Page 30 of Sheltered By Love

I sit back down at the table. “It’s coming together. I’ll be installing the rest of the cameras this afternoon.”

He eyes me. “I meant with Felicity.”

“Fine.”

He frowns as he reaches for the sugar. “She’s going out of her way to help. Most Flatlanders wouldn’t trouble themselves.”

He’s not wrong. This is a crazy idea. But that makes it even easier to think she might have a screw loose for going along with it.

“Do you know anything about her past in Arizona? Why she moved here on her own?”

He narrows his eyes. “These cups look familiar.”

I grunt at his avoidance. “I’ll take that as a yes,” I mutter.

He leans back in his chair and shakes his head at me. “Everybody has a past. If she came to Blueskin Bay to get away from hers, that’s nothing to do with us.”

“You did do the background check, didn’t you? I know things were bad but—"

He interrupts me while casually adding milk to his drink. “Just drink your damn tea, Zane.”

I haven’t had a cup of tea since I left home, and I can’t say I ever liked the stuff, but I pick it up anyway.

“Did you find anything on her fake alarm?”

He takes a swallow before he nods. “Looks like a few have been sold in the area. I’m following up on that now, but it’s going to take some time. After customers started realizing they’d been duped, his profile disappeared.”

“What’s the chance they’re connected to the break-ins in Blueskin Bay?”

He seems more interested in the smell of cookies Felicity has cooking than the alarm. “It could be nothing or it could be something.”

I’m primed to ask him more questions when I hear Felicity’s footsteps in the hallway.

When she returns, she’s holding a photocopy of a single piece of paper.

“It’s not a long list. Like I said, most of my customers come via the website. And a lot of people want to place an order but never follow through.”

Garrett gives her his ‘cop smile’ and folds it in half. “It’s a good place to start. But it’ll be a while before we can ‘officially’ look into them.”

I know what he’s saying without saying it. He’s letting me know that if I do the leg work, I’ll end this faster.

Which is fine by me.

I’m pretty sure there are rules about tenant-landlord relationships.

And me sitting here thinking about how ours looked wearing nothing but her shorty PJs probably breaks about twenty of them.

While I’m thinking about all the ways this crazy-ass situation can land me in hot water, Garrett finishes up with Felicity, using his best ‘Trust me, I know what I’m doing’ voice.

“I’ll keep you both informed. But unless we catch these guys in the act it’s going to be a hard slog.”

Felicity’s mouth twists a little. “Do you really think they’ll be back here?”

Garrett glances at me before answering. “We wouldn’t be interrupting your life this way if we didn’t,” he says.

“I’m going to visit Mrs. Davis this morning, then I have a few errands to run. I may not be back until late,” she says.

She’s telling Garrett, but I answer her. “It’ll give me a chance to install the second phone, and cameras while you’re gone.”

Felicity’s face falls and she sounds a little panicked. “Nothing inside though?”

Garrett doesn’t let me answer, and it’s probably just as well. “Absolutely not. The cameras are to record anyone lurking around outside.”

Her shoulders relax, and she brightens considerably.

I’m still thinking about why she looked so relieved when Garrett leaves with a cookie in his hand twenty minutes later.

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