A Forever Christmas - By Marie Ferrarella Page 0,30

aprons and a host of other kitchen-oriented things coexisted in a jumbled heap.

Angel went to help herself to an apron. There was no denying that there were colliding butterflies in her stomach, but all the same, she did have a good feeling about this.

“Don’t look so worried,” Miss Joan chided Gabe as he watched the kitchen’s swinging doors close behind Angel. “She’ll be just fine. Eduardo hasn’t required a human sacrifice since his third wife had the good sense to leave him.”

“I heard that, old woman!” Eduardo called out. “And it is I who left her, not she who left me,” the cook corrected.

“Whatever helps you get through the night,” Miss Joan allowed with a dismissive shrug. “She left him,” the older woman whispered to Gabe just before she accompanied him to the diner’s exit. “Eduardo makes a lot of noise, but your little friend’s going to be just fine,” she reassured the new deputy.

Gabe started to issue a disclaimer that Angel wasn’t “his little friend,” but the truth of it was, he was stuck for an alternate label to apply to the woman he’d rescued yesterday. If Angel wasn’t his “little friend”—and she was petite—how did he refer to her? As his project? As his work in progress? Or maybe just a lost woman?

Stumped, Gabe opted to leave the initial label alone until he could come up with a better one to take its place.

He supposed he should be grateful that Miss Joan hadn’t referred to Angel as his new “girlfriend.” Aside from that being totally inaccurate, it would have also been awkward for both of them if Angel had heard Miss Joan calling her that.

Weighing the two options, he came to the conclusion that “little friend” was definitely the lesser problematic of the two.

* * *

HEARING HIM ENTER, Alma glanced up from her computer.

“Where’s your friend?” she asked. Craning her neck, Alma looked to see if he was indeed alone. “Her memory come back?” she asked.

“I left her with Miss Joan.” He saw Alma’s eyebrows rise in a silent question. “Turns out she knows how to cook really well.”

“You made her cook for you?” Alma asked in amazement.

Gabe took exception to the implication. “I didn’t make her do anything. When I woke up this morning, she was making breakfast in the kitchen.”

“In the kitchen,” Alma repeated, the full impact of what he was saying finally hitting her.

“Yes,” he answered, bracing himself for what he assumed was going to be another round of interrogation.

“And just what did she ‘make’ in your house last night?” Alma asked.

He knew exactly what she was asking and he wasn’t about to get caught up in being defensive. He’d played that game before.

“We’ve already gone through this last night, remember? Get your mind out of the gutter, little sister, and make yourself useful,” he told her. Nodding toward Alma’s computer screen, he asked pointedly, “Did you find anything on her yet?”

She’d told him that she was going to go through the missing-persons reports. “So far, no,” she answered. “Nobody’s filed a missing-persons report looking for anyone who even vaguely matches Angel’s description. But that’s just in this county,” she added. She spared a dark look toward her computer. “I’m going to widen the search as soon as the computer comes back to life.”

Puzzled, Gabe looked at the screen. “Back to life?” he echoed. “What do you mean? The computer looks all right to me.”

“Look closer,” she urged, moving her chair to the side to allow her brother better access to her computer. “Try moving the cursor,” she suggested.

When Gabe took possession of the mouse and moved it around on the desk, nothing happened. He had the exact same results hitting various keys on the keyboard. The last couple of keys he all but sank into the keyboard. Still nothing.

Alma physically removed his hands from her keyboard and pushed them to the side. “I think you get the picture,” she told him.

Gabe’s frown went down to the bone. “How long has it been like this?” he asked.

“For approximately the past ninety minutes. I actually came in early to get to work on finding our mystery woman’s identity. What a waste that was,” she complained.

“What did you do to it?” he asked.

“I didn’t do anything to it,” she retorted. “And for your information, the other computers have the same problem. As near as I can figure it, the system’s been hacked into and infected with a virus.”

Unlike the men in the office, Alma knew her way