Page 53 of In Her Sights
“Are they going to be gone again tonight?” he asked, his attempt to sound casual failing so miserably that it caught her attention…and her suspicion.
“Why?” she asked. “Did you enjoy sleeping in my bed that much?”
He coughed, sounding strangled. “I just wanted to make sure you had some backup, in case your house gets burglarized again.” He put an emphasis on the again, as if she wouldn’t remember that every Tom, Dick, and Stuart had tried to break in over the past few days.
“Cara and Norah will be there with me. Oh, and Warrant.” She glared at him when the dog’s name made John snort. “Warrant can be ferocious when he wants to be.” Although she tried to think of examples, all she could come up with was that he snored ferociously, and that wouldn’t deter anyone from breaking in.
“I’m sure he can.” From his soothing tone, John didn’t actually believe in Warrant’s watchdog abilities. Sure, the hairy boy did sleep pretty soundly, and he tended to see all visitors as potential petters and bringers of snacks, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have his moment of save-the-family glory. One day. Maybe.
Shaking off her thoughts, Molly refocused on the point of the discussion.
“Besides,” she said, “you’re forgetting about Cara and Norah. With this new project, Norah will be awake all night.”
“They slept through the last break-in,” he said.
“That was a testament to our slick and silent expulsion technique.” She wanted to bristle at his implied critique of her sisters, but he wasn’t wrong. Unless a loud noise woke them, they did tend to sleep deeply. “Besides, we’ll have a security system by tonight. If the alarm goes off, everybody—including the neighbors—will wake up.”
Despite her excellent logic, John didn’t look happy, grumbling to himself as he glared through the windshield like the oncoming cars were to blame.
His grumpiness was actually sort of funny. “Admit it. You’re just in love with my bed and want to sleep there every night,” she teased.
The look he shot her was so filled with unexpected heat that her toes literally curled in her boots. His attention returned to the road, and she took a few moments to get her breathing back under control. She barely resisted fanning her face. “My bed’s nicer,” he finally said, and the mention of his bed made the molten heat inside her fire up again.
Stop it, she commanded her libido. That was an innocent comment, and you’re being ridiculous. Her self-directed lecture didn’t help. Clearing her throat, she decided a change of subject was in order. “Did you find anything in the other two rooms?”
“The one on the end was a sewing room and a bust, but I grabbed this from Tick’s room.” He pulled a small notepad from one of his many pockets and handed it to her.
She flipped through it. “Tick’s not a bad doodler,” she said, admiring a sketch of a spider in the corner of one page. Most of the pages had simple drawings or patterns, although there were a few notes interspersed throughout the notepad. One was a to-do list, including “tell Mom to buy Cheetos,” but there were some others that had more potential, like a phone number and a scribbled local address. “Nice work, Carmondy.”
“Thanks,” he said as he pulled up in front of her house. “But the real find is that phone.”
“We’ll see if Norah can pull anything off it.” She was trying to tone down her anticipation, in case the cell was a dud with no usable information. “Should I feel bad that Mother Tick is going to think Sonny’s a weirdo who took off all her electrical outlet plates?”
John snorted. “With all the bad things he’s done, Sonny Zarver deserves that and so much more.”
“True.” If all went well, Sonny would be headed back to jail soon, and Molly kind of liked the idea of being a force for karma.
As they headed toward the front door, she looked around for strange vehicles parked on the street, but it was empty. Somehow, that didn’t reassure her. Instead, it felt like people could be hiding in any shadow. She usually loved having the national forest so close, wrapping the west side of their neighborhood like a cozy natural blanket, but now the deep reach of towering trees made her feel uneasy. Whole legions of criminals could be tucked back in the trees, just waiting for their opportunity, and she wouldn’t be able to bring them all down with just her Taser and her rudimentary knowledge of self-defense.
With a shiver, she hurried into the house.
“You okay?” John asked as he followed her inside.
She hesitated, debating whether she should share her completely illogical fears with him. Before she could say anything, a huge white ball of fur came galumphing toward them. “Hey, Warrant,” she said, bending over to greet him. “What brought on this show of love?”
He breezed by her outstretched hands and wrapped himself around John’s legs, his tail wagging enthusiastically. Narrowing her eyes, Molly straightened and glared at the dog thief. John didn’t even notice her glare—he was too busy petting Warrant.
“How’s my sweetie pie?” John cooed, massaging the dog’s ears in a way that made Warrant groan in ecstasy. “Who’s the best boy? You. Yes, you are.”
Rolling her eyes, Molly walked away from the lovefest to find Norah in the kitchen.
Norah’s face lit with anticipation. “Do you have it?”
“Right here.” Molly pulled it out eagerly, her sister’s excitement at the find feeding her own. She held it out, and as Norah reached for it, the phone vibrated.
They both jerked back, and the phone started to fall. Molly reached out, trying to keep it from hitting the floor. Her fingers just touched the plastic case, bobbling the phone several times before her fingers closed securely around it. As the cell vibrated again, she moved to answer, but then remembered that she didn’t sound anything like Sonny Zarver—at least she assumed she didn’t. She’d never heard him speak before.
“Carmondy!” she called, dashing for the living room. At her call, John jerked up, his face falling into the stern, danger’s-here lines that she’d only seen on him a few times before—and all over the last few days. She chucked the phone at him, and he caught it automatically. “Answer! Pretend to be Sonny.”
