April 2018
Hello, all, and welcome to my column. I’m Jory Harcourt, and since I haven’t talked to you all since Easter—which I hope for all of you that celebrate was awesome—I thought I would tell you the whacky turn of events that happened on the Saturday before.
Every year since the kids grew out of the classic egg hunt, I do a treasure hunt instead.
So in the morning, there’s a clue on the dining room table that they have to solve to get to the next egg, which has the next clue in it, and so on and so on until they guess the final clue and find their baskets, which are still filled with candy and a gift card.
I originally got the idea from a friend of mine who lived in an apartment.
She didn’t have her own yard, so she did the treasure hunt instead.
So the kids love it, and when Sam helps me, the clues get very Indiana Jones-puzzle-level hard, and that’s their favorite.
This year, in the baskets, I wanted to have large decorative eggs as well, because I felt like, at fifteen and thirteen respectively, I was getting to the end of them wanting to do these things with their parents.
Anyway, I found a woman in Bucktown who makes gorgeous eggs on ETSY, and when I contacted her, she said I could pick them up from her on Saturday.
I drove over, met her at the Starbucks on Armitage and Hoyne, and she apologized for not bringing them with her but a lot of the beading was still setting—they were supposed to look like Fabergé eggs—so I just needed to grab them from her daughter’s apartment a block away.
I didn’t want her to have to walk back and forth, so I went alone and tapped on the door of the third-floor walk-up. The guy who answered leaned out the doorway, looked right and left, and then waved me inside before closing the door and rounding on me.
“You here to pick up the two?”
I smiled at him. “I am.”
He exhaled sharply. “Good. So many people have been calling about it last minute, and it’s making me nervous. This way I know it’s done.”
I knew how that was. Lots of people had last-minute ideas, and it sucked for nice people like Mrs. Chmiel to have to say no. It was clearly making her son, or whoever the nice young man helping her was, sad to say no.
I patted his arm.
“You’re not at all how I thought you’d be,” he said, flashing me a quick grin before darting into the other room.
I stood there, glancing around the small cozy apartment, and he was back in seconds with a brown paper package that looked very well insulated, which was good since I knew the eggs were somewhat fragile.
I tucked it under my arm, as there was a loud knocking on the door that turned quickly to pounding.
“You better go out the back and down the fire escape,” he suggested, wincing. “Last time this happened, two buyers got into a fight right here in the living room.”
Throwing blows over decorative eggs seemed excessive, but I didn’t want to make the already twitchy young man any worse.
Ducking out the back, I was out on the fire escape and scaling down to the next floor when I heard yelling from above me. Poor guy, it had to suck to tell people no.
The alley behind the building was covered in puddles, and since I was wearing my white Converse sneakers, I had to be careful where I stepped so I didn’t submerge my whole foot. It ended up taking longer than it should have, but I finally made it back to the sidewalk.
“There he is!”
Turning, I saw three guys running toward me, the guy who gave me the eggs behind them at the door of the building and a girl beside him pointing at me.
I was betting she was another buyer, and maybe the guys coming for me were her brothers?
Or maybe one was her hubby and the other two were her brothers?
I had no idea, but when people run at you, the smart thing to do is run.
Bolting down the sidewalk, not wanting to lead them back to my car since clearly they didn’t care that I’d actually bought the eggs legitimately, I charged across the street, nearly got hit, but ran on, really happy that I’d been running with Kola lately to try and improve my endurance.
Once upon a time I’d been all about the gym, and I still went regularly but not every other day like Sam did, and I didn’t lift weights either or swim like him and Hannah.
Kola didn’t like the water either, so we’d been running lately, and I was glad since without the new stamina, I wouldn’t have been able to keep in front of the men who wanted to steal Easter from me.
I ran on, down streets, down more alleys, even cut through a few businesses—like I had no experience in this area or something—and finally made it to the parking lot far enough ahead to get to my car, gently place the package on my passenger seat, and then get the car started.
It’s hard not to shriek when someone is suddenly at your door, so I ended up screaming my head off while the guy tried to yank my door off.
Another guy appeared at the passenger door, and when he took out his gun, only then did I realize that perhaps this wasn’t about eggs.
I had a moment of horror, not that I was going to die but that I’d have to explain this to my husband, and how the hell was this going to sound even remotely possible.
Even when things started off so normal, they somehow went right off the rails.
Throwing the car into reverse, I checked my rearview, because my God, there could be kids crossing behind me, and then when I saw it was clear, gunned it, squealing out of the Starbucks parking lot and hitting the street fast.
As I drove, I told Siri to call Sam.
“Hey,” he yawned, at the office, catching up on some paperwork like he normally didn’t do on a Saturday.
But Kola was at an ACT test prep until three, and Hannah was working on a school project with her group at a friend’s house.
We were all reconvening at home at four before we took all the plastic eggs we’d filled to the homeless shelter.
“Did you pick up the eggs from that woman?”
“Uhm…yes and no,” I answered as I realized that I had two cars behind me. I’d run a red, and both SUVs came with me.
He made a noise. “I’m sorry, not what you thought, huh? Too small?”
“No, I’m sure they’re great, but I picked up the wrong thing, I think.”
Silence.
I plowed on. “And so I’m considering driving to the––”
“What?!”
“Don’t yell,” I grumbled.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at––”
“Never mind, I see you,” he snapped. We had location sharing on our iPhones, so I was guessing he checked. “Drive here to me.”
“Sam, I––”
“Jory!”
His voice could get so loud in a heartbeat.
“Stop,” I pleaded with him. “I’m not sure what’s in the package, and I don’t want to bring it to you and get you in trouble, and these guys following me are––”
“Following you?”
“Well, yeah,” I said matter-of-factly. “They chased me from the building to the Starbucks.”
“Oh God,” he groaned.
“You know, Sam, that Starbucks was a lot bigger than the one near––”
“Focus!”
Ugh, the yelling.
“Drive to me now!”
“Yes, dear,” I said instead of yessir and turned at the next light. “I’ll call you when––”
“Don’t you dare hang up the phone.”
“We’re just going to chat for twenty minutes?”
“Yes,” he said, disgruntled.
I couldn’t help laughing. “Don’t sound so happy about it.”
“You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Oh, I will not, don’t be so dramatic.”
Heavy sigh. “What do you imagine is in the package?”
“I dunno. I thought decorative eggs, which reminds me. I need to call the woman back and make sure I can pick up what I need after all this is taken care of.”
“Just—give me her name and I’ll have Elyes call and take care of the eggs.”
“Sam, she’s your assistant, not your––”
“She’s out running errands, she’s happy to do it.”
He, on the other hand, did not sound happy; more worried, scared, and a bit mad. “You wish you’d found some nice boring boy to marry who wouldn’t give you heart attacks, don’t you.”
“Shut up,” he instructed. “You’re the love of my life, you idiot.”
“Oh,” I whispered as my eyes filled, and it was hard to see the road for a second. “Sam. You know I––”
“Focus!”
Spell broken.
“I have to make some calls on my landline, but just stay on the phone.”
I grunted.
“Jory.”
“Yes, geez, on the phone. You’re so grouchy when you think I’m gonna die.”
“You’re not going to die!” he roared, and as loud as it was on the phone, in his office it must have been really something.
Ten minutes later I made the turn onto the street in front of his building, and when I came to a stop, before the guys got out behind me, there were police cars everywhere.
Like a sea of uniformed officers and detectives in suits.
I put up my hands, but Sam was there, striding across the street, glowering, but stunning in his Tom Ford suit.
There was no way to miss the power radiating from the man.
When he reached my door, I unlocked it and he opened it, drawing me out of the car and up into his arms. He crushed me tight, his face in my hair as he held me pressed to his heart.
“From now on I’ll do my paperwork from home.”
“Sam, I––”
“Even your boring errands can become a summer blockbuster at a moment’s notice.”
He wasn’t wrong.
An hour later Sam and I were in his office as he stood staring at me, arms crossed over a chest like a brick wall as he listened to a Detective Shannon Curtis on the other end of the line.
“It’s almost thirty grams of uncut heroin.”
I groaned. Sam growled.
“Apparently, Mr. Harcourt was supposed to go to the apartment on the third floor, not the second,” Curtis explained.
I hadn’t really been listening that closely to the directions, terrible habit that.
“This is such a break for us. We’ve been tracking this ring for months, and their MO is to kill all the low-level street buyers, which they thought Mr. Harcourt was, and then sell in bulk to the Russians.”
Sam remained silent.
“I guess they have these guys come to different apartments all over the city to pick up product and then kill them when they hit the street. They usually stab them, though we’ve found some of the buyers shot, strangled, one guy was garroted and––”
“That will be all, Detective,” he rasped, hanging up the phone before leaning forward and putting his hands down on both sides of me on the desk where I was sitting. “Jory, you––”
“Did Elyes get the eggs?”
“Do not say eggs to me,” he warned, his voice low and husky.
I cupped his face in my hands, his stubble rough under my fingers as I lifted for a kiss. “I’m sorry, it was an accident.”
He grunted, his eyes narrowing as I nibbled over his chin.
“I promise to be more careful.”
“You always promise that,” he rumbled before he bent and kissed me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck to pull him down and hold him close as I returned the kiss that was possessive and mauling and everything I craved. When I was whimpering and squirming under him, my legs wrapped around his hips, he pulled back so we could both breathe.
“Lock the door,” I begged him.
He chuckled softly, and it was so sexy I let out a moan I wasn’t proud of.
“Why not?”
“Elyes is coming by here to bring the goddamn eggs, and more importantly, my office can’t smell like cum. It’s not professional.”
“No?”
He laughed at me and kissed me again and promised to take me to bed the second we got home. Amazing how a day could go from crappy to pretty near perfect when you were with the one you loved.
“Maybe next year we just have dinner, all of us, huh?”
I would have to think on it. A year away was a very long time.