23 Chapter 21 – Zack – Iteration 144 (1/2)

He picked at the lock on his cuffs with the tip of a pen. Quebec had left an hour ago to retrieve the rental car she'd abandoned near his trailer. The pen made a terrible lock-picking tool. Zack didn't think he would do better with anything short of the actual key. If there were real people who could open a lock with nothing but a hairpin or a paperclip, Zack wasn't one of them.

The door ended his halfhearted efforts by opening. Quebec entered bearing plastic bags.

”Did you go shopping while I was stuck to the bed?”

Quebec cocked her head and looked at him. ”I abandoned a car along a back road, walked a mile to retrieve another, and bought you a change of clothes. Be happy it didn't take longer.”

”Well, I have to use the bathroom.”

She pulled the key out of her pocket and unlocked the handcuffs. ”You should take a shower while you're in there.”

He took her advice. Fifteen minutes later, he emerged clean from the bathroom wearing new clothes. Quebec gestured at the array of vending machine food arranged on the table. Something in her mannerism made him smile. ”Did you spend all your casino winnings on this?”

”Travel with me and you eat nothing but the best,” she said.

A twinge of his stomach reminded him he hadn't eaten in close to a day. Zack sat across the table from Quebec and opened a bag of mini-donuts. ”Want to hear something funny?”

Quebec's brown eyes fixed on him as he ate. ”Always.”

”I am a great cook.” Zack gestured at the junk food. ”But I eat like this all the time. Up until the past year, I used to make all sorts of things I found in cookbooks. I stopped because right after we got married, Lacey told me I had to learn how to cook because she wasn't doing housework. I tossed out everything in my kitchen that wasn't nailed down and Lacey never noticed. We've been eating freezer meals ever since. Tater tots are the closest thing to a vegetable I've had in months.”