Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,47

dinner, so we might as well stay and have them.”

“Or you’d have plenty of meals for yourself,” Kai argued.

Joy shot her friend a look. “Am I that bad of a cook?”

Just as they walked in, Kai started to laugh and laugh. “Even if you were a magnificent chef, I doubt the guys would let you touch the steaks. And, if you don’t have a barbecue grill, I’m not sure they’ll be too happy about steaks cooked any other way.”

“Steaks need to be barbecued,” Tyson said immediately, as he stood up, gathering the bags from their arms and placing them on the counter.

“Well, I don’t have a grill,” she said.

“Interesting,” he said. “Why did you get steaks then?” He gave her a pointed look, as if to say it was completely useless to buy steaks and not have a barbecue grill.

She sighed. “Fine. So maybe we are going out then.”

“We could try it in a skillet,” he said, “but, depending on the size of the steaks, it’ll take a lot of fry pans.”

“We could broil them,” she said hopefully.

An ominous silence took over her kitchen before Kai chuckled. “Maybe you should look at going out and getting a charcoal barbecue set for Joy,” she said to Tyson.

“Or a real one,” he said.

“I can’t afford anything,” Joy said. “I still need all my paychecks just for survival at the moment, particularly if another move and/or lack of a job is about to rear its head again.”

“Right,” he said. “We can ask the guys too.”

“Ask the guys what?” Kai questioned.

“Have you heard from them?” Joy asked, as she pulled out the groceries. “I didn’t even think of them,” she said, grimacing. “I’ve only got four steaks here, no wait, three,” she said, frowning.

“Which is what I mean. Put them away, and you’ll have three meals for yourself,” Kai said gently. “We can hardly not feed Johan and Galen.”

“And I guess half a steak won’t do much for them, will it?” she asked, staring down at the steaks doubtfully.

“Nope, not likely,” Tyson said. “Honestly, with steaks this size, they’d need two apiece anyway.”

She looked at him in shock. “Seriously?”

Kai laughed. “Yeah, absolutely.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because this was already costing you a bunch, and you wouldn’t let me pay,” she said. “So I figured this would be meals for you over the next week or so. After that, you may not even have a job, and you’ll be happy to have something on hand.”

Frowning, Joy pulled out stuff for sandwiches. “How about a sandwich while we wait for the guys to show up?”

“I could eat,” Tyson said immediately.

Kai sighed. “You ate enough brunch for two people,” she muttered.

“Your point?”

Kai shook her head and told Joy, “If you haven’t been feeding men lately, honest to God, it’s brutal.”

“Sounds like it,” Joy said, “but I can handle sandwiches.”

“Good enough,” she said.

“And, yes, the guys will be here in another hour or so,” Tyson said.

She looked at him. “Did they find anything?”

He shrugged. “Nothing more than they expected.”

“That’s too bad,” she said. “I know it’s been a pretty rough day for them already, but you would hope that there would be answers at the end of it.”

“There will be,” Kai said solemnly. “The thing is, you’re just not at that day yet.”

*

Johan met up with Galen and said, “So I didn’t see anything. You didn’t either, did you?”

“Nope, outside of that foreman, you didn’t meet anyone else down there.”

“No, I didn’t, and it’s possible it was him, but he was in the office, so justifiably in his own space.”

“Any reason as to why he was there?”

“Came in to get caught up on paperwork,” he said. “My guess is he doesn’t much like being home alone with the wife. She nags at him to retire, and he’s terrified that’s his future.”

“Well, he might not get a choice after this scenario,” Galen said. “It should be interesting to see the fallout from the murder.”

“And no security cameras to say who came in at any time, right?”

“No identity to the one man who came in behind him, if that’s what you’re asking. Visitor pass to one Donald Duck, as we learned earlier, but no sign of his face appearing on any of the cameras because they were down.”

“So were the camera systems down when he got here?”

Galen shook his head. “Not sure. Looks to me like maybe he took them down remotely at some point. Either that or he’s sophisticated enough to edit out his entry and stitch clear time