Revealing Annie - Freya Barker Page 0,59
flash in Bryce’s eyes is gone as quickly as it appeared, but I saw it.
“Later, Pop.”
The kid casually turns on his heel and saunters back to his buds.
I can barely hear his father’s muttered response.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
20
Sumo
“I’m going to take a nap.”
I tilt my head back and look up at Annie, who is leaning over the back of the couch.
It’s been a lazy day and a half with little action, other than Jasper’s installation of the alarm system on windows and doors and linking everything to an app on my phone. I can pull up a schematic that shows which locks are engaged and which aren’t, and I can pull up the feed from any of the three cameras installed on the outside of the house.
“Kiss me,” I tell her, cupping the back of her head when she bends down. When I let her up for air I ask, “Want me to wake you up?”
“Please. Don’t let me sleep more than an hour or so, or I won’t sleep tonight.”
“You know, I’ve got ways to help you with that, right?”
She doesn’t answer me but grins as she heads up the stairs.
I’m not surprised she needs a nap. We were up late and she was already elbow-deep in pastry dough when I walked into the kitchen this morning.
Last night Annie helped me go through the last of the moving boxes I hauled in from the garage. Mostly books and medical journals, but there’d also been a few photo albums my mom brought over years ago. She’d fawned over my preteen pictures. I was a skinny, knobby kid, with teeth too big for my face, but Annie thought I’d looked adorable. Her warm smile had done more to heal the childhood bullying I’d been subjected to than the years of playing class clown, which eventually garnered me some friends in high school.
At the back of one of those had been the architect’s sketch I had done for the mountain home I’d hoped of building. I found myself talking about my dream house, the piece of property I’d been eyeing just a few miles up the mountain from here, and the years of saving my hard-earned money, which had received a serious dent after sending over fifty grand for Bryce’s medical bills. Something, by the way, I don’t regret for a minute.
That got us on the topic of my son, and Annie brought up what he’d said when we left the club the night before. That one word had a bigger impact on me than I would’ve expected. It’s an acknowledgment I don’t really deserve, because I’ve done nothing to earn it.
I flip off the TV I’m no longer watching and get up to let Daisy—who’s scratching at the back door—out for a pee. Then I grab my phone, a cold one from the fridge, adding beer to the whiteboard, and follow the dog outside.
The beer is nice and cold on what is a pretty hot day and I down half the bottle. Then I set it on the railing and head down the steps to toss a ball the dog brings me. She needs the exercise, but I’m not going to walk her if it means leaving Annie alone. The last few days we’ve done her walks together.
Daisy clearly indicates she’s had enough when instead of dropping the ball at my feet; she ignores the ball and lies down in the grass. I head to my beer and take a swig when Daisy starts growling, her head up and focus on the house. I’m about to go inside when she suddenly jumps up and sets off around the side of the house, barking furiously.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I put it to my ear without looking.
“Can you grab your dog before she eats through your gate to get to me?”
“Tony?”
“That’s me.”
I tuck my phone away and walk around the side of the house to find Daisy with her front legs up against the gate.
“It’s okay, girl, it’s just Tony.”
I grab her collar and pull her back, unlatching the gate.
“She’s fierce,” he says, holding out his hand for her to sniff and she immediately starts wagging her tail.
“She’s been on edge. Last night we took her for a walk and she almost went after a guy jogging along the river.”
“Probably picking up on your tension,” he suggests, as we walk into the backyard.
“Where’s Annie?”
“She just went down for a nap. Why? Did you want her?”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s