“I cannot stress this enough,” I said, as I strode down the perfectly landscaped, tree-lined sidewalk, “once we are inside the building, we need to be silent. Like, completely f*****g silent. I want to be able to hear a pin drop. Me. With my human ears. Do I make myself clear?”
Erin scurried along beside me. “Yes, I understand. Silent, pin drop, I get it.”
I’d probably repeated myself at least 50 times since we started talking about Monarch at Target.
“I’m not sure you do. Yesterday was not your first day on the job—your first day starts right now.”
“Evander counts,” she mumbled.
Downtown Santa Barbara was quite busy—bustling, even—even during the day. Erin and I spoke in hushed voices, and we walked almost shoulder-to-shoulder, but I doubted any of these people were paying much att
