It’s cooler out here in the morning breeze than inside the stuffy truck, but not by much. I grab a lemon-lime Big Shot bobbing in the pool of chilly water in our ice cooler. I crack it open and guzzle the soda so fast, I feel half of it dribble down my unshaven chin and trickle onto my sweat-soaked undershirt. I don’t even want to think about how unattractive I must look right about now.

“Oh, my God, it’s really true!” I hear a woman behind me cry out.

I turn around. Just my luck. It’s Vanessa. Of course it is.

“Are you guys okay?” she says, hurrying up to me.

I swallow my mouthful of fizzy sugar water and wipe my lips on my forearm.

“Marlene’s the one to ask,” I say. “But she’s fine, thank God. They don’t make ’em any tougher than her. She can handle anything. Our truck on the other hand … ”

She cuts me off by slinging her arms over my shoulders and pulling me in for a long hug. I’m caught off guard by the tender gesture, and by how much I appreciate it … and enjoy it.

“How did you hear?” I ask.

She slowly lets me go and steps back, brushing back her hair. “I checked Twitter to see where Killer Chef was going to be for brunch. But every mention showed pictures of the trashed truck.”

I turn and take another sorry look at the flat tires, the spray-painted exterior, and the hammered metal sides. “Look at that,” I say. “Sometimes, the things you read online are true.”

She approaches the vehicle and gently strokes one of the dents in the metal sheeting as if it were a wounded animal.

“How sick do you have to be to do something like this?” she says quietly, shaking her head.

“Not sick,” I say. “Determined. Hard. Here to send a message, hurt Mar and our business.”

“Still … ” She steps back. It looks like her eyes are getting watery.

Emotion for seeing this vandalism, or emotion at seeing how distressed I am?

I say, “Vanessa, having you come by … it means a lot. Especially after how we left things at the cemetery. I gotta admit, I was worried I wouldn’t be seeing you for a while.”

She looks away from our ruined truck, gives me a wide smile that makes me forget the damaged truck, all my aches and pains, and my smelly and sweat-stained clothes.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you, Caleb,” she says. “You don’t need to be a star detective to figure out things with me and Lucas are … complicated. But lately … ”

She trails off as she looks back at the truck, her face pale with concern.

I know exactly what she’s thinking, too. Because just a few hours earlier, I had the same thought myself.