the dog repeatedly. The dog slowly turns to look at him and we both freeze with bated breath. Then his little nubby tail does the slowest wag known to mankind.
“See! He loves it!” Leland says as he grabs the dog in a hug and squeezes it to him.
Sarge looks extremely uncertain but tolerates it.
There’s a knock on the door and the dogs go wild. I turn and watch as Leland has to wade through deafeningly loud bodies. There’s a whole booklet on how to control them but Leland says that they look sad when he makes them listen. Cayenne squeezes through them and they all love her enough that she gets to the front where Leland opens the door.
“What… the hell?” Cassel asks.
“Come, come,” Leland says. “They’re kill dogs. Basically, they sniff a person to tell whether they’re good or not. If they’re not a good person, they immediately kill them.”
Cassel closes the door, remaining on the outside. He must not like his chances.
“Cassel! They’ll only kill you once. Come on!” Leland calls.
“Leland’s a bigger threat,” I assure him. “Leland, don’t scare away the help.”
“But he’s so cute when he’s scared,” Leland says, which should be concerning. Not that he finds Cassel cute—the man is attractive—but because he thinks him scared is cute.
Cassel slowly opens the door and carefully walks in while being scrutinized by ten dogs leaving Cayenne to beg to be petted.
Cassel picks the forty-pound dog up and carries her as she wiggles in his arms. “Do I even ask what is happening?”
“Leland has hired a team of canines to protect me. I am soooo protected,” I say as I force a fake smile on my face.
“Hey, it’s protected him from Ava and in my book, that was worth the money.”
“I don’t even want to know what you paid for this,” I realize.
Leland just smiles a huge smile. “Cassel, do you want toast?”
“Sure!”
“Get it yourself,” he says, making Cassel’s eyes narrow.
But Leland just grins and goes over to the toaster.
“Why are they so big?” Cassel asks.
“You’re small enough you could almost ride one of them,” Leland says. “You’d look more threatening, at least.”
Cassel glares at him. “I waste a week of my time to help you, come over during my ridiculously busy day, and all you do is make fun of me.”
“Um… hold on…” Leland holds both hands up in the air. “You… have no job… I’m paying you a stupid amount of money and I’m not… allowed to make fun of you?”
Cassel sets his bag on the table, scoots his chair next to me and pulls his laptop out. “Alright, Jackson. So here’s what I have.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll stop teasing you,” Leland says as he slides his chair up next to Cassel close enough it slams into him. That’s when Sarge squeezes his head between Leland and Cassel to stare at Cassel.
Cassel nervously pats the top of the dog’s head. “Your dog is going to eat me.”
“Nah, Sarge is a sweetheart.”
“You have such strange opinions on what’s sweet,” Cassel decides as he picks up a piece of toast. “Thank you. What’d you do to it?”
“The norm.”
“Which is?”
Leland gets a ridiculous grin on his face. “Butter, cinnamon, and a dash of secret dust.”
Cassel looks to me for guidance. “I’m scared.”
“So am I. Sometimes I wake up and Leland just has this look on his face. The look tells me he’s up to something and that I should be terrified, but I have no choice but to just buckle down and face it because that’s what you do when you’re in love.” I shiver dramatically at the thought.
We both look to Leland who has a manic grin on his face. He’s proud of himself and the chaos he has caused. It’s extremely clear at this point. God, I just love that face.
Leland leans into Cassel. “You love me, and you know it.”
“Tiny bit,” he says.
“Jackson, Cassel’s trying to get between us, beat him up.”
“Sounds painful,” I say as I wave toward my stomach. “What if we listen to what he has to say first, and if it’s not good enough, I sic the dogs on him?”
Cassel gives me a sad look. “I thought you were the nice one.”
“I’ve tainted him,” Leland whispers in Cassel’s ear.
“Poor man.”
“He likes it. Dontcha, babe?”
“Love it,” I say as Cassel opens the laptop and starts clicking on shit.
“So this is Burrows’ laptop. I went by after the cleanup crew and grabbed anything electronic that could help, including his phone. So far, pretty much everything