Page 41 of Deadly Evidence
No long-term complications were expected, to Anna’s heartfelt relief.
The pup was now sleeping off the last of her anesthetic on a pile of clean blankets in a box stall with Lacey at her side.
Brady nodded to Anna and walked to the end of the aisle on the pretext of checking one of the mares.
“I’ll talk to Luis at the DEA office about sending more backup.” He paused for a moment, clearly weighing the options.
“From now on, I need to be closer to the main house at night. In fact, I should be inside. I could use that small bedroom off the kitchen or just crash on the couch in the living room.”
“Sure. Of course.”
“It doesn’t matter where—I probably won’t get much sleep anyway.”
She nodded.
“I’ll need to connect to the Internet.”
“Of course.” Anna thought for a minute, then nodded. “You can also use my office.”
“However you want to deal with my presence in the house is okay with me, but it might be hard to explain to everyone here.”
“True,” she said faintly.
“I can figure out an excuse so I need to move into your house for a while. Maybe something could happen to my cabin’s wiring or plumbing, so the place is uninhabitable for a while. The other cabins have no room for an extra person and Vicente will soon be back in his.”
“Isn’t that awfully extreme?”
Alarm must have shown on her face because he grinned down at her, curved an arm around her shoulders, and gave her a quick, reassuring hug.
“I promise to fix whatever I break. Otherwise, how will you explain me moving into the house when I have a perfectly good cabin? You know Dante and Vicente will think we’ve got something going on, and if you don’t want this to look fishy, we need an excuse.”
“Of course.”
He gave her shoulders a little squeeze before lifting his arm away.
How long had it been since anyone besides Lacey had hugged her? A very, very long time, and for just a moment, she almost felt bereft.
But this was a business relationship. Not anything more. She just needed to keep reminding herself of that fact.
Every single day.
She cleared her throat. “Tell me what you’re going to do to my cabin.”
“I could create a small fire in the electrical breaker panel—as long as Vicente and Dante aren’t good at electrical work. Or the pipes running into the cabin could suffer an unexpected break.”
“That sounds like a mess to deal with.”
“I think the fire would be best—the nights are cold here, so not having heat from the electric baseboards would be chilly, and there could be a little smoke damage, too, which would take a while to air out.”
Anna thought about the clean but tattered old quilts on the bed. The swaybacked couch and burnt orange upholstered chair. “There’s probably nothing in there that couldn’t be thrown out. But this sounds like arson—or vandalism. And that’s illegal.”
“Only if we report it and make a claim to your insurance company. I’ll fix or replace anything that’s damaged at no charge, and promise it will look better than before. Consider it,” he added with a smile, “a little overhaul.”
“How much time do you need?”
“I already checked the Saguaro Springs phone directory, and there doesn’t seem to be any electricians in the area. Given the distances out here and how busy those guys are, we could figure on a few weeks easy.”
“I could also delay making the call.” She fixed him with her sternest look. “You’ll take care of any damage?”
