”I just sat there open mouthed.“You mean you gave up your day off, for me?”They all laughed and hugged me.“We gave up a couple of hours in a g...od cause. It wasn’t too long ago that Kate had a similar problem. She waited a long time for Jenny.” Chris said laughing as Jenny flushed.“Listen Alex,” Sally looked serious. “I don’t want to dampen your excitement, but you have to know that you’re taking a risk. Sophie might not take it well, at least at first, and she may never accept you.”I sighed. Brennan was actually a little bit unhappy. He'd wanted to hit .407! The cheeky little bastard! The second-highest batting average in the league was .349.We had the Twins in the first round of the ALCS. The AL Central champions, the White Sox, were set to go against Seattle.I knew Paul Warren was searching everywhere for some kind of statistical argument to explain why we should be going into the Divisional playoffs scared to death of the Minnesota Twins. It was Paul's way. He'd keep looking up. Both were calling 911. About the only thing they agreed on was the gun and that he was wearing a dark baseball cap. Maybe Royals, maybe not.”“Then you found the burned-out truck.”“That’s right. Nothing there for us. The explosive devise appeared to have been homemade. Crude, nothing too sophisticated. You can download plans from the Web.”Daddy said, “But a local cop — Excelsior Springs PD — was smart enough to rope off the area of your crash. The scene was pretty well preserved except where the. The result was something that would make life better for the local people. I was only afraid that it would not last.On the way back home, I stopped for coffee just as I had done several times before. The Frenchman was already there, waiting for me while nursing his own coffee. If somebody had been following me, it would have looked like any other meeting we'd had here during these last months. We exchanged the normal pleasantries while I tasted my coffee. After a moment he used the commonly.