Page 33 of A Little Christmas Wish

“Yeah?”

“You’ve got to chill,” she advised him. “Or you’re gonna give yourself a heart attack with all this worry.”

“Right. Sorry. Just making sure that no one is being mean to you.”

“If they are, I know what to do.” She thumped her fist into her hand.

He winced. “Yeah, Betsy isn’t such a fan of that method of solving problems. She’s worried that you’ll end up in trouble.”

“I’m used to getting in trouble.”

Ink pulled up in front of the school, then turned to her. “If you do, you know to tell the principal to call me, right?”

“Right.” Zippy frowned. “Ink?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“Why’re you driving me to school every day and not Betsy? And how come when she picks me up, she’s got someone with her?”

Shit.

Zippy was a smart kid, of course she’d figured out something was going on.

Should he tell her the truth?

But they didn’t know what was going on for sure.

“You’re not gonna tell me, are you?” Zippy asked.

“I don’t want you to worry,” he told her. “Neither Betsy nor I do. We’ve got everything under control.”

Zippy frowned. “So what is it?”

“Your old foster father has gone missing.”

Zippy’s face closed up instantly. “Leon is missing?”

“Well, sort of. He hasn’t been seen at his house for a while.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve had someone keep an eye on him,” Ink admitted.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I figure that he must have done something terrible for you to threaten to stab him.”

Surprise filled her face. “You do?”

“Yeah, Zippy. I do. You don’t have to tell me what it is, but I think there was something. And I think it was bad. So I wanted to keep an eye on him.”

“What about Amber?” she asked about Leon’s wife.

“She left in her car and hasn’t been seen since, either.”

Zippy was silent for a long moment.

“You don’t have to worry about this,” he told her.

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