary said. He nodded to the man next to her, brown with a life lived outdoors and a few inches taller than Gary. "And Bill Gibson. They stood up with my parents at the wedding."

"Jane, this is Gary's Toni," Lois said. "And his friend Marissa. Jane's my sister," she told Toni. "She was my maid of honor."

"Those are the two I was telling you about," Bernie said as he settled himself back on the stool. "The ones who'll never have to pay for fried chicken in Linville again! Did I tell you how Marissa saved Harvey Hasting's niece from getting shot?"

Marissa and Gary both flinched at that.

"Four times," Jane said. "So far," she added with a wink at Toni.

Toni was relieved to hear the door behind them open. "Speaking of chicken," she said, "we'd better join the buffet line and let you greet the rest of your guests."

"Gary, where are you going?" Lois asked as he made to join Toni and Marissa.

"Marissa needs my help in the buffet line,." He dug a not-so-subtle elbow into Marissa's side. "Don't you?"

"Sure." But Marissa turned toward Toni and rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, I'll just show them where to go," Gary said. He grabbed Toni's elbow and steered them toward a round table near the front of the room.

"You guys are going to be here, with Jane's husband Dave and their kids, Tracy and Scott." He pointed to what was obviously the head table, a rectangle that looked out over the rest of the room. "I have to sit with the wedding party. Technically I was there," he added at Toni's raised eyebrow.

"You were—oh!" Marissa laughed.

"Showing up early and without an invitation? Sounds like you, Hobson," Toni said. Instead of flustering him, though, her words elicited a dopey grin. "What?"

"You look nice," he said, his gaze taking in her blue dress, a fluttery thing her mom had picked out for her brother's rehearsal dinner a few years ago. It wasn't her work style, but then again, this wasn't work. And given the way he lingered on the neckline…maybe he was taking in more than the dress.

"You sound surprised," she said, trying to ignore the way her heart rate picked up when he finally dragged his gaze back to hers. "You think we wouldn't come prepared?"

"No, I just—this is—um, it's different than your usual." His cheeks flushed, and he turned to Marissa. "You look great, too. You both, uh…yeah, you look great."

"Mmm-hmm. Thanks." Marissa gave him a look that said she knew he wouldn't be able to describe anything she was wearing if he closed his eyes. Toni snorted. "You gonna feed us, or do you plan to just stand there staring at her all night?"

"I'm not—uh, buffet table's this way."

It took more than two hours for everyone to get their food and eat. By the time the cake came out, Toni had learned the life stories of both Gary's cousins, and a few interesting tidbits about times his childhood intersected with theirs. Tracy was elaborating on the time they went waterskiing—"So just as the boat started up, his swimming trunks caught on a nail that was sticking out of the dock. We heard this huge rip and there was Gary, upright, gliding across the lake buck naked!"—when a clinking sound came from the back of the room. It grew louder as people at every table tapped their silverware against their water glasses.

"What's going on?" Marissa asked.

"It's some kind of trigger. Bernie's kissing Lois." She leaned in close to make herself heard over the ensuing applause. "Must be some kind of small town tradition."

"Or a small town white people one."

"Yeah, we're definitely…unusual here. Just like in Linville."

"But we got the job done there."

"We did. And you're sure there's nothing in the paper about this party?" The paper had come to their hotel room in Braille that morning. Marissa had solved a couple issues with well-placed phone calls, and Toni had stopped a pileup on Lake Shore Drive with another call to Carla. After the past week, it seemed almost too easy.

"Not a word," Marissa assured her as another round of clinking started up.

This time, Gary got to his feet and raised a glass. Everyone quieted down.

"My parents asked me to thank everyone for coming tonight. And I want to make a toast." For a guy who she'd seen stutter, or even lose the ability to speak completely, when they were alone, he sounded confident. Comfortable. Maybe the week of vacation had done him some good.

"It's been good to be back here this week. Good to see all of you, and to remember how this place operates. And where I come from. So a toast to Hickory."

"To Hickory!" the crowd chorused, Bernie loudest of all. Toni screwed her lips tight to keep from uttering anything sarcastic in front of Gary's family.

"And," Gary went on, "to my parents, who taught me that being in love, and making it last, is about more than just making googly eyes at each other." He darted a gaze her way, too quick for her to respond, then turned to face his parents. "Love—real love, whatever kind of love it is--it's about compromise and being honest, and taking that love and directing it outward, building up the people around you. It's about helping your community, wherever that is, and making it stronger. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for setting that example for me."

When the applause died down, everyone drained their glasses, and, as if by a prearranged signal, made their way to a small area at the back of the restaurant that had been cleared out for—dancing, as it turned out. Gary helped his father limp out to the dance floor. "I'll take it from here," Lois told him, and they danced to "I Want to Hold Your Hand," joined after the first chorus by a number of couples their age who still seemed to think they could do the twist, or whatever dances had been popular in the mid-sixties among—well, small town white people.

Gary took advantage of the seat his Uncle Dave vacated to join them.

"That was an impressive toast, Hobson," Toni said.

"Thanks. Wasn't sure I'd make it through it, but I figured it was worth saying. To them, and to you. To both of you, because you're my team."

"Does this mean you're going to take more breaks?" Marissa asked. "Because frankly, partner, they seem to do you a world of good."

"Yeah, you should definitely take a real vacation," Toni told him. "Somewhere warm, somewhere with beaches."

"Mmm-hmmm."

His expression had gone all dopey again, and because she knew he was recalling their phone conversation, and probably picturing her in a bikini, she chose that moment to add, "Somewhere you can show me your waterskiing prowess. According to your cousins, you're quite the natural."

Marissa burst into a laugh.

"I think I'm better off dancing," Gary said through a clenched jaw. "Who's first?"

Toni nodded at Marissa. "You owe her at least one."

She sipped at her sangria and snuck some chicken under the table to Reilly while she watched Gary dance with Marissa, both of them chatting and laughing and, for once, at ease with each other. When the song changed, he handed Marissa off to Scott for "Can't Help Myself" while he pulled a bar stool to the edge of the dance floor for Bernie and danced with his mother. He wasn't a bad dancer—for an occasionally awkward small town white guy, anyway, and whatever he said to Lois at the end of the song made her smile, then pull his head down and whisper something in his ear. He blinked back at her, shrugged, and made his way back to Toni.

"Madame," he said with a ridiculous flourish and his trademark dopey grin. She took his outstretched hand and they made their way to the dance floor. Lois, who'd been chatting with the DJ, flashed Gary a wave and pulled a stool over next to Bernie. Some dancers left the floor, while others joined, as a slower song started up.

"The Beach Boys, Hobson?" Toni asked as he put an arm around her waist. "You really are a throwback."

"It's my mom's idea. I think it was their song, back in the day. Or one of them. She told me to get you out here, so I did."

The lighting was a lot dimmer now, but she suspected he was blushing. As their meandering, swaying dance—closer and much more comfortable than the dance they'd done for show back when she was chasing the Iceman—passed his parents, they grinned broadly, and Bernie gave them a thumbs up.

Gary rolled his eyes. "Sorry," he muttered in her ear. "They're kind of a handful."

"So are you." But while she had to agree that "God Only Knows" was laying it on a bit thick, it wasn't the worst song to be drifting through a sunflower-decked party to.

"Too much of a handful?"

Surprised at the genuine worry in his voice, she looked up. "I used to think so. Now that I've had a chance to see what makes you who you are, I think I'm starting to get it."

"You mean this?" he tilted his head to indicate Hickory. Or his family. Or maybe both.

"A little bit. Mostly I meant the paper." And Marissa, if she was being honest. At first she hadn't been sure what that relationship even was. After a while—especially after Scanlon and Savalas and that whole disaster, and even after she'd found out about the paper—she hadn't been sure why it was. Why Marissa was so fiercely loyal to this guy, so willing to go through the trouble the paper created. "Now that I've had it land on my doorstop, I can see why you—" She broke off as the song reached its crescendo. Somewhere along the line, they'd ended up in a quiet corner and stopped. The other couples on the dance floor seemed a million miles away, and Gary's eyes were locked firmly on hers.

"Why I what?" he murmured. "Why my life is to much of a mess to live with? Why I'm too much of a mess to live with?"

She shook her head. "Why you're willing to live with it. It's a powerful tool, and you've figured out how to do good things with it because you, Gary Hobson, are a good person."

"So you don't want out?" Relief flashed across his face, followed by a grin that was only slightly less dopey than usual. "I'm not too messy?"

"Oh, you're definitely messy." She reached up to touch the back of his head, to pull him down for a kiss. Just before their lips met, she added, "but you're the kind of mess I like."

Notes:

"And if a man prevail against him that is alone, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken." Ecclesiastes 4:12

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thatcuriouscat, JaneQDoe, Missy, snarky_panda, Brindle_Cat, shiho59, JayneL, drayton, and devilish_t as well as 5 guests left kudos on this work!

Comments

Noniefan (Guest) on Chapter 1 Thu 30 Dec 2021 05:30PM UTC

This is great! Love seeing these characters back in action.

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1. akamarykate on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Jan 2022 12:31AM UTC
  
  Thank you!
  
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Jayne L (JayneL) on Chapter 5 Sun 02 Jan 2022 10:35PM UTC

Yay fic! You write these characters and their relationships SO WELL; every fic feels like a comfy revisit of all the things I loved about this show. In this fic, I really liked your exploration of exactly how Marissa's tactics for handling the Paper differ from Gary's and Toni's (whose tactics also differ), and how all of their different methods can compliment each other. A cord of three strands, indeed!
Very enjoyable!

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1. akamarykate on Chapter 5 Wed 05 Jan 2022 12:43AM UTC
  
  Hey you! I'm glad you liked it--it ended up being kind of a hodgepodge of things I was thinking about and things the recipient was looking for. Mostly, it was Something I Wrote in a year where my writing mojo wore thin, as you know. ;) Thanks so much for taking the time to read it!
  
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dramatic owl (snarky_panda) on Chapter 5 Sat 05 Mar 2022 11:20PM UTC

This fic is so fantastic. Great, compelling plot with a perfect wrap-up, and great characterizations all around. I loved seeing Marissa front and center, as well as Toni, who was a wonderful guest character and is fleshed out beautifully here. I would've really enjoyed seeing this aired as an episode.

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1. akamarykate on Chapter 5 Wed 09 Mar 2022 03:37PM UTC
  
  Thank you so much for reading, and for a lovely comment that brightened up a cold grey March day! I have always been a little bitter that we didn't get any scenes at all between Marissa and Toni, so I deal with it via fic. ;) It's great to hear from someone who remembers these characters fondly!
  
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