Page 35 of Crew

“Not yet,” he said, pausing his trek.

“I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “It wouldn’t hurt for them to wait until I’m relieved by Ford in a couple hours.”

“Positive. I need to do something, and Crew won’t let me join the patrol.”

“Of course not,” he said. “I wouldn’t let my soulmate patrol on her own either. You can call it sexist or macho, but soulmates are precious.”

“The feeling goes both ways,” she said with a smile. “I don’t think it’s sexist. I’m not a trained fighter, but Icanwatch for danger.”

“Hopefully, no one on patrol here ever needs to put their fight training to use, but we can if we need to. When the security system is set up, maybe you can take over watching the monitors from inside the farmhouse; that would be a big help.”

She brightened at the prospect. “I’d like that.”

She hopped down to the grass and walked to the barn to take care of the livestock. Since she wasn’t leaving the area, she didn’t need a walkie, but she’d still keep her wits about her and not take her own safety for granted. Ford, Grey, and Crew were working with Khyle on setting up the rest of the security equipment.

As she reached the barn, she heard the soft rumble of a vehicle and looked up in time to see an old beat-up truck drive down the road and pass by their farm. Since they didn’t turn into the driveway or slow down, she didn’t give it any mind. It probably belonged to one of the other farms on the old dirt road.

In the barn, she got to work tending first to the cows, fending off Daisy’s propensity to get into everything, and then she took care of the chickens.

As she returned to the barn to get Daisy her breakfast, she heard an engine again and looked out the door.

The same truck she’d seen before drove by.

Now that was strange.

“Hey, Avi?” she called.

“Yeah, Zara?”

“I just saw a truck.”

“Okay?” he asked, striding toward her. “What did it look like?”

She described the truck, telling him how she’d seen it pass by two times since she’d been outside.

He frowned. “That’s not good. They installed cameras on the fence at the front of the property,” he said. “Let’s go take a look.”

She fed Daisy and put her in the pasture with the cows, then hurried back into the house to the den where Avi was already seated at the desk and pulling up the camera footage.

She pulled up a chair to sit next to him and watched as he told her how to access the different cameras on any of the three monitors they’d hooked up. The desk now looked like something out of a movie about computer hackers.

“There,” she said, as she saw the footage of the truck drive by.

Avi stopped and reversed the footage, slowing it down. “The angle’s bad, so we can’t see the license plate, but I’m very sure I haven’t seen that truck before.”

He twisted the top of his walkie and said, “Crew, you there?”

There was a small squeal of static, and he answered, “Yep, I’m at the back of the territory with Grey setting up cameras. What’s up?”

Avi told Crew about the truck she’d seen.

“Damn it. All right, just keep an eye on things and we’ll finish up as soon as we can. If they’re just driving by periodically, they might be trying to see how many of us are around outside. I mean, it could be innocent and just some lost idiot who doesn’t know where they are.”

“That doesn’t seem real likely,” Avi said.

“I know, I was just throwing it out there. I think it’s far more likely that Colton sent one of his assholes to drive by. It was good luck that Zara saw it. Speaking of, is Zara there?”

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