“Clearly,” Ian agreed.
The front door opened, the living room light turned on, and Ian’s heart kicked. It wasn’t like a woman and a kid posed physical risk, but blowing his cover and exposing the op—his first with the team—before it even began would be disastrous, not to mention embarrassing as hell. His self-esteem didn’t need any extra dings right now.
“Mom,” the boy said, “can I bring Deputy Corwin cookies?”
“It’s late, honey, and a storm’s coming.” Savannah moved around the kitchen, putting groceries away. “Time for a bath and bed.”
“He’s got to be hungry. He’s been out there since I got home from school. He can have the Oreos from my lunch for tomorrow.”
“Fine,” Savannah sighed. “Then straight into the bath.”
The front door opened, closed, and silence filled the house once again.
“Bail out the back, dude,” Sam told him.
No way. This was just getting fun. “I only need two more minutes.”
In the boy’s bedroom, Ian attached a listening device to the back of the mirror, then moved through the short hallway toward the mother’s room, pausing to reach for the smoke detector on the ceiling. Positioned at the opening to the living room, the device was in the perfect location to give Ian a view of almost every corner of the tiny house.
“What in the hell are they doing?” Everly asked over the earbud, now staged outside somewhere.
“Delivering cookies to the cop,” Ian muttered. “I can’t believe we’re surveilling the fuckin’ cookie fairy.”
“Don’t start,” Everly warned.
Ian pulled the cover from the smoke alarm. Only, it wasn’t a smoke alarm. “What the fuck?”
“What?” both Everly and Sam asked at the same time.
Ian squinted to get a better look
at what he couldn’t quite believe he was seeing. “Someone else has eyes on her.”
“No shit,” Sam said. “I’m watching her tail eat Oreos while I turn into an ice cube. They’re heading toward you, bro. Hit the back door.”
“Watching her from the inside,” Ian clarified as he slipped into the mother’s room. With groceries to put away and a kid to get to bed, her own room would be the last place she’d visit tonight. “There’s a CCTV unit hidden in the smoke detector. Looks like a GSM device.”
Ian ducked into the shadows of the hallway just as mother and son came through the front door. When Savannah and Jamison returned to the kitchen, Ian slipped into the larger of the two bedrooms.
“Perfect,” Everly said, her voice edged in sarcasm. “Whoever put it there just recorded you breaking in.”
“Not necessarily,” Sam said. “It could be activated by movement, but it could also be a dial-in. One that doesn’t record unless the person who put it there dials in to turn it on. That would save battery life. If they aren’t watching right now, they’ll miss him. The fact that someone else has eyes on her only confirms we should too.”
“Provably the ex, trying to get dirt for the divorce,” Ian murmured.
“Can we play To the Moon and Back tonight?” Jamison’s bubbly voice came toward Ian, and he pressed his back against the wall as the Bishops made their way into the boy’s room.
“It’s too cold, baby,” she told him.
“But we’ve never done it with Deputy Corwin outside.”
The scrape of dresser drawers came from Jamison’s room, but in Savannah’s room, the soft scent of roses and spice filled Ian’s head. Savannah’s scent. The one she left floating on the air when he’d been in the café for breakfast that morning. The one that kept him focused on her cute little body too long.
Unlike her son’s room, which had been decorated in a baseball theme, her room was stripped down. No pictures. No head or footboard on the full-size bed. One nightstand and one dresser-mirror combo that looked as old as the house.
“You comin’ out anytime soon,” Sam asked Ian, “or are you just going to crawl under the bed and sleep there?”
“Don’t be a creeper,” Everly told Sam.