Michael was asleep on the sofa when the doorbell rang. Groaning, he checked his watch: 3:00 in the morning. Despite knowing that Kitt was on guard in the driveway, he still carefully approached the door and looked through the peephole.
Opening the door, he said with surprise, "Devon?"
"Hello, Michael. May I come in?"
"Yeah, sure." Michael stepped aside to let his boss into the house. "You must have left right after I called."
"Indeed."
Too tired for anything but bluntness, he asked, "Why?"
"Your report was somewhat lacking in details. All you said was that a woman, Maria Daniels, was in the hospital and you were watching her daughter for a few days."
"Yeah. Maria's at the hospital, in surgery. Emily Grace is upstairs, sleeping. Or not." An orange-haired girl was at the top of the stairs. "Hey, Pumpkin, you should be in bed."
"My apologies for waking you," said Devon to the girl.
She looked at him sleepily and started gesturing.
"Emily Grace is mute. We'll need to go out to Kitt."
"That won't be necessary, Michael. I am fluent in American Sign Language."
"Of course you are," muttered Michael, not quite under his breath.
"My name is Devon Miles," he said, with both words and sign language, pausing for Emily Grace's responses. "Correct . . . I agree, your Uncle Michael is quite resourceful. And he's right: It is quite late, and you should be in bed . . . I shall ask." Devon turned to Michael. "Miss Emily Grace would like me to read her a bedtime story."
"Yeah, okay. One short story."
Devon went upstairs with the girl while Michael went back to the sofa. Michael could hear his boss's cultured, measured voice. And shortly, he came back down.
Devon sat in the recliner. "And now, Michael, if I could have your report."
Michael briefly considered demanding Devon explain his presence. But he was tired and just wanted to go back to sleep. He yawned and began his report.
"As you know, I had been working on a case involving the sale of meth. Agent Kevin Rinaldi of US DEA had been working on the same case, from a different angle. We joined forces and ended up in Lexington. We were able to shut down the distribution side of the operation. Our next move was to head upstream, to shut down the production side of things."