The door swung open.
A blob of bright golden fur zipped down the interior hallway and hurled itself at us. I briefly lost sense of time in a whirl of tongue, happy yelps, and tail-smacks, and somehow managed to crouch down with Dax to wrap my arms around Evie’s warm body. “Holy shit, you smell like blueberries,” I said.
“I gave her a bath,” Tony said. “Which you are currently undoing…I should have hosed you down at the brig.”
At least the dog was okay. I guess some part of me had figured Keller might eat her or something. But she was here, squirming all over the place, her tail slamming into the wall and my legs and my face.
Evie had given us good greetings before, but damn, I’d never seen this kind of production. I’d had cats growing up, and didn’t know much about dogs, but I could swear she’d missed us.
Once she had calmed down enough to let us inside, we removed our boots and stored them in the dark wooden cubby beside the door. Much to my surprise, the cubby matched the rest of the place’s immediate furniture; to our immediate left was a living room with a television set perched atop a beautiful entertainment center, and to our right was a dining room outfitted with an expensive-looking cherrywood table and chair set. Overall, not the sort of surroundings I’d expect from Tony McKnight, a decidedly outdoorsy former gun magazine editor.
“You have good taste in decor,” I said to Tony. “I figured you’d have more…I don’t know…gun racks.”
“This ain’t mine,” he snorted. “Place comes pre-furnished. And let me tell you, whoever designed it had real questionable taste in paint color.”
Point made. The dark wood was nice, but the pale orange wall in the living room seemed…off.
He led us past the living room and into the kitchen, which sported turquoise walls vibrant enough to make my eyes ache. The previous owner had furnished it with a table and chair set large enough to handle a family of five. They did have granite countertops, though, which I guess was pretty cool. My mother would have been thrilled—apocalypse or not, granite countertops were to be admired.
“First off, you two reek, so you need to shower up before anything else. There’s decent hot water, enough for ten minutes each.” Tony looked between the two of us. “So who’s it gonna be?”
Ten minutes of hot water? I’d died and gone to Shower Heaven.
“Ladies first,” Dax said.
“You’ve been bitching about a shower since we got here,” I said. “You go right ahead.”
Dax wavered, then looked at Tony.
“Second floor. Third room on the right. Your backpacks are in the hallway, but there’s fresh clothing in one of the cabinets. One of Keller’s outfitters gave them to us…I guessed at your sizes.”
Dax bolted up the stairs. Evie gleefully chased after him, her tail wagging with every step.
I started to slide into one of the seats by the kitchen door. Tony shook his head. “Nuh-uh,” he said. “You can just stand there. Right there. And don’t lean on anything.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look, this place is too frou-frou for me by far, but it’s kinda nice not being surrounded by dirt and ash and dead people, so if you can avoid spreading those molecules around…that would be great.”
I studied my new surroundings, and pointed at the cabinets. “Do we have food?”
“No. They drop off MREs for breakfast and we pick up more MREs in the afternoon and evening.” He looked at the cabinets with something approaching resignation. “What were they feeding you in there?”
I had to think about it. “Packaged oatmeal in the mornings, I think. And Spam. And random canned stuff.”
Was that envy I saw in his eyes? “Not bad. You just played cards all day?”
“And did push-ups and sit-ups.” I lifted up my arm and flexed to prove it. “Seriously, my biceps have never looked better.”
There was a soft rumble in the walls, followed by a steady pounding. It took me a moment to connect that pounding with the sound of running water. Goddamn, when had I last heard a real shower? It couldn’t have been all that long ago—I’d showered at Elderwood on a semi-regular basis—but listening to water running through pipes in a house was something else entirely.
Tony folded his arms across his chest and looked at me, seemingly waiting.
“Thanks,” I said. “For getting us out.”
“My pleasure.”
This gave me an opening to angle toward: “How’d you do it? Or did he just want Gloria?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out,” he admitted. He glanced at the kitchen walls, his eyes narrowing as he took in the gaudy shade of the wall. “Hastings has a lot going on, and much as he wanted to interrogate her, he had to tend to other matters first. Once the doctor made it clear she needed you, you sort of became our bargaining chip.”