A Warm Heart in Winter(81)

Fritz was a very good proxy, wasn’t he. Present when he had to be, invisible to humans of all kinds when the legal work was done.

Ron rubbed his side like he had an itch on his liver. “They said this house had been in your family for two hundred years. Is that true?”

“Hey, Ron, I’d love to keep chatting, but I don’t suppose you could grab those letters for me?”

The kid looked up at her dad. “This was his older brother’s room.”

“Just like you and Tommy.”

“Yup.”

“Come on,” Ron said to Qhuinn. “They’re in the safe in my office.”

The three of them walked down the hall together, Ron making a shhhh with his forefinger to his lips as they passed the master suite, the universal sign for Don’t wake up the wife.

Yuppers, Qhuinn agreed. That shit was mission critical.

Ron’s office was in what had been a formal guestroom, and there were all kinds of high-tech minimal on the Lucite desk, the computer nothing but a keyboard and a screen thin as a human hair.

“The safe is over here.” Ron went across to the opposite wall—which appeared to be covered with leather panels the color of Rhamp’s diaper after the kid ate a boatload of peas. “It’s hidden.”

Ron flapped his hand around. Frowned. Did some more flapping. “Maybe it’s over here.”

After a couple of tries to get some sort of hidden reader to recognize his palm print, Ron managed to locate that which had been so successfully camo’d that he couldn’t find the goddamn thing: A part of the wall slid back, exposing a black-and-gray safe.

After some beeping on a little button pad on the front, there was a shhhscht, and then Ron was all about the open-sesame. For a split second, Qhuinn panicked that there would be a mysterious disappearance. Some kind of whoopsy. A spontaneous combustion in front of his very eyes—

“Here they are.”

Ron held out a bulky manila envelope. As Qhuinn took it and cracked the flap, he felt like his whole body was shaking.

“You okay?” Ron asked.

Inside, there were a couple of sealed letters, a sheet of paper, and something wrapped in tissue paper.

“Daddy? There are two people out in the backyard.”

Qhuinn looked up. The mini-Ron in the Disney nightgown was standing at one of the windows that faced the garden. Her hand was up on the glass, her face worried.

Before her father could get involved, Qhuinn froze the guy where he stood and then went over to check the view.

Out on the lawn, where Qhuinn’s mahmen’s rose garden had been, two tall figures dressed in black were standing together, facing the house. Even though the moon was partially covered with a bank of passing clouds, it was obvious that one had red hair and the other had almost no hair at all.

Well, at least they weren’t trying to hide themselves.

“It’s okay.” He patted the little girl’s shoulder. “They’re with me.”

She looked up at him. “Are you real? Or am I dreaming?”

“I’m kind of real.” Qhuinn turned to Ron and held up the manila envelope. “Thanks for this.”

The man nodded. “Something told me I should hang on to it. Was it your brother’s?”

“Yeah, it was.” Qhuinn held the bundle to his chest. “You’re a good guy, Ron.”

“Thanks. You, too.”

Who the fuck knew what they were saying to each other. “Did you deal with the feeds from the security cameras?”

“Yup, they’re all gone.”

“Good job. I gotta go now. You take your little girl back to her room.”

“Okay. Bye. Come on, Mouse.”

As Ron held his arm out, his daughter went readily, and as she was led away, the little girl looked over her shoulder.

That was Qhuinn’s chance to strike her memories—and he almost did. But her father would take care of framing things, and there was no reason to risk scrambling her for life when this would all just be relegated to the huh, weird bucket in her brain.

You had to be careful with children’s minds.

When he heard a couple of doors shut, he glanced around one more time. The manila envelope crinkled in his hands as he switched his hold on it, and then he closed his eyes. He desperately wanted to look through the things his brother had left behind now, but here was not the place.

A moment later, he dematerialized down to the back lawn.

As he re-formed, he faced the pair of interlopers.

Z didn’t seem bothered by the getting caught. Blay rubbed his eyebrow with his thumb, like he was trying to think of something to say.

Meeting the two males in the eye, Qhuinn did the only thing that came to mind.

He hugged them both at the same time. Rushing forward, he threw his arms around them and dragged them in close. As his embrace was returned, he closed his eyes briefly, and heard himself speak a truth that surprised himself.

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

Before things got too gooey with the emotional bullshit, he stepped back and held up the manila envelope. Clearing his throat, he announced, “And I got what Luchas left. Let’s go back and see what it is.”

“I’m so glad,” Blay said as he appeared to brush away tears. “I was worried something might have happened to whatever it is.”