Twenty-Six“Mmm. Nice cookies.” Isabella smiled at the small ebony-skinned boy with liquid dark eyes who gazed at the shortbread he held up between delicate fingers, as if anticipating it might disappear before he could bite into it. “Nice cookies.” The only words either boy had uttered in the forty-five minutes since they’d arrived at the Ebner suite, smelling of smoke and hanging off Mrs Purdy’s arms for grim death.
Sebastian had given her the briefest of explanations: they had been rescued from a raging house fire; Mr Purdy was missing. He instructed her to make them as comfortable as she could while he returned to see if he could locate her husband in the ruins.
The copper hot tub had washed away the stink of the smoke, the charcoal smears of ash and cinders on their faces, arms and l
