Lucas made a gagging noise. “Gross. Why would anyone want pickle soda?”
“Hey now, have you ever tried pickle soda?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it’s gross? Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
Lucas pulled another face. “I don’t want to knock it or try it.” The indignant way he repeated the phrase provoked a surprised laugh from Clay, causing Lucas’s eyes to narrow as he studied him from across the table. “There’s no such thing as pickle soda, is there?”
Clay lifted his hand and grinned. “There really is. I’ve just never tried it before. Apparently, there’s also a dirt soda, and eel.”
“Eel soda?” When Clay nodded, Lucas’s mouth gaped in horror. “But…why?”
“Dunno and can’t say I ever plan to find out. Well, maybe the pickle juice soda. Definitely not eel.”
“Yeah, me either. Not even pickle. I hate pickles.” Lucas shuddered before scanning the other tables. “You don’t think any of them are drinking eel soda, do you?”
The suspicion-laced question made Clay laugh. “No. Pretty sure Bob’s Burger Barn sticks to boring old flavors. Orange, cola, lemon-lime, those types.”
“Good.” After another shudder, Lucas picked up the menu and scrutinized the options. Probably to double-check that Clay was telling the truth. “I’ll take a regular brown soda.”
“Sounds like a wise choice.”
A couple of seconds passed. “Are you sure you didn’t make those sodas up?”
“I swear. Here, I’ll prove it to you.” Clay typed “pickle soda” into his phone and showed Lucas the results.
The other man leaned on the table, peering at the screen. “Wow.”
Clay repeated the process with eel and dirt soda. “Trust me now?”
Clay meant the question as a joke, but when Lucas didn’t answer right away, he kicked himself for the teasing.
Before he could apologize, Lucas grinned. “I don’t know if I can trust anyone who thinks pickle soda sounds like a good idea.”
The force of the relief that swept through Clay surprised him. Until a second ago, he hadn’t realized how invested he was in gaining the other man’s confidence. “Fair enough.”
The waitress came, and as promised, Clay ordered for both of them. Once she left, their conversation switched to favorite beverages, but part of Clay’s mind dwelled on that unexpected surge of relief. He’d put the same friendly, joking technique to use countless times in the past in order to place both suspects and witnesses at ease.
This was different, though. Winning Lucas’s trust and high regard mattered, and he wasn’t sure why. No doubt part of the urgency was because of the man’s connection to Caraleigh, but there was more to it than that.
It was the way Lucas talked, his little mannerisms and interactions. They reminded Clay of his sister.
During a lull in the conversation, Clay risked bringing her up again. “Can you tell me anything else about Caraleigh when you two were together? Anything at all. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her that I’m scared I won’t even recognize her now that she’s all grown up.”
He grimaced when he voiced the fear out loud. He hadn’t meant to put a damper on their meal like that, but Lucas’s eyes lit up. “I read that babies are challenging for people to recognize later because their facial structures grow and change so much. Prepubescent faces lose fat but change at a much slower rate. Caraleigh wasn’t a baby.”
Clay knew all that already. As an FBI agent, he’d worked with facial progressions more than once. But somehow, Lucas’s steady, matter-of-fact recital drove the truth home. “Thank you, that makes me feel better.”
Lucas beamed, but by the time Clay finished sipping his water, the happiness dimmed. His shoulders rounded while he drew circles on his glass. “Sometimes, I believed the doctors when they said she was too good to be true. That she wasn’t real. They kept asking me how it was possible that, out in the mountains with barely any other people around, how I’d found a girl my own age who didn’t make the world noisier or more stressful? They didn’t believe the girl existed, and I started to think that maybe I did make the whole thing up.” His hand stilled. “But I didn’t, did I? Make her up?”
Lucas’s soft plea was full of hope. The same hope that had been fueling Clay. “No, you didn’t. Good luck, karma, guardian angel, whatever you want to call it. I think some unexplained force helped the two of you find each other. And let’s hope that didn’t use up our quota of luck because we’re gonna need a helluva lot more of it.”
The waitress waltzed up with a tray and placed their plates on the table. “You need anything else, just holler.”
Clay thanked her and turned back in time to catch Lucas lifting up the top bun and peeking underneath. “They got it right. No ketchup…or pickles.”
That made Clay laugh again while Lucas picked up his burger and nibbled off the tiniest of bites.
“What, you afraid it might be poisoned or something?”
Lucas swallowed before shaking his head. “Not poisoned, but why take a big bite if I’m not sure I’ll like it yet?”
Hard as Clay tried, he couldn’t come up with a good answer for that. “Valid point. So, how is it?”
Lucas had already bitten off a much larger chunk and mumbled around a mouthful. “Delicious.”
Even so, damned if Clay didn’t try a smaller bite to start with than usual, just in case, but the instant the burger hit his taste buds, he had to concede. He waited until he swallowed to gloat. “What did I tell you? Hole-in-the-wall joints make the best burgers.”
Lucas was too busy gobbling down another bite to speak, so he nodded. He polished off the burger in half the time Clay took with his and started in on the fries. They talked for the remainder of the meal, with Clay sharing a funny story about how Caraleigh had refused to leave the petting zoo when she
