Free Salvaged to Death by Vanessa Gray Bartal Page A

dumb to know which end is up,” Fiona said. “She and Tom are two peas.” She tittered at her own joke, a girlish trill that ran in direct contrast to her normally deep baritone.
    Sadie turned her flashlight on the dog, wanting to assess for herself the chances of survival. The mongrel was some type of mastiff mix. Drool ran in a long string from both sides of its mouth, its eyes were crossed, and a wayward tongue lolled haphazardly, adding more drool to the mix. Sadie couldn’t be sure, but the dog appeared to be smiling at her.
    “Hi, Gidget,” she said. “Don’t eat me, and I’ll buy you something pretty.”
    In reply, the dog licked her chops and panted a few times.
    “We girls have to stick together,” she said, turning toward the door again.
    “Preach, sister,” Hal said.
    Sadie paused again and turned back. “On that note, Fiona, I don’t think you should go in with us. If we get caught, there’s a good chance I can talk us out of trouble. But if you’re here, it’ll be like a powder keg.”
    “All right,” Fiona said evenly. “I’ll leave the light on for you.”
    Sadie smiled as she watched her walk away. “For you” sounded like “fer ya,” but despite the down-home accent, there was nothing simple about Fiona Tomkins. She was a riddle in herself, but Sadie didn’t have time for more puzzles. She pushed thoughts of Fiona aside and focused on the search. It didn’t take long.
    There was one room, the same room they had seen earlier. There were no hidden compartments in the desk, no filing cabinet. Wherever Tom Tomkins kept his secrets, it wasn’t at work. And there certainly wasn’t any information about Bo in the room, except for a sleeping pallet that might have been used by either man. Luckily no one was sleeping there now.
    Hal walked to the back door and poked his head out. “I would love to get a look at that salvage yard.”
    “Okay,” Sadie said. She gave him a light shove through the door when he remained staring at her, confused. “What?”
    “I was waiting for you to tell me we shouldn’t,” he said.
    “You’ve got the wrong person,” she said, not adding what they both knew; Luke was the naysayer in their group, the cautioner, the red flag. “Let’s go.”
    Unlike the tiny office, the salvage yard was vast. Sadie had grabbed a more powerful flashlight from the office, but even so, it was slow going. The night had turned black and the flashlight’s beam only illuminated so much. Ghoulish shadows appeared in the beam of the anemic light. On closer inspection, they turned out to be mottled arrangements of bent steel.
    “This would be an awesome place for hide and seek,” Hal observed. “Tetanus notwithstanding.”
    “I wonder why Fiona and Tom never had any kids,” Sadie said.
    “Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome would be my guess,” Hal said. “Fiona has all the hallmarks for it.”
    “Sad,” Sadie said.
    “Treatments are available, but probably not readily up here in the middle of nowhere. Someone should start a clinic.”
    “Hal, did you just receive a calling?”
    He laughed. “No. My calling includes making enough money to pay off my med school loans. I’m going to go where rich people are and find a sick sugar mama I can nurse back to health. Maybe Beverly Hills.”
    “I hear it has swimming pools and movie stars,” Sadie said.
    “Can’t you just see me kissing up to the rich and famous? ‘Why, yes, Eve Harrington, I do think you look lovely today. Is that a wrinkle? Let me fix it with some Botox. That’ll be three thousand dollars.’”
    She smiled, but she would be sad when he went away. He had become a good friend in a short amount of time. Their relationship was different than any she’d ever had because it wasn’t muddied by romance. With both Hal and Luke, she could be herself, her real self and not the person she pretended to be with everyone else. Even though she didn’t have the same comfort level with Hal as she did with Luke, in