Kat picked up Billy and snuggled her gently "come to The Keep Riley, you can't stay here, it's been three weeks, everyone is doing everything they can...to get Allora back" Riley looked at the empty expanse of ground "I shall stay thank you Ma'am, I'm still on duty until Miss Allora relieves me of my watch" Kat sighed sadly then glanced over her shoulder "how long has he been sitting there?" Riley glanced over at Connor who sat on a small bench in the garden just staring out at the empty place. I mean, we’re talking about my Daddy.”Mike held up his left hand and pointed to the stubby middle finger. He said, “That’s when I lost half of this finger.”“Do you mean that story is true?” Karen asked wide eyed.“Yes. Your father is a hero and a lot of people owe him their lives. He was even given a medal for it,” Mike said.“Wow, I didn’t realize that,” Karen said.She knew that her father worked for Homeland Security, but she didn’t think that he actually fought terrorists. This was the first. "What you are looking at is Ronnie's (her husband) biggest fantasy. He wants to watch me with another man. I haven't made up my mind yet, but I probably will do it for him."I shook my head in amazement. "Why would you do something like that?"She smiled, "Why not? Anyway, what you do is take these books home with you and leave them on the kitchen table. Then get out of the house so Sam will be alone with them for an hour or so. When you get home and he asks you what they are tell him that I came. We had some snacks, watched some TV, then it got later and we opened the wine and started talking about which of us would be your girlfriend. There was a lot of discussion of the topic over the first glass of wine. Then when we reached agreement, we were celebrating with the second glass of wine.”Eve said, “I remember Spic sitting on the bed, congratulating all of us for agreeing, and we all shared a rather platonic kiss over it. Then she fell over, and Liz, you were laughing at her, I felt.