Софи Райан - The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

I stood up and Jess came down the aisle and hugged me. “What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“Where else would I be?” she said with a smile. She gave me one more squeeze and moved into the row behind us.

Sam caught both my hands in his. “No one in their right mind would believe Mac could hurt anyone,” he told me.

“Thank you for being here,” I said.

“Any time, kiddo.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead and then took a seat next to Jess.

I was about to sit back down when the courtroom door opened again and Glenn McNamara walked in, followed by his uncle Clayton. They both smiled and Glenn raised a hand in hello as they took a seat on the aisle four rows back.

I took my seat again but a couple of minutes later I noticed Rose look over her shoulder once more. I turned to see that Channing Caulfield had come in, along with two men I knew that Mac had crewed for several times. Suddenly my chest got tight, like someone had just sat on me, and I had to take several deep breaths to make the sensation go away. By the time we were ready to begin, almost every seat behind me was filled by someone who knew Mac: Vince Kennedy, who played in The Hairy Bananas with Sam, Stella Hall, whose brother’s house we’d cleared out back in the spring. I started biting the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t cry. Just before court was in session, Jackson Montgomery slipped in and took a seat in the back. True to his word he was still in town. I nodded in recognition and he raised a hand in return.

Mac came into the courtroom looking serious but collected. I saw him swallow a couple of times when he looked behind us and realized the courtroom was more than half-full of people, all of them there for him.

Josh was right about the process and bail and very quickly we were all in the hallway outside the courtroom.

Rose hugged Mac and then stepped back to look him over. “Are you all right?” she asked, her eyes searching his face. “Did they treat you well?”

He smiled. “I’m fine, Rose.”

Avery threw her arms around him then. “Was prison horrible?” she asked.

“It wasn’t prison and it wasn’t horrible,” Mac said. He shook hands with Mr. P., hugged both Charlotte and Jess and as he turned to speak to Sam and Glenn his eyes locked with mine and he smiled.

I looked around but there was no sign of Jackson. His not staying around was probably for the best.

Liz came down the hall with Josh.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

“Mac’s free to go,” Josh said. He moved to speak to his client while I turned to Liz.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No point in having money if you can’t throw it around once in a while,” she said with a smile.

“I love you,” I said, already knowing how she was going to answer.

She waved a hand at me. “Yeah, yeah, everybody does,” she said.

There were a couple of things that Josh explained needed to be taken care of, so we all headed back to the shop. Mac arrived about half an hour later. By then I’d made tea and cut the Bundt cake that Rose had taken out of her freezer when we’d gone home to change. Josh was with him, and Rose immediately invited him to stay for cake. I headed upstairs to get a cup of coffee for him and one for Mac.

When I came back down Mac was standing at the bottom of the stairs. I handed him one of the mugs I was carrying.

“Thank you,” he said.

I smiled. He’d been gone only a few hours and I couldn’t believe how relieved I was to see him. “You’re welcome.”

“I don’t mean for this,” he said, holding up the mug. “Well, I do, but I mean for everything working out so well today.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “The people who deserve credit for today are Josh and Liz.”

Mac smiled. “And I’ve thanked both of them, but I also know that I wouldn’t be standing here right now if you weren’t friends with Michelle. I wouldn’t have been allowed to turn myself in this morning the way I did, Josh wouldn’t have been able to get a reasonable bail set. Michelle made that happen. She did it for you.” He shrugged. “So thank you for being the kind of friend that she’d put herself out for, that lots of people would put themselves out for.” He leaned over and gave me a hug.

Before I could point out that all the people who showed up in court today came because of him, not me, we were interrupted by Avery. We stepped apart, a little self-consciously, at least on my part.

“Hey, Sarah, is there any hot water in the kettle?” she asked. She was carrying the teapot in its knitted cozy.

“Uh, yes,” I said. “But you’ll need to put it on to boil again.”

“Okay.” She bounded up the stairs. “Rose is looking for you,” she said over her shoulder.

“For me or for Mac?” I asked.

“Both of you,” she said. “She wants to plan strategy.”

“Strategy?” Mac said.

Avery stopped two steps from the top and turned to look at us. “Well, yeah,” she said. “We have to figure out who killed that woman. Rose said we can’t wait for the police to do it. Right now she thinks they’re all a bunch of . . .” She hesitated. “I won’t say the word but it rhymes with ‘glass bowls.’” She took the last stairs in one long step and disappeared down the hall.

I turned to look at Mac.

“All bets are off now, aren’t they, as far as Rose is concerned?”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“Is there any way I can ask her to—” He hesitated. “I’m trying to think of the right cliché.”

“Not go off half-cocked? Or get her knickers in a knot?” I shook my head. “Not unless you want to be a ‘glass bowl.’” I smiled at him and headed for the workroom.

Just before closing Avery knocked on my office door. “Come in,” I called.

The teen poked her head around the door. She looked troubled.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“There’s a man in a suit downstairs asking for Mac,” she said. “I don’t know who it is and I wasn’t sure what to do.”

I knew that Mac was out in the garage working on a bed frame I’d found during the spring trash pick. “What does he look like?” I asked.

“He’s tall, very short dark hair with one of those little beards just on his chin. The suit is expensive and Nonna would say he had good posture because you know how she is about that kind of thing.” She shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. “He was at court earlier.”

It was likely Jackson, I realized. “I’ll talk to him,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Mac’s not going back to jail, is he?” Avery said. “I thought maybe that man was some kind of police officer.”

I shook my head. “He’s not a police officer and Mac isn’t going back to jail.”

“How do you know that?” It was impossible to miss the challenge in her eyes—and the concern.

I got to my feet. “Because he didn’t do anything wrong.”

She gave a snort of derision and shook her head, looking so much like Liz I had to bite my tongue not to laugh. “Innocent people get put in jail all the time. Don’t you watch TV?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to Mac,” I said. “Josh is a very good lawyer. You know that. And besides, he has a secret weapon.”

“What secret weapon?”

“Us.”

Her expression cleared and she nodded emphatically. “Yeah. You’re right. He does.”

I went downstairs and discovered I was right. Jackson Montgomery was standing in the middle of the store. He turned as I approached.

“You’re persistent,” I said.

He smiled. “I messed up. It’s up to me to fix things.”

“Thank you for coming to court.”

“I didn’t stay because I figured it would be awkward.”