by Katie Ruggle
He dipped his head in an ironic almost-bow. “My pleasure.” Pulling a handcuff key from one of his pockets, he freed Cord and gave him a strong nudge away from Molly and the house. “Off you go. You’re free. Fly, little goose. Fly!”
Cord gave one last mournful look at the disabled SUV and Sanders before hurrying away from them.
John smiled broadly, making Molly give a snort of amusement. “You’re such a weirdo.” She shoved Sanders away from her, grabbing the Taser from her waistband in the same motion so it was pointed at him before he even turned around. Giving him an insincere smile, she flapped her free hand in a shooing motion. “Better get moving. It’s a long way to the bus stop.”
“I need my phone back.” He eyed the Taser, as if trying to decide whether or not he could tackle her before she could deploy it.
John moved to her side, but she kept her attention focused on Sanders. He was angry and embarrassed, and she didn’t trust that he’d choose to follow the most reasonable path. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you broke into my house. Now, shoo.”
He started to argue, but John shifted forward. It was a slight move, but it was enough to make Sanders jump back. With a final glare that Molly assumed was supposed to promise retribution, Sanders grudgingly turned and strode off after Cord. Without taking her eyes off the retreating duo, Molly gave an audible sigh.
“Why don’t the bad guys ever quail in my presence like that?” she asked idly.
Even with her focus on Sanders and Cord, she knew he was eyeing her with amusement. “Maybe because I’m twice your height and weight?”
She waved a hand, dismissing that, and then remembered that she’d vowed to quit imitating Jane’s gesture. “You’re not twice my height.”
“Close enough.”
“No. Not close enough. You’re like six inches taller than me.” As Sanders rounded the corner and disappeared, she turned to face him. When she tilted her head back to look at his grinning face, she realized that estimate might’ve been low. “Fine. Ten inches, tops.”
“That’s what she said.”
It was almost impossible to hold back her laugh at that, but somehow she managed. Elbowing him in the side, she turned her face to hide her struggle to contain her amusement. As she did, she saw Mr. P’s lights come on, and her desire to laugh deserted her completely. Instead, she groaned.
“What?” John asked, following her gaze.
As if in answer, Mr. P’s front door swung open. Grabbing John’s arm, Molly hustled back toward her house, towing him behind her. He went willingly, not even laughing as her pace picked up until they were practically sprinting toward her front porch. Only when they were inside did she let out a relieved breath.
John, of course, was laughing at her. “Why did we just run away from your elderly neighbor?”
“He’s not really elderly. He just acts like it.” Molly knew that she was dodging the question, and the way that John’s eyebrows climbed higher on his forehead told her that he knew it, too. “Fine. I didn’t want to deal with Mr. P tonight. I’ll need more sleep before I can listen to his complaining and stay civil. A lot more sleep. And maybe some wine.”
Chuckling quietly, John ushered her to the stairs. “I can’t help with the wine, but we can get some more sleep.”
“Unless someone else breaks in,” she grumbled, making a serious effort to keep her feet quiet. She was extremely tempted to stomp up the steps like a toddler in the midst of a tantrum, but Cara and Norah—and Warrant—had somehow miraculously managed to keep sleeping through all the commotion earlier. She didn’t want to wake them now and have to explain everything that had happened. All she wanted was to sleep, uninterrupted by sisters or dogs or burglars.
“True.” John sounded quite a bit more nonchalant about the idea than she felt. “Burglarizing your house seems to have become a trend recently.”
Making a sour face, she waved John toward her room before peeking in at Cara and Norah. Both were still down for the count, although how Norah could sleep clinging to the edge of her narrow bed while mattress-hog Warrant pressed huge feet into her back was a mystery.
Molly softly closed Norah’s bedroom door before turning around to find John waiting for her. The sight of him there, so steady and strong, sent a sense of comfort sweeping through her, pushing away her exhaustion and stress. She froze, caught in a strange moment of wondering if this was what it would be like to have a partner, someone who could have her back and prop her up when the weight of taking care of her family got unbearably heavy. It was an addictive, incredible feeling to have support, and she knew she had to be careful. He wasn’t here forever, just the night, and it would be stupid of her to start leaning on him. When he inevitably disappeared, she’d fall.
He eyed her curiously. “What?” he asked, his voice low.
Shaking off the longing for that moment to be a permanent reality, she brushed past him without speaking. She stayed silent, worried that something desperate and needy might slip out if she said anything. Sleep. She needed sleep to rebuild her walls and organize her thoughts, to tuck her hungry emotions back far enough that no one else could see them.
“What was that look?” John pressed as soon as they were in her room. He closed the door with a firm click that almost made her jump with its intimate finality.
“What look? There was no look.” She didn’t care that it was a lie. There was no way she could deal with an emotional discussion with John Carmondy right now. Meeting his gaze, she hoped desperately that he’d let it go.
His expression said clearly that he didn’t believe her, but—miracle of miracles—he did let it go and shimmied out of clothes until he was just in his underwear.
“Whoa!” She spun around to face the wall, but it was too late. The image of mostly naked John was burned into her brain. “Give me a little warning next time.”
“Next time?” The words were filled with laughter, and she remembered why she always had to fight the urge to shove him. “Aw, Pax. Is that your way of inviting me over for future sleepovers? An open invitation to turn any night into coed night, shall we say?”
“No.” Her tone was harsh, but she knew the importance of making her answer very clear, or he’d be dropping in all the time, acting like her bedroom was his own. “Let’s not say that.”
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 wa
s 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.
Those eyelashes dropped for a long moment before they rose again. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why would you do that?”
Before she could respond, he waved a hand, dismissing all future arguments with the same gesture that her mom—and Molly, despite her best efforts—used. Apparently, it was contagious. “Anyway, let’s get back to talking about Zach. If you’re not going to the cops with this, how are you going to shut him down? He most likely has your car—if he hasn’t sold it—and he’s telling everyone and their mother that you have the necklace. That’s not good, unless you enjoyed our late-night visit with Sanders and Cord.”
“I did not enjoy it one bit.” Molly paused, considering her words. “Okay, so maybe I enjoyed it a little when you slashed their tires.”
“Yeah.” His smile was just nostalgic enough to be amusing. “That was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Very satisfying.” When his eyebrows did that funny waggle thing that they did, she wanted to kick herself for using the word satisfying while talking with John, of all people. With a great effort, she brushed off her embarrassment and pulled herself out of the conversational rabbit hole. “Back to Zach, I texted Fifi and Charlie this morning, letting them know about him. Mom’s mess is their deal, and Sonny Zarver is mine. Sonny is what we need to concentrate on.” As soon as the words escaped, she realized how easily the we had slipped out, as if their team of two was an actual unbreakable thing now.
“Right.” John still sounded concerned. “Sonny. Just for curiosity’s sake, when’s your sergeant friend getting back? Any update?”
“No,” she answered gloomily. “Her kid must still be down with that mutant strain of chicken pox.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It really is.”
“Okay!” As they turned the corner just a few blocks from Dutch’s, John clapped his hands together once and then dusted them off, as if physically removing any trace of disappointment. “The sisters are handling Zach. We’ll get my car, bring Sonny in, and make it back to your house in time to meet Desmond to get your security system installed.”
“Just like that?” she asked dubiously.
“Hopefully, we’ll have time to fit some lunch in there, too.”
She blinked at him and then laughed, shaking her head slightly even as her chest warmed. “You’re nuts, but at least you’re optimistic.”
He gave her a crooked smile that said he accepted both those things as true before focusing on Dutch’s. She followed his gaze, and the sight of the bar sobered her. John’s car wasn’t the only one parked in the lot across the street, and there were two vehicles in the bar parking lot, but neither was a marked police car. I
n fact, the only sign that there’d been any incident the night before was a broken strand of yellow police tape hanging next to the entrance.
As John made a beeline for his car, Molly headed toward the back of the bar. Once he noticed she wasn’t following him, he changed course and jogged after her. In the daylight, the damaged portion of the building looked both worse and, at the same time, not as bad as it’d appeared the night before. Most of the back bathroom wall was missing, but the rest of the structure appeared sound—at least to her non-engineer eye.
On this side of the building, more of the police tape remained, but Molly ignored it as she picked her way through the scattered rubble that used to be a concrete-block wall.
“It felt worse than it looks,” John said, apparently reading her mind once again.
“Yeah. I think it was meant to be a distraction rather than to be destructive.” Crouching down, she examined the blackened base of the damaged wall. “Although the bar owner probably wouldn’t agree with me.”
“What wouldn’t I agree with?” a rough voice demanded, and Molly hurried to stand.
“That it could’ve been worse,” John said easily, although he shifted to put his body between her and the newcomer.
The woman scoffed, even as Molly straightened and stepped to the side, so that she could see the other person without John’s ridiculously enormous form in the way. When she finally got a good look, Molly recognized her as the bar owner, Yolanda.
“It’s bad enough.” She smoothed a flat hand over her reddish-blond hair. Her lips were drawn down tightly, emphasizing the wrinkles along her top lip and at the corners of her mouth. “Have to close down for a few days, which means that the two of you shouldn’t be here.”
“We were just picking up our car from the lot across the street and got curious,” Molly said, trying to borrow John’s look of wide-eyed innocence. “How’d this happen? Do you know?”