Page 43 of In Her Sights
Despite her denial, he chuckled softly. A pillow collided with the back of her head, and she made a strange squeaking sound of surprise as she automatically caught it. Whirling around, she chucked the pillow back at him, trying her best to not let her gaze slip below his neck. It wasn’t easy.
“Good night, Carmondy,” she said, keeping her voice stern with a great deal of effort, but exhaustion pulled at her, and she gave up the effort. “Or morning, or whatever.”
“Good night, Pax.” He still sounded amused and strangely affectionate, his voice making a happy shiver run down her spine. “I like sleeping with you even more than working with you. This is the start of a beautiful…partnership.”
She wasn’t sure why he’d paused, but her thoughts were bouncing around, refusing to settle down and analyze his motives. Responding with a grunt, she ignored his laugh and got ready for bed for the second time in too short a span.
“I knew this would be fun,” he said, apparently ignoring her wordless hint to be quiet and let her sleep. “Didn’t expect to like it so much, though.”
He went quiet as her thoughts spun wildly. Forget the fact that her house had been burglarized three times in the past few days. The real danger to her—to her heart and happiness—was sprawled on the bed right across the room. All of her efforts to focus on her mom’s case or even just to empty her mind so that she could sleep failed.
It seemed that John Carmondy hadn’t just taken over her bed. He’d seemed to have taken over her brain, too.
Chapter 14
Later that morning, Molly was uncomfortable. She was also annoyed with herself, because the reason she was uncomfortable was that things were too comfortable. Both her sisters were gone and John was already up by the time Molly dragged herself out of bed, and he’d wordlessly handed her a giant mug of coffee as soon as she’d entered the kitchen.
She, in turn, had made eggs and toast, while he’d cut up some fruit with only the slightest wistful mumbling about her lack of protein shakes. Warrant had curled up around her feet as she’d cooked, but she knew it wasn’t because he loved her the best. If John had been making the eggs, Warrant would’ve been cozying up to him instead. After they’d eaten and washed up, moving with the synchronization of a couple who’d been living together for forty years, she was both fully unnerved and grateful for the few moments of peace.
“Desmond’ll be here around noon to install a security system. What’s the plan until then?” John asked once the kitchen was clean.
“We need to pick up your car from the lot by Dutch’s before it’s towed.” Too restless to sit in her usual spot at her improvised desk, Molly leaned against the counter, drumming her fingertips against the lower cupboards while resisting the urge to pace. After a little bit of sleep and a whole lot of caffeine, she was ready to do something physical, like chase down and tackle a skip, but she had to find the guy first. It was frustrating.
“And after that?”
A tiny thread of guilt jabbed into her. “Are you sure you want to be involved in this whole mess?” She waved her arms, broadly indicating the house and everything that went along with it—her sisters and mom and Sonny Zarver and Barney and all the less-than-stellar characters who clung like leeches to the latter three.
“Are you kidding?” Dimple on full display, he mirrored her stance, leaning against the wall across from her. “Explosions? Tracking skips through abandoned warehouses? Exploring the underbelly of Langston society? This is why I became a bounty hunter.”
Rolling her eyes, she decided she believed just about a quarter of his enthusiasm. After all, he could’ve found all that chasing his own skips and not had to deal with all of the nonsense that was part of Pax Bail Recovery at the moment. “Fine. It’s your funeral.” She paused. “Hopefully not literally.”
“It’s so sweet that you don’t want me to die.”
“That changes moment to moment,” she said honestly. Instead of looking offended, John just laughed. Of course he found that funny.
They decided to walk to Dutch’s. It was far enough that Molly left Warrant at home, knowing that John would end up having to carry the dog over his shoulders like a shepherd with a huge, fluffy sheep. As Molly and John passed the burglar’s disabled SUV, a flatbed tow truck pulled up in front of it. She couldn’t hold back a smile. Either Sanders and Cord had called for help bright and early that morning, or Mr. P couldn’t stand having the vehicle sitting at his curb for even an hour or two in daylight. She was almost certain it was the latter.
Molly hummed quietly as they turned the corner at the end of her street, glad that Sanders and Cord had to deal with the headache of retrieving their car from the impound lot and weirdly happy to be walking. Even though she’d never admit it to Felicity, she missed starting the day with a sister-run boot-camp torture session. Without it, she felt lazy and slow, like she still had one foot in bed. The walk to the bar woke her up, knocking the sleepiness out of her and kicking her brain into gear.
“What are you going to do about Zach Fridley?” John asked.
A little startled at his apparent mind-reading skills, Molly met his gaze and then lifted one shoulder, more in indecision than apathy. “I’m torn. Since Sergeant Blake is out, I don’t think just turning over his name to Detectives Hostile and Hostile-er is going to do anything unless I hand over a mountain of evidence against him at the same time.” Although she didn’t say it, even if she did have that evidence, she didn’t trust those two cops enough to turn it over to them.
“Isn’t there someone else you could deal with?”
Mentally paging through the cops at Langston’s small department, she shook her head. “None that I know well enough to trust. Mostly I deal with the sheriff’s department, since they run the jail. The only time I deal with Langston PD is when Mom does something squirrelly or if I need information and Blake isn’t available.”
“Like now.”
“Like now,” she agreed, although she grimaced at the sergeant’s bad timing. “This is too important to hand off to some random officer I don’t know.”
John made an absent sound of agreement, as if his brain was working just as hard as hers. Molly was glad to have him on her team. As annoying as he could be, he was also extremely clever, and she’d had to be at the very tip-top of her game in order to steal a skip out from under him. In fact, she’d wondered a time or two whether those thefts had been too easy. Shooting him a suspicious sideways glance, she ran the possibility through her mind.
“What?” he asked, already blinking guileless, heavily lashed eyes at her.
“Did you let me steal your skips?” she asked baldly. Not only did she want to know the answer, but the distraction from her current, more critical issues was a relief.
