Benny
Nixx was nearly an hour into what should have been a thirty-minute errand before I stopped pretending the delay was ordinary.
JJ and I were sitting in the art center lobby while Millie painted something behind the closed classroom door. I had already checked the time twice without meaning to. Nixx had left the house to grab a part Marcus needed from a shop fifteen minutes away, and even with traffic, a slow counter, or one of his inevitable conversations with somebody who thought they knew motorcycles better than he did, he should have been back by now.
I called him.
It rang until voicemail.
JJ lowered the book she had been pretending to read. “Nothing?”
“Could be driving.”
The answer sounded reasonable enough that I tried to believe it.
Ten minutes later, I called again. Sam
