Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“You’ve got us both,” Sam told his daughter.
“Okay,” Hannah began, sounding like her phone was on speaker as well. “This is not anything at all to worry about. I will be home”––she sucked in her breath––“shortly.”
“What’re you doing?” Sam questioned her.
“Just picking something up,” she replied far too cheerfully.
“Oh my God, you are so your pa’s daughter.”
“Pardon me?” I hope I sounded as affronted as I was going for.
“That’s a gross mischaracterization of the situation I find myself in currently.”
Sam’s growl was loud. “And what precise situation is that?”
She cleared her throat. “You mean right this second?”
He glared at me. “This is your fault.”
“You don’t even know what she’s doing.”
“Yes,” Sam snapped at his second child, “what are you doing at this exact second?”
She coughed softly. “At the moment, I’m walking across a beam in a warehouse.”
“Hannah!” Sam yelled.
Long-suffering sigh from her.
“Why are you on a beam?”
“Well, the door was locked but not the window, as most people believe that if an escape seems unlikely, it won’t happen.”
“Ohmygod, Hannah, what’s going on?” he bellowed.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she soothed him, “nobody’s shooting at me.”
“What?” he roared, and really, it was lucky she didn’t have the phone near her ear.
“Ooooh, you’re lucky this thing has a sound filter or that would have melted my brain,” she said, chuckling. “Wow, was that loud.”
I wasn’t sure what it was she’d gotten herself into, but I suspected that since my daughter and I were so similar—our brains worked the same way—and she was bantering with her father at the moment, that she was not in mortal danger. If she had been, she certainly would have shared that with Sam.
“Seriously,” she chided him, but gently, “the volume is not helping my balance.”
Gritting his teeth, Sam turned to me. “This is your fault,” he accused me again.
“I don’t know that post hoc ergo propter hoc actually pertains in this situation,” Hannah, like the good egg she was, defended me. “Simply because Pa has, in the past, been in a few troubling situations himself doesn’t mean my current predicament was caused by him.”
Sam was going to explode, but I spoke up before he could. “And what is that, exactly?”
“I wanted my first Valentine’s Day with Jake to be special, so I was getting glitter hearts to go in the resin so when I made him his ridiculous, over-the-top keychain with our names on it, it would be extra-special shmoopie.”
“But…” Sam prodded her, texting as he listened to his daughter.
“But there was a situation at the front of the store where there were some people who didn’t want to have to put on a mask to go in,” she explained slowly, her voice remaining low and steady. “You know, that whole argument about a state mandate not being a law and––”
“Moving on,” he groused, putting his phone down on the coffee table.
“Anyway, there were a lot of doors open because of deliveries, and I had to walk around a ton of boxes, and, as you know, at times my sense of direction can be a bit off.”
“Yes,” I agreed. She got it from me.
“I tripped over a pipe across the bottom of a doorway—not a good place for a pipe in the first place, if you ask me—and even though I caught myself, I ended up in a back room with a couple guys, a lot of women, and tables covered in purses.”
“Purses?” I repeated, glancing at my husband. “Not drugs or…something?”
“I know, right? I mean, handbags? Who cares?”
“But instead of turning around and walking out,” Sam began, the irritation in his tone just boiling on the surface, “you looked at them, didn’t you?”
“I wanted to see what kind they were,” she replied innocently.
It all suddenly made sense. “And you saw they were knockoffs and warned the other women, didn’t you?”
“I mean, they were really good but not quite it, you know?”
Sam groaned loudly.
“I was trying to be helpful,” she explained.
“And the women who were there started talking and texting, and then what?”
“I would have excused myself and left, but when I went back out the door, there was another guy in the alley I hadn’t seen before. And he had a gun.”
“So they held you at gunpoint, and then?” I saw the sliver of dread cross his face. His girl near an armed criminal would make him crazy.
“Then he grabbed my arm and marched me next door to a warehouse, put me in an office, said he’d be back to deal with me in this really over-the-top Disney-villain voice, and left.”
“Jesus, Hannah,” Sam rasped.
“I know. I should have taken the gun away from him, but he wasn’t right next to me, so I could grab him, and he was much bigger than me.”
“No, it’s better that you didn’t grapple with him.”
“That’s what I thought. And honestly,” she continued, sounding put out, “at the moment, the only thing I’m upset about is my iPhone 12 Pro Max, because I just got it for Christmas, and it was so very pretty.”