Page 29 of Five for Silver

Chad dozed, half listening to Romeo’s latestobsession, a Spanish crime drama about a detective solvingimpossible cases. He’d started the series to help with his languageskills. Italian and French weren’t enough—he’d added Spanish to themix, too.

Chad knew it was a distraction. Romeo neededto keep his mind busy.

Unless Chad asked for them, he left thesubtitles off, and Chad had to read the character’s expression andmusic to understand what was going on.

He yawned, too tired to care about thecurrent case plaguing the protagonist. Romeo would fill him in oncethe episode had finished anyway.

Merc clambered onto the sofa despite theloud tut from Romeo and laid down in front of Chad’s chest. Hewagged his tail every few minutes, beating it against the cushionlike a drum, and making Chad chuckle.

“You miss me, huh?”

“Yes,” Romeo replied, in a dead-pan voice.“I missed you.”

“I was talking to Merc.”

Romeo jabbed his fingers at Chad’s neckuntil he squirmed and begged for mercy.

“So … was everything okay?” Chad asked.

Romeo paused the TV.

“If you mean did I try to kill your dog, noI did not.”

“Our dog.” Chad corrected, stroking a handdown Merc’s spine.

Romeo rolled his eyes. “I spent most of mytime in the outhouse, going over the cold cases, but his shrillwhining got distracting, and I gave up.”

“You need to give him attention.”

“I had a better solution.”

“Which was?”

“I taped his mouth shut.”

Chad widened his eyes and rolled onto hisback to glare at Romeo. “You didwhat?”

“I’m joking, Chad. Obviously.”

“I don’t think anything is obvious when itcomes to you.”

“Me and Mercutio got on fine, or as fine aswe’ll ever get on.”

“I can drop him off at doggy day care.There’s one not too far.”

Romeo’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Do youreally think I’m incapable of looking after him?”

“No. Not incapable.”

“We were fine. I walked him around thefield. He likes … digging.”

Chad smiled, “Yeah, I can imagine.”

“No. I mean he likes digging, which might bea problem.”

“Why?”

“He fetched me an arm.”

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