“I guess we’ll see for ourselves once we get there,” Jack said as he followed the instructions on the navigation system.

It was barely ten in the morning, and the traffic was already bumper to bumper. Jack wished he were hitching a ride with Harry on his Ducati. If that were the case, they’d arrive at their destination in fifteen minutes.

As Jack muttered under his breath, he found his thoughts going to his godchild, Little Jack, and how he was faring with his decorated fat knees. He found it hard not to laugh that a ten-year-old girl named Emily could bring his godson to his fat little knees.

No pun intended.

Chapter 3

Dennis did his best to keep up a running conversation with Jack as they made their way to Happy Village in the stop-and-go traffic.

Jack took his eyes off the road for a moment to look across at Dennis. “If I counted right, that was about ten questions you just asked me, none of which I have the answers to. I got here when you did, so I know what you know. I don’t see any point in speculating at this point. I’m still racking my brain to try to remember if I ever even heard about this project of Cosmo’s. I know for a fact Lizzie never mentioned it, or if she did, it was in the vaguest of terms and didn’t register as something I needed to remember. On the other hand, I think I can count on one hand the times I’ve been in Cosmo’s company, so there’s no reason for me to even know about his affairs. Lizzie and Cosmo are both very private people, or at least they try to be in a town like Vegas.”

Dennis nodded as he stared out at the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the exhaust spiraling upward into the cloudless blue sky. “It’s supposed to reach over a hundred today, Jack. Did you hear that this morning on the news?” Jack shook his head to indicate no, he had not heard about the temperature.

“Do you have a plan in mind when we get to Happy Village?”

“I wish,” Jack muttered. “No. Do you?”

“No. I think we need to think about the possibility that the seniors won’t want to talk to us. As a rule, senior citizens are very much aware that there are people who try to take advantage of them, scam them because they’re up in years. We’re going to be strangers to them, and we’re going in cold, with no credentials. Yeah, we know Cosmo Cricket, and yeah, we know he’s fighting for his life. All the more reason for them to clam up to strangers. I suppose we can bandy Zack Meadows’s name about, but whoever is in charge will want to know why Meadows didn’t get in touch with him or her to warn them we were coming.”

“I guess we’ll just wing it the way we usually do. By the way, did you have any luck researching those gangs we talked about earlier?”