Page 84 of A Breath of Life
More staring. More analyzing. Was he gearing up for a fresh fight? I wasn’t sure I could go another round.
Without a word, he took the bottle and moved toward the fridge.
“Dump it. Please.”
He didn’t think twice and drained the minimal contents down the sink.
When I remained hunched over the counter, he encouraged me to turn around, then wedged himself into my arms, his sleep-warm body a comfort I didn’t know I needed. Fresh out of bed, Tallus was always adorably rumpled. It was something I secretly enjoyed and looked forward to. He smelled of sleep and sex and steadiness.
I rested my cheek against the top of his head and worked hard to control my twitching muscles. “Good morning,” I rasped, trying and failing to sound cheery.
“You were up early. I thought you’d gone to the gym.”
“Couldn’t sleep. Can’t leave you.”
“Did someone call? I thought I heard the phone ring at some ungodly hour.”
I hesitated long enough that I was sure he suspected the incoming lie before I spoke it. “Wrong number.” If I told him about Nana, he would insist we stop by the home. I couldn’t risk a fight, and I was out of excuses.
Tallus didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.
***
Thursday was a day Tallus and I worked together at the office. As far as Tallus was concerned, finding Clarence was a priority. I planned to put him on the primary investigation and have him look into the wife’s whereabouts. It would free me to continue researching Ace and his people—a task that was proving futile.
Locating a vaguely remembered wooden door that may or may not be somewhere on a building in Old Toronto was akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, but I had nothing else to go on.
IfJefferywas the name for one of Ace’s guys, it wasn’t enough on its own to get me anywhere, so whoever had visited Nana was protected. For now. I would have loved to contact the main desk at the nursing home and find out who had graced the building in the past week, but Nathan had claimed there had been no one by the name of Jeffery. Besides, I didn’t want to risk a phone call until I considered exactlyhowthese people were keeping tabs on me.
Leaving Tallus at the reception desk alone made me nervous, but insisting he work beside me was a good way to provoke another fight because I couldn’t explain why. I would come across as an overprotective asshole again and piss him off. Unless dramatically whining about my snake, Tallus was not a damsel in distress and loathed to be treated as such.
He bitched when I demanded he leave the curtains over the windows closed, but I didn’t want any of Ace’s cronies thinking they could peep at him all day. I debated leaving Echo at his desk to keep an eye on things, but she wasn’t a trained guard dog, and it would only look suspicious.
Begrudgingly, I went to my office, leaving the door open and staying alert in case anyone showed up.
Tallus’s morning ritual included replying to emails and returning phone calls. “I’ll contact Hill and get the details for that case?” he shouted after me. “I’m still working on it, right?”
I grunted an affirmative and found the secret stash of birdseed I kept in a desk drawer. A few feathered friends waited on the windowsill. When I pried it open, they fluttered away. I left a thin line of seed from one end to the other and shut the window again, returning the bag to its hiding place. The birds quickly returned and brunched. Their calm nature, out of place in the bustling city, usually worked wonders to de-escalate my stress. I couldn’t watch them today and scanned the city for threats before drawing the curtains and considering my predicament.
Supposedly, the card tracked my movements, but how closely? After performing a few online searches, I discovered a high-tech tracker could pin my location to within a meter. So, three-ish feet.
If the device was of lesser quality, it could be as much as ten meters or about thirty-two feet. Interference was possible and expected, especially in real-time tracking. Signals dropped all the time, but those pockets were usually short and sporadic, like a signal on a cell phone.
Which brought me to a new concern.
I was more and more convinced that someone had tampered with my cell phone. I had no doubt the Consigliere had access to every incoming and outgoing call and might be able to read my texts. If I was in his shoes, I’d have made sure to rig it with a listening device.
I peeled back the protective case and examined the structure of the device itself to see if I could make out any damage. Phones today weren’t meant to come apart easily. It wasn’t like back in the day when people could remove the back and change the battery. The average Joe wasn’t meant to access a phone’s innards.
Ace could easily have an engineer of some kind on his payroll. Someone with enough knowledge to hide their footprints. Tampering with these types of devices was second nature to some.
Hell, Tallus’s cousin would probably be able to take a smartphone apart without batting an eye. I debated asking Tallus to call him for instructions but thought better of it. I didn’t need Costa Ruiz’s help. I could pry cheap plastic apart on my own—hopefully without busting it.
As I aligned a fine-tipped screwdriver against the seam and applied pressure to see if the sections would easily part, a rap at my door made me jump. Instinctively, I threw the screwdriver aside in a failed attempt to hide what I was doing, but it skittered off the edge of the desk and clattered to the floor.
Tallus glanced at where it landed, then scanned the various other tools spread out on the desk before arching a brow. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” I brushed the remaining tools into a drawer and scanned the floor for my runaway driver.
