Once the shoes were laced up, he put his hand through a stylized falconer’s glove, opened a cage, and had two hawks perch on his arm. Between the large glove and the weight of the birds, it looked like his skinny arm had trouble holding them up.

He turned to look at Darlene, who was talking on the phone, no longer sitting on the desk, but walking away from the desk so as not to be overheard.

She gave the thumbs up.

Chicken Little hit switches, and his office went dark, shutters whirring as they closed it off from the remainder of the office.

“Because noise,” Kenzie explained for me, as she ducked under the shutter. “The squawking and chirping gets kind of crazy sometimes.”

“You good?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Very.”

She had a stray lock of kinky hair that had pulled free of the pin. I used a finger to poke it back into place. “We’ll see if we can time the Roadkill thing so I can bring some to Swansong, and you can have a long-distance dinner together.”

“Please. And short-distance dinner sometime this week? Can I come over sometime?”

“If your guardians at the institution say okay,” I said.

She stepped forward, giving me a sudden, very unexpected hug. Her forehead hit my breastplate with the enthusiasm of the movement, and both Darlene and Chicken Little’s heads snapped over to look at us in that moment.

I put my arms down, forearm and hands across her shoulder blades. I murmured, “I thought you had rules.”

“I’m getting sloppy,” she said. “It’s bad, I know.”

“Okay,” I said, not sure what to make of that. “Careful.”

She nodded, hugged me tighter for a second, then broke the hug, bouncing over to Darlene’s side.

Tattletale, Chicken Little and I made our way downstairs, and into the parking garage that was attached to the building. Snuff was standing by the car, which was running, engine idling.

The hawks went into a cage that was apparently built across the middle section of the backseat, dividing the two sides. Tattletale took the passenger seat, and Snuff got behind the wheel. I ended up sitting behind him, because of how the door of the cage opened behind Tattletale’s and where the booster seat was fit into the car.

“What are we fact-finding?” Chicken Little asked, as he strapped in.

“Turn off your earbud?” I asked. “I don’t want to loop in Lookout just yet. For her protection.”

Chicken Little hesitated, then turned it off.

“Thanks,” I said. “And Snuff?”

“We can trust him,” Tattletale said.

“You didn’t use him when we had the thing three weeks ago.”

“She used me,” Snuff said.