“We are all still waiting to hear. Lucy has been in touch with the man from Charlotte. He is going to wait and see who he is dealing with a day at a...time. He did tell Lucy to stop the police harassment of you and Michael. He doesn’t know yet who all he is going to need,” June explained. “And Ty, I see what you mean, Lucy is a snake.”“She would give all reptiles a bad name,” I suggested with a laugh.“You don’t know that she was bragging about how she and Amos stole your business. She would have. Jas set her local assets on task, devour the small Hive creatures thenstand by.Every one of the woodland creatures Jas sent in would die. Even the oneswho survived the onslaught would die, as orbital command sanitized thearea and local air command sanitized it again with chemical weapons andnanites.But they were bred for this. Jas was using Hive methods to fight the Hiveitself.The problem was, Jas's assets were spread over a wide area. Because theHive could appear anywhere inside the cluster of. She accepted the flattery, and then stepped forward to make me finish. I got the distinct impression that she liked what she saw. Although, in the end, she did turn her attention back to the Harley."I wish we could get back on the bike," she said. "The heat from the engine was too much." It won't be as bad, now that we're naked," I teased. "Want to try something?"Her eyes were big as she looked up at me and said, "I am yours for anything!"=====We had a few nice days in a row, and she asked. On the first day of school, I trudged out to the bus stop (I didn’t have my own car) at the expected 7:10 AM to catch the bus. As I stood there waiting trying to keep myself from nodding off I glanced over at the vacant house and noticed the For Sale sign in the front yard was gone. A car was now parked in the driveway. I was mildly surprised for a moment but thought nothing of it, since I was only half awake anyway. As the bus rounded the corner at the end of my street, I felt a presence.