Yolks on You Box Set

Chapter 17-2

The most suspicious area of the Farm Breakfast Dom could think of was the raffle section—there were always gift baskets and the like at those, which would be an easy place to hide a bomb. At least, that would be where he’d hide a bomb, so he went there while Kiko strolled off to show children a goose. Dom was glad he wasn’t around for that, as he was sure Mother didn’t like him.

The raffle was in a dimly lit outbuilding, nowhere near as big as the barn, long and narrow and looking like it probably stored farm equipment when not in use for the Eggstravaganza. The only person handling it was a teenage girl, maybe the farmers’ daughter. She smiled at Dom when he entered, reel of tickets on the table in front of her, and asked if he wanted to buy any.

“How much?” he asked, pulling out his wallet. He suspected she would be more open to talking to him after he’d spent money.

“A dollar a ticket, or six for five, twelve for ten, that sort of thing. Proceeds go to the county animal shelter and the local school. How many you want?”

Dom handed her a ten, thanked her for the tickets, and moved to examine the prizes. As was to be expected, the bulk of them were gift baskets, all done up in the normal fashion with that irritating fake grass. He hadn’t expected the number of baskets containing plastic eggs, though; only four of them didn’t. A few of the other prizes looked safe, like the Packers jersey and the foam cheesehead, though he lifted that one up, glad Kiko wasn’t there to stop him. In the end he lingered, dropping tickets in various gift baskets, then spoke to the girl when she came to ask him how he was doing.

“I was actually wondering,” he said, the last few people in the building with them leaving, “if any of these baskets looked weird this morning?”

She laughed.

“Weird? If you ask me, the one full of pet pedicure stuff is weird, but it was brought in that way.”

Dom smiled back.

“I meant ‘tampered with,’ actually,” he said, and her smile fell. He could see her analyzing him, trying to determine whether he was some sort of threat. He leaned back, giving her more space, and she relaxed.

“You an undercover cop or something?” she asked.

“Or something,” said Dom, using his ability to mislead though not truly lie that he’d honed so well from years in the closet. “And it does have to do with the recent explosions.”

“So, er, by tampered with, you mean rearranged?”

“That works,” said Dom, following her as she walked back down the length of the table to a cookie decorating basket.

“This one,” she said. “One of the women from the church dropped it off yesterday, but when I came out here this morning some of the sprinkles and candies had been taken out of the plastic eggs, and the frosting and everything was rearranged.” She paused. “Mom said it was nothing…”

She trailed off. Dom stared at the basket, trying to look as thoughtful as possible.

“You can tell me,” he said.

“Well, I put it back the way I remembered it,” she said, now removing some of the items from the basket and lifting the plastic grass. “But I found these in some of the eggs.”

She rattled the basket and tilted it so Dom could see. At the bottom were little jagged pieces of metal, some rusted. He figured this is what the shrapnel pulled from Chad looked like. He looked up at her.

“Nothing else?”

She shook her head.

“Just those. I didn’t know what to do with them. It’s just so weird, isn’t it?”

Dom nodded.

“Thank you for telling me. Were any of these other baskets…?” When she shook her head, he continued. “And they were all moved this morning?”

“I set them up on the tables, so yeah,” she said. “Am I in trouble?”

“With your mother? She doesn’t believe you,” said Dom, dropping the rest of his tickets into the can at the base of the basket. He very much wanted to demand she give it to him, but at that point he’d be impersonating authority and he didn’t want to be caught doing that. “Thanks for your time. And not a word to anyone, right?”

He walked out as casually as possible, desperately considering his next move. He didn’t want to look awkward, and he was sure she was watching him leave. He turned and set himself back in the direction of the breakfast barn, because he could use some food while he thought over what he’d just discovered, and because he’d spent ten bucks on the little paper band around his wrist so he might as well use it.

He was at a table debating a spoonful of rösti when the explosion went off to his left. The noise was loud and too familiar to him by now; he turned to see a spray of chocolate milk, and then people were screaming. In the chaos he considered setting down his plate and texting Kiko only the words “happened again,” but Dom realized it was likely the entire farm knew by now. He moved over to see what he could do to help; thankfully, no one appeared badly injured, and a woman was already on the phone with 911. Instead Dom set himself to the task of making sure anyone that had been nearby when it happened was still around when the police showed up.

The cops were really going to hate him now. At the scene of four different explosions? Dom held back a sigh.