by Katie Ruggle
A buzz from her phone brought her mind back to the present, and she saw that Norah had texted.
Great news! I’ll be back at the house in a few minutes, and I’ll take a crack at it.
Felicity and Charlie each sent a short congratulatory text, and Cara stayed silent. Concern rose in Molly’s chest, but then she remembered that Cara had class until one. Cara, being Cara, would never even consider keeping her phone on—even on silent—during a class.
“Any news on the hunt for your mom?” John asked, pulling her attention away from her phone.
“Nothing solid yet, but they do have a few leads.” Charlie had been exasperatingly vague, as usual, but Felicity had filled in some of the blanks. “They’re pretty sure they’re on the right track.”
“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.”
To his credit, he didn’t waste any time asking her to elaborate. Instead, he answered the phone immediately. “Yeah?” he said gruffly. After a pause, he said, “It’s me. Sonny.” As Molly rushed to pull up the recording app on her own phone, she hoped that, unlike her, he actually knew what Sonny sounded like. Once she had it going, she held it up to show John, who immediately switched to speaker mode.
“…sound strange,” a male voice was saying.
John cleared his throat but kept his rough intonation when he spoke again. “Just woke up.”
Holding her breath, Molly glanced at Warrant, hoping he wouldn’t choose this of all times for a rare bark.
“It’s almost noon. Glad one of us is able to sleep.” The sarcastic voice on the other end of the call sounded familiar to Molly, but she couldn’t place the person. Filing it away in the back of her mind to think about later, she concentrated on what he was saying. “Are you taking tonight’s deal seriously? This could m
ake us or break us, so if you’re just blowing it off…”
“I’m taking it seriously,” John said. “I’ve been sick, that’s all.”
“Sick or using again?”
“Sick.” John flashed a look at Molly, who was still trying to keep her breathing as quiet as possible. Norah was frozen in the kitchen entrance, looking as if she was just as petrified to make a noise. “I’m clean. You know that, so quit bitching at me and tell me what I need to know for tonight.”
Molly could feel her eyes widening at John’s bossy tone. What if the guy on the other end of the call was Sonny’s boss? She didn’t want him to get angry and hang up before they got any details.
“Watch your mouth.” He sounded more resigned than furious, and Molly relaxed slightly. “It’s nothing we haven’t gone over before. The exchange is at eleven, the usual place. They’ll have your new ID papers. Don’t bring that squirrelly kid along this time. I’m serious, Sonny. Nothing can go wrong tonight.”
“Fine,” John growled. Although most of her attention was riveted on the conversation, a part of her was impressed with John’s acting skills. He generally seemed so up front and open that it was always strange seeing him play a part. “What d’you need me to do?”
There was a pause, and Molly’s heart rate took off like a greyhound after a bunny. “What do you think I need you to do, Sonny? You need to be there on time with the merchandise. That’s it. Think you can manage without screwing that up?”
“Yeah, I’ll have it there.” John looked at Molly, and she mouthed where? at him. “You don’t think the usual place is too risky?”
“Why would it be?” the man asked with a snap in his voice. “Have you been running your mouth?”
“I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean word hasn’t gotten out,” John said, inserting a slight, nasally whine that suited Sonny to a T… At least, she imagined it did. She knew a lot more about Sonny’s reputation and the destruction he left in his wake than she did about the guy himself.
“Word better not have gotten out,” the other man snarled. “If something happens to wreck this deal, I swear to God, Sonny—”
A loud knock on the front door interrupted whatever threat the guy was going to throw out. Molly jumped a foot before rushing as quietly as possible over to open the door.
“What was that?” the man on the call demanded.
The good-looking Latino man outside had to be Desmond, John’s security system friend. He opened his mouth to speak but went still when Molly dramatically thumped a finger against her lips in the international sign for be quiet. Before he could do more than frown at her in confusion, she grabbed the front of his button-down shirt and hauled him inside.
“Just my landlady,” John lied easily, giving Desmond a wave. “Ignore her.”
A loud, exasperated sigh rattled through the cheap phone speaker. “Fine. Just…be there on time. Don’t screw this up.”
“I’ll be there.” John’s gaze met Molly’s, his words a vow, and she felt a spark of excitement race through her. The two of them would be there, and they’d finally bring this chase to an end. Sonny Zarver was in their sights. Together, she and John would finish this, even if they had to drag Sonny by his hair all the way back to the county jail.
They just had to figure out where this exchange was happening, and then they could finally bring down the elusive—and dangerous—Sonny Zarver.
Chapter 17
Even after John ended the call, the rest of them were silent until he tossed the phone to Norah. “It’s all yours now, genius.”
Molly eyed him sharply, but there was no sarcasm in the term, just affectionate admiration. Norah, who was not the queen of activities requiring hand-eye coordination, fumbled the catch, and Molly cringed, too far away to make the save this time. By some miracle, Norah managed to hold on to the phone before it hit the floor. Holding it up in a sort of I’ve got this gesture, she rushed upstairs.
“Slippery skip?” Desmond asked.
“You could say that,” John said, greeting his friend with a handshake-hug combination as Molly ended the recording and tucked her phone into her pocket. Already, her thoughts were spinning as she tried to figure out where the “usual place” could be. Dutch’s was too busy, and she couldn’t imagine that Sonny would do anything at Mother Tick’s place, not when he lived there…or at least he had before that morning’s events. Unfortunately, those were the only two places she knew that were connected to Sonny. The “usual place” could be anywhere in Langston or Denver or…well, anywhere within an eleven-hour radius.
“Pax?” John’s voice pulled her from her thoughts to find both men looking at her.
“Sorry.” She grimaced. “Just going over the huge grab bag of possibilities in my head. Why couldn’t he have just given us an address? Easy-peasy, Sonny-handcuffy.”
Huffing a laugh, John shook his head with mock sadness. “That doesn’t flow at all. Really, Pax?”
If she was closer, she would’ve pinched his arm. Instead, she settled for a frosty look before turning to Desmond with a polite smile. “Sorry to grab you and drag you into the house just now. Thanks for coming so quickly.”
“No problem.” Desmond’s wide smile was almost as appealing as John’s. “It’s not the strangest greeting I’ve ever gotten.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and Molly instantly wanted to hear stories about the even-weirder situations he’d walked in on. Before she could ask, though, John strode over and threw one of his monster arms over her shoulders, distracting her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, baffled by the action and by the fact that she didn’t hate being tucked against John Carmondy’s side.
“Showing affection.” He cuddled her closer, sending pleasure zinging through her nerve endings. “To you.”
“Why?”
The puzzled look he gave her made her feel like she was the one out of sync. “I’m an affectionate guy?”
Desmond must’ve understood something that she was missing, because he was laughing behind his hand.
Wriggling free, she threw her arms up. “Okay! Today is only half over, and I have a shady business transaction to attend late tonight. I can’t afford to have my brain explode before then, so I’m going to go see if Norah’s having any luck. You guys”—she sketched circles in the air that encompassed the entire house—“do your security-system thing. I trust your judgment.” She paused as she headed for the stairs, glancing back at John. “Just don’t make it too expensive. I’d rather not have to sell this house to pay you for it, not after all the effort we’re going through to keep it in the family.”
“We’ll get you set up,” Desmond said as John fixed her with a wry look that told her he was well aware she was running away. Feeling her cheeks warm, she turned around before he could see the telltale redness. As she climbed the stairs, she could feel his gaze on her back, reminding her of a predator patiently settling in to wait for his prey.
Telling herself that sleep deprivation and an overdose of adrenaline were taking a toll on her, leaving her a victim of a too-active imagination, she shook off the sensation and hurried to Norah’s bedroom door. She knocked and, after waiting for the invitation to come in, slipped inside, closing the door behind her.
“Any luck so far?” she asked.
Norah gave her a really? glance before refocusing on what she was doing with the SIM card. “It’s been, what? Three minutes?”
“Five.” Molly paused. “Maybe. Anyway, it’s a measure of your skill that I believe you could have discovered something by now.”
“Mmm-mmm.” Norah didn’t sound like she fully believed Molly’s excuse.
“Fine. John was weirding me out.”
That caught her sister’s attention. “What do you mean? I thought the two of you were…you know.”
Molly fixed Norah with her best basilisk stare. “Why di
d you think that? Have you been listening to Fifi’s gossip again?”
“No.” Norah—sweet, innocent Norah—rolled her eyes so hard that Molly thought they would roll out of their sockets. “Anyone who’s around the two of you for five seconds knows that you’re banging. It’s obvious.”
“Banging?” This was so much worse than she’d expected. Maybe she should’ve stuck with the guys. At least then she would’ve been spared this discussion. “We’re not banging.”
“Right.”
“We’re not. At all.” Molly tried to ignore the twinge of disappointment at that fact. “There’s no banging. There isn’t even any kissing and hardly any cuddling.”
Norah’s attention, which had drifted toward the SIM card again, snapped back to Molly. “But there’s some cuddling?”
“Minor cuddling. Extremely minor cuddling.”
Norah studied her face. “You sound disappointed. Do you want there to be more cuddling?”
“No.” That felt like a lie. “Maybe. How can I tell when we keep getting almost blown up all the time?” Her brain was spinning again, this time with her very confused feelings about a certain rival bounty hunter. She flopped down next to Norah, forced to curl around her sister in order to fit on the narrow bed. “Let’s stop talking about that. How do you manage to sleep when Warrant’s on the bed? This is so tiny.”
“Just used to it, I guess,” Norah said absently, already immersed in her project again. “I’m a deep sleeper, so that helps.” After a pause, she lifted her head and looked around her small room. “Where is he, anyway?”
“Still with his crush.” At Norah’s confused look, Molly clarified, “Carmondy. Warrant’s in looove. I suspect that there were sneaky, secret bacon treats involved, but I don’t have any evidence.”
