Page 26 of Love Undecided
Bauer makes a pseudo-sympathetic clicking noise with his mouth and moves to pat Brad on the shoulder as he walks by.
“Not anymore, bud.”
Shit. Fuck. Piss.
I see Brad lunge toward Bauer, but Ethan grabs him by the arm before he has a chance to reach him.
“Dude,” he warns Brad in a low voice. “Not worth it, three strikes you’re out, man.”
Brad rubs his hand over his face, turns to give me a hard stare, then walks out of the room. I turn to look at Ethan, he gives me a none too friendly look as well.
“Glottal!” I say. Ethan looks at me with a raised eyebrow in question to my sudden outburst. “That’s the noise that Bauer made just now. It’s called glottal, it was a GRE word. I took the GRE before I took the LSAT. I like standardized testing... “
My voice trails off when I see the slightly disgusted look on Ethan’s face. I don’t think he cares about my tangential recall skills. But the English teacher for that thirteen-year-old girl inside me is beaming with pride.
Brad comes back in the room. “We gotta go,” he tells Ethan. “Chief wants us back. There’s no medical or rescue reason to be here.”
He turns to me. “Keep me posted on the camera. You okay with him still being here?” He motions toward the balcony where Bauer is still dusting for prints and examining the camera.
“With Bauer?” I laugh. “Totally, he’s harmless.”
Brad nods in response and leaves without saying goodbye.
I turn to Ethan as he starts to follow. “He okay?” I ask.
He pauses at the door. “Really, Kat?” He looks at me with a furrowed brow, shakes his head, and then follows Brad out the front door.
Bauer comes back in. “The thing was wiped clean, no prints, nothing on it. As far as I can tell, it’s activated remotely or maybe motion sensor, battery operated, and totally wireless. There’s no audio capabilities, so they can’t hear you. I don’t think it’s transmitting right now, but that would make sense given the time of night.”
“Who would put a camera on my balcony?”
“Pissed off client? Stalker?Ex-boyfriend?”
“No. No.No.”
“Well they’ve got it positioned to span across the entire balcony, thereby across the entire back of the house, living room, office, and bedroom since you’ve got more windows than the fucking Chrysler Building.”
“I like natural light.”
“Given that the exclaimsto have seen someone on your balcony today, I’m going to guess that either it was installed today, or they adjusted it somehow today.”
“I’m kinda creeped out by this.”
“You should be.”
“Well, did you disconnect it?”
“No. If we disconnect it we won’t be able to catch who it is. We need to leave it running, be careful with what you do on your balcony and anywhere within view of your windows. We stand a better chance of intercepting the signal and catching this guy if he doesn’t know we’re on to him.”
“So it’s like I’m a stool pigeon. Stalker bait. Creeper catcher. Scoundrel snare,” I say, oddly excited about this.
Bauer laughs. “Exactly. But I’m serious about you needing to be extremely careful. I’m sure Sherman can schedule drive-bys throughout the day, which would be the front of the house so it wouldn’t be caught on camera. Wait, did anyone check the front of the house? Or inside?”
“I have a security system for the inside and it hadn’t been breached, so I think we are good there. I believe Brad checked the front; he knows this house better than anyone.”
“Well, can you check with him?”
“On it.”
