Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(107)

Petrie waited for the procession to go by, and turned to Zia Rosa again. “So? What do you need me to do? Where are we going?”

“Shhhh!” Zia Rosa shushed him, her dark eyes darting anxiously from left to right. “We can’t talk about it. They got mind readers!”

Petrie let out a slow, measured breath. “Mrs. Ranieri, we have to know where we’re going in order to get there,” he said patiently.

“They’ll tell us when we’re moving,” Zia said. “When we’re sure we’re not being followed. Don’t say nothin’!”

Lily came in, with tiny Marco draped over her shoulder. “Oh, Sam. Thanks for coming. Bruno said you’d drive Jeannie and Kevvie. Kev and Edie will take Eamon and Maddy, I’ll take Zia, Marco and Lena, and Sveti and Bruno will take Jamie and Tonio. We just have to wait for Kev and Edie to get here with the kids. Get yourself some coffee, there’s a fresh pot in the kitchen. I’m going to try and get Marco down so I can pack, so make yourself at home.”

She hurried off, and he wandered into the kitchen, relieved that they’d assigned him the biggest kids. Jeannie and Kevvie were smart, reasonable, young human beings. He could deal with them just fine. Infants or toddlers would have provoked instant catastrophic brain melt.

Not that he should make light of brain-melt, considering what had happened to Davy. He looked around Bruno and Lily’s kitchen, thickly cluttered with baby and toddler paraphernalia. He picked out a mug, poured some brew and sipped, wondering what had really happened to Davy’s brain. If the guy just happened to have an aneurism randomly, like anyone could have, and the arguably paranoid and volatile minds in the McCloud Crowd, Miles foremost among them, had blown up that disaster into something that it wasn’t.

Something that it could not possibly be.

He sipped coffee, listened to the constant kiddie shrieking in the far part of the house, glad it wasn’t his problem. He could hear Lily in the adjoining room, Bruno’s office, humming a lullabye to little Marco. But her singing was higher and faster and jerkier than a lullaby should be, and Marco was feeling it. He fussed and squeaked.

When he finally calmed down, Lily deposited him and hurried off to do what she could in her narrow naptime window. His coffee finished, he rinsed the cup and walked into Bruno’s studio.

The room was crowded with toy designs. Wild, colorful stuff was scattered and hanging everywhere. Heaps of paperwork lay all over the desks and shelves. Bruno ran a toy business, and Kev McCloud was one of the main designers. Marco’s bassinet dominated the room. A hanging mobile that featured what appeared to be strands of DNA fashioned out of colored beads dangled over his head.

Petrie edged closer, peeking into the bassinet. Marco was finally starting to plump up properly, get the dimples and the chubby wrist folds. He’d lost the shriveled preemie look. His round cheeks quivered rhythmically, sucking constantly on his binkie as he slept.

Cute. Petrie enjoyed kids—in small, calibrated doses. His sister’s kids, for instance, were great. But he was uncomfortable with them on a visceral level. Their vulnerability scared the shit out of him, knowing as he did just how shitty the world could be if the fickle wheel of fortune turned and dumped them down, down, down. So many dangers. Kid killers, school shootings, bullies, pedophiles, child traffickers, heroin and meth, drunk drivers, and date rape. Jesus wept.

You couldn’t pay him enough to risk it.

His niece and nephew and little Marco and the rest of the McCloud Crowd’s spawn all had better odds than most, but still. You never knew when the telepathic mind-melters were going to come along and mess you up.

The door opened, and Sveti barreled in. She jolted back when she saw him. “What are you doing to him?” Her voice was shaky.

He lifted his hands. “Ah . . . nothing? I wasn’t going to skewer him and barbecue him. I was just watching him sleep.”

She hurried over to the crib and peered in, making sure he hadn’t started the barbecuing process. “Since when have you been interested in babies?”

“I like babies just fine,” he said.

Satisfied that Marco was intact, she put some distance between them, in the usual pose she tended to strike with him. Hands on hips, tilted gold-brown eyes flashing. Looking extremely fine in her fitted black-ribbed sweater that hugged her small but very curvy frame. Hair swirling down, long and shiny and touchable. And those tight skinny jeans, wow. He longed for the back view, but was certain he’d get an eyeful of it, as soon as she minced off in a huff. He could probably start the countdown to that ass twitching huff any minute now.

“What’s eating you?” It was suicide to ask, but hey. He’d always been kind of dumb that way.

Sure enough, she looked outraged. “Someone threatened my little friends,” she said. “Is that not enough for you, as an explanation?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Excuse me,” she murmured. “Please, move. Lily asked me to pack Marco’s diaper bag. No, move the other way, please.”

She shoved him out of her way, and proceeded to start packing a big, quilted bag with baby stuff. In went the portable changing table, diaper cream, wipes, spit-up rags. She was fiercely ignoring him.

“So you think this threat is real?” he asked.

Her gaze whipped around. “You think that it is not? Why?”