"The one that got away?" He said mildly.
I rolled my eyes. "Honestly, as if Bubba McKee would ever say something like that about anybody, let alone about me. He was probably talking about his snake."
Jack laughed. "I need to head out. I’m hoping to catch the Fox brothers to ask them to help me with this case."
"You decided to help your friend?"
He nodded.
Of course, he had. That was who he was.
The Fox brothers, Austin and Dallas, were ex-Special Forces like the rest of the Swamp Commandos personnel ("the boys" to Jack) who owned and ran the airboat business. But the Fox twins were also brilliant with computers, digital security, and all sorts of things I’d never understand. They ran a business that was highly regarded in the upper echelons of people and companies who needed their expertise.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Can I have a donut?"
I waved a hand toward the kitchen and wandered around inspecting my newly cluttered domain. When Jack came back out with a donut in each hand, he stopped in front of the new ferret display and shook his head.
"Eleanor?"
"Eleanor." I sighed. "Part of it is because she needed to escape a difficult situation with her new step-grandson. I’ve invited the three of them over for a pool party and barbecue later this evening, if that’s okay with you."
I still wasn’t quite accustomed to checking in with someone else about my plans, but Jack was working hard to do the same after all his years as a lone-tiger soldier, so we gave each other some grace on the issue.
"Sure. I’ll make sure we have enough meat to grill."
"Jack. We have enough meat in the freezer to feed half of Dead End, should they show up at our door."
"You can never have enough meat," said my husband, the tiger shapeshifter, grinning at me.
In his Bengal tiger form, he weighed around five hundred pounds, and he was maybe half that—and all muscle—in his human form, so he needed quite a lot of food.
"Okay. About this case," he said, after polishing off both donuts. "An old friend from my fighting days called me. Sergeant Sam Sampson was an old-school soldier. He served in the U.S. Army before the vampire wars and brought a whole lot of expertise and toughness to our missions.
He paused and laughed. "He also had a fondness for the wrinkliest dogs I’d ever seen. Georgia Bloodhounds, he called them."
"I love dog people almost as much as I love cat people." I adjusted a cloudy glass jar on a shelf so it caught the light from the window, and the clouds inside the jar began to sparkle and swirl around. After checking to see that the jar was firmly sealed, I stepped back and looked up at Jack.
"What does Sam need? Sounds like he’d be able to handle pretty much any problem on his own."
Jack’s grin faded. "His granddaughter is missing. He says she was in a bad way for the past year. The family is pretty sure something happened to her at college. A rough breakup, maybe. Then she dropped out and started traveling. She kept in touch for the first few months, then less and less, and finally went radio silent."
Radio silent meant she stopped communicating. It was one of the interesting phrases I’d learned since I started dating a soldier.
Others: O Dark Thirty (ridiculously early in the morning, when it was still night, really), SNAFU (Situation Normal, All F’d Up—FUBAR was a variant of this, F’d Up Beyond All Recognition), and check your six, which meant watch your back.
Since I’d made the very real threat to stop baking pies if he didn’t cut it out, Jack had calmed down on the acronym use, but when he and the Swamp Commandos got together, it was like an alphabet convention on steroids, with ABCs flying in all directions.
"I’m so sorry to hear it." I felt instant sympathy for Mr. Sampson. I’d be devastated if Shelley disappeared. Of course, my sister was only ten, and this girl was in college, but still.
Family was family.
"What’s her name?"
"Katherine." He snorted. "Apparently, Katherine’s mom wanted to name her Delilah, but Sam and his son—Katherine’s dad—put a stop to it."
"Delilah Sampson?" I shook my head in disbelief. "Maybe not the best idea."
