The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,4

like he’s fourteen. I think if I took a blood sample, I’d see Big Mac special sauce running in his veins.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why is he talking about your butt? Is that a gay thing? Is he making a move?”

Tean rolled his eyes. “We’re just friends.”

“As my grandmother used to say, ‘You can fool yourself, and you can fool your mother, but you can’t fool me.’”

“We’re just friends.”

The kettle whistled, and it was a nice excuse for Tean to turn away from the look in Hannah’s eyes. After pouring the hot water so the tea could steep, Tean sat and said, “Is this about Norbert?”

“No. I mean, not really. I hate that old bag of bones, and I think he’s doing a terrible job at something I care about. He’s this awful reminder of how things used to be—a good-old-boys club where all you had to do was ride around in your truck and bust people who weren’t your friends. But it’s not enough to get worked up over.”

Tean chose not to mention the screaming that had taken place fifteen minutes earlier.

Fiddling with the tag at the end of the tea bag’s string, Hannah stared off into space for a moment. When she spoke again, she said, “I honestly feel like I’m going crazy, Tean.”

“You have seemed upset for a while now.”

Hannah laughed. “You’re too nice. I’ve been a bitch for months. I know I have. I’ve had a lot going on. That’s not really an excuse, no reason to treat people badly. But it’s the truth. No, this is something else. It’s just been the last little while.”

“What?”

“I think someone’s following me.”

3

Jem was stocking men’s shirts in Snow’s Department Store, in the men’s section, under the watchful eye of Mr. Kroll.

“No, no, no,” Mr. Kroll snapped. He stood with perfect posture, hands clasped schoolboy style at his waist, his graying hair shiny with pomade. “Mr. Berger, have you been paying attention at all?”

“Yes, Mr. Kroll,” Jem said. “I’ve definitely been paying attention.” He’d been paying attention, for example, to the way Mr. Kroll watched his ass when he bent over to arrange the shirts on the display table’s lower shelves.

“Well, it’s very hard to tell from the sloppiness of this work. Can you please try a little harder?”

“Of course, Mr. Kroll.”

Jem was hoping that would settle the matter—sometimes Mr. Kroll just liked to poke his nose in long enough to remind everyone that he was the manager of menswear at Snow’s Department Store, which was apparently the retail equivalent of being the king of England. Instead, though, Mr. Kroll just stood there, smelling like baby powder and gardenia, until Jem started to sweat. His back was itching like crazy, and he couldn’t breathe in a shirt and tie and jacket.

“For heaven’s sake,” Mr. Kroll said, pushing past Jem to grab a shirt that was still wrapped in its plastic. He shook it in front of Jem. “What does this say?”

“Giroux,” Jem said. He’d memorized that one quickly. “And the rest of these are Giroux too.”

“Not the brand, ignoramus,” Mr. Kroll said, moving closer until his body pinned Jem against the display table. Jem had front-row seats to the broken capillaries in Mr. Kroll’s nose, to the faint wrinkles around his mouth, to the way he ran his tongue inside his upper lip when he raked his eyes up and down Jem. Mr. Kroll tapped a finger against the packaging. “This. What does this say?”

Jem’s face heated. He was learning—with Tean’s help—but it was still hard, and he was slow. He still had to work out the sounds in his head most of the time. Decoding, Tean called it. And it was extra hard because Tean also insisted that Jem was dyslexic, although Jem didn’t think that was the case. Nobody had ever told him before that he was dyslexic, anyway.

Mr. Kroll was still staring.

Sweat prickled under Jem’s arms. He resorted to his usual tactic in these situations—his number one, charm-the-shit-out-of-a-bear smile.

“LinenTouch,” Mr. Kroll said. “And what about this one?”

That one was easy because Tean made Jem read everything at the grocery store. “Cream.”

“And is LinenTouch the same as Cream?”

Jem had something smart to say about that, something about Tean, who probably would have worn LinenTouch pants with a cream-colored shirt and ivory loafers, but he just smiled and shook his head. Now that Mr. Kroll had pointed out the difference, Jem could see the slight variation in the colors of the—what he’d thought of, until now, as white—dress shirts