Christmas Morning with Madison Knight
Excerpt: Chapter 5, Justified, a Madison Knight Novel
Madison’s eyes
felt like they had been welded shut by the sandman. She heard a faint banging, which at first she
was able to convince herself was conjured by her sub-conscious and part of a REM
cycle, but unfortunately it was persistent.
What time was it anyhow? She
managed to read the clock through foggy slits.
Seven a.m.
The knocking intensified. Her visitor
wasn’t going to leave. Her initial
reaction was to throw something hard at the wall and protest the awakening, but
she didn’t have enough energy for that.
“What!” She yelled loud, certain
her neighbors would bang on the wall to protest the noise. The walls were paper thin in this place, and normally
it didn’t take much for them to pound on the wall and scream obscenities to
quiet her. Maybe they had drunk their
Christmas cheer and passed out unconscious to the world. Or possibly, they had taken her last warning
seriously, when at one in the morning she had donned a housecoat, fuzzy
slippers, and her Glock and paid them a visit.
Not necessarily something a good cop would be proud of but she was just
human.
The banging on the door continued.
“I’m coming. Shut up!” She couldn’t help it. Her patience was never a strong suit and at
this point, on the limited amount of sleep, she had even less of it.
She swung the door open and faced Terry.
“What are you doing—”
“Nice PJs.”
She looked down at herself and was thankful for full coverage—a pair of
blue track pants and a Stiles PD sweatshirt.
“And I would have taken you for a white lace woman.”
“As if.” She stepped back from
the door to let him in.
He held a couple of cloth grocery bags with one hand and a small,
decorated tree under his other arm.
“What are you doing here?” Her
words stopped when he handed her the tree.
“What—”
“You don’t have one do you?” He
glanced around the apartment. “Didn’t
think so.” He met eyes with her and
smiled. “Everyone needs a tree, Maddy.”
“Put it where you like.”
She found herself somewhat touched by the gesture, but didn’t allow him
to see it. “It’s early.” She plugged the pre-lit tree in. It had small white lights tastefully
dispersed. She fought a smile from
giving her away.
Terry made himself at home and worked at emptying the contents of a
cloth bag on her kitchen counter. He
pulled out a Tupperware container filled with what looked like batter, and two
smaller ones filled with blueberry and strawberry sauce. He took out a bottle of genuine maple syrup
and then folded the bag signaling the end of its contents.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re going to repeat yourself all day like a parrot?”
A cliché—Terry’s vocabulary was poisoned with them. “Until you answer the question.”
He laughed.
“Is this some joke?”
“Absolutely not.” He swung open
cabinet doors, working his way around the compact space in seconds. “Guess I should have brought it with me—”
“What are you looking for? Terry,
it’s seven in the morning!”
“A non-stick fry pan. I’m going
to cook you up some superb pancakes. With
Grant pancakes the secret’s in the batter.
We know how to make them light and fluffy—”
“Stop there—” The sincere
happiness he seemed to be experiencing in this moment was breaking through her
grumpy exterior. “Light and fluffy?”
“The best.” He took out a flipper
and turned on a burner.
“But why? And why so early?” She brushed past him, opened the bottom
drawer on the stove, and put a fry pan on the burner.
“Because we’ve got to get to work you and I—”
“But it’s Christmas day.”
“Doesn’t mean we don’t work.”
Okay, so he had a point. The
strange part was he was the one pushing work this morning, and she was the one being
tempted to take personal time. The lab
was shut down until Friday so no forensic results. Their list of suspects was short at this
point despite Allison’s mention that many people wanted Claire dead. The only name they got was that of the best friend, Darcy Simms.
He wiped the inside of the pan with oil and turned the burner on. “Annabelle’s on the way with Hershey.”
Hershey. She almost
said it aloud. Damn, that wasn’t part of
a dream, or a nightmare. No, it was her
cursed Christmas gift from the Grants.
Could they stop giving all ready?
Her thoughts were sarcastic, and her internal venting shifted viewpoint
when she found herself excited about petting the little guy again. But why a dog, and why a lab that would grow
larger than an apartment?
“She’s bringing a kennel for him too.”
She nodded as if she knew what all that meant. “I’m not sure…” Her words flittered into non-existence when
she saw the look of disappointment on his face.
She decided to twist her words to have a different meaning than they
were originally intended to express. “What
is the kennel for?”
He laughed. He must have found
her naivety entertaining. “For training
purposes mostly. Some people keep them
in the crate whenever they’re not home.
We don’t like to do that with Todd and Bailey. We like them to have free rein, but you’ll
want to make sure he’s trained first.”
There was a knock on the door. “I
left the door cracked open downstairs.”
Madison stared at him. “The front
door? So much for a secured building.”
He just smiled at her and answered the door as if it were his
place. It was Annabelle, and her arms
were overloaded. She carried a kennel
crate folded flat under one arm, a bag of puppy chow under the other, and a
hyperactive puppy pulled on a leash. For
the excess she toted one would think it was just as bad as a baby.
Oh, her simple home life was about to change.
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