She blew out a breath and headed back inside. Snooze was still standing guard at the back door and she reached over to scratch his ears. “At least you’ll let me know if someone is out there. Between you and the guns Halcyon lent me, we’ve got this covered, right?”

But all the same, she made a mental note to call Luke when she got a chance. It might be nothing, but if the poacher was still on the loose, it could be that he was camped somewhere nearby. Maybe he was hoping for an opportunity to steal food or supplies.

“Okay, back to the clothes hunt,” she announced.

Snooze, apparently deciding the crisis was over, headed for the rug and flopped down. A couple seconds later, he was snoring.

Marina returned to the bedroom and tackled the boxes again, managing to locate a pair of jeans without holes in them and a blouse that wasn’t horribly wrinkled. She’d have to go with ballet flats because the lack of pedicure precluded sandals, but that would work.

She and Halcyon had decided that the first order of ring business would be paying Dottie a visit. Maybe they’d get lucky and she’d have the ring, and all of this could be over. At worst, Dottie would probably know other people to check with. Since other people likely meant older people, that meant wearing decent clothes and being on their best behavior.

After that, Halcyon wanted to go to a jewelry store near New Orleans and see what they’d give her for her engagement rings. Marina had protested until she was blue in the face, but Halcyon had insisted that it was way past time she got rid of them and it might solve the cash-flow problem. Worst case, they didn’t find the ring and on the night before the world was set to end, they’d blow it all on one final hurrah in New Orleans. But before she could do any of that, Marina had to take care of an obligation that she’d been putting off.

Visiting her mother.

She’d told herself that she was busy getting Avery to college and then with her and Avery’s exploding lives. The truth was, Marina was grateful to have a reason to put it off but would have settled for reasons with fewer long-term repercussions. She supposed she could still convince herself she had good reason to stay away, but it had been two weeks. And Marina liked to pop in regularly to make sure nothing was going on that she needed to know about—like a facility coup staged to get rid of her mother.

The thought of having Letitia out among society again was frightening for so many reasons, not the least of which being that Marina was living in the only structure her mother owned. So after getting dressed, she grabbed her keys and headed for the highway. The sooner she got it over with, the sooner she could get on with saving the world.