Page 56 of Time to Bounce

She melted into my arms, then looped hers around my neck.

“This is weird for me,” she said. “I feel like you’re Dr. Jekyll one second, then Mr. Hyde the next.” She scrunched up her nose.

I allowed my fingers to drag through her thick hair.

“I guess that maybe all I have to do is take the time to make it up to you,” I said.

Before I could say anything more, Jack called my name.

“Hey, Gable!”

I squeezed Athena’s hips, then let her go.

Getting back to Jack, I said, “What’s up?”

He jerked his chin toward the door and said, “What do you think of this?”

I looked at the door—or where the door used to be—and stared. “Wires?”

“Looks like a camera,” he said as he pulled it out.

I turned to look at Athena. “Did your brother set up a camera for you?”

She shook her head. “He was electronically inept. He would’ve never set anything electronic up for me without messing it up.”

I reached for the wire that Jack was holding, then pulled on it. It slid free of the door frame, trailed inside the house, and disappeared into an electrical outlet.

One that wasn’t being used.

“Oh,” Athena frowned. “I always thought that was part of the doorbell.”

Jack pointed out an old box that was in the hallway. “That’s the doorbell. But it looks like you haven’t had a working one for a while, because there aren’t any wires here that are leading to the doorbell.”

“Oh,” she crossed her arms over her chest. “That wire looks pretty new for my place. I wonder if the old owners had it put in for their parents?”

That wasn’t the vibe I was getting, and I always trusted my gut.

“Fix the door, Jack,” I instructed. “I’ll investigate this further when I can get one of my brothers out here.”

“Shasha can look at it,” she suggested. “I think he got into town today. He was already coming over here tomorrow so we could talk about our next step with my program, but I’ll bet he’d be willing to come over now.”

My jaw clenched at the mention of yet another man.

“Call him,” I said, trying to control my baser emotions. “I’m gonna look around for a bit to see if I find anything else suspicious.”

“What do you think it is?” Shasha asked as he walked around the house with me.

Milena, the next to youngest sister, came with him and kept Athena occupied in the house while I took Shasha out back.

I had plenty of friends who could’ve done this, but I didn’t want to make Athena any more uncomfortable than she already was.

And I knew that Shasha would be able to figure out what it was a lot faster than me or any of my friends could.

We were good with cameras, but Shasha seemed to have a knack that surpassed most people.

“Well, at first I didn’t really know,” I admitted. “But when I was looking around the back of the house, I found this box.”

I pulled the cover off the box, then showed it to him.

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