Chapter 9 #2
I read what was available. Sandra was an excellent writer, her tone adapting to the variety of topics ranging from the mundane to the profound.
Her commentary was searing in pieces about the brunt of labor many moms bore and lighthearted in others, like the pieces suggesting honey for an angry baby bottom.
I was midway through a piece on breastfeeding in public when my phone rang.
My heart seized when I looked at the screen and saw Unknown. My reflex was to answer—I still hadn’t fully accepted Wallace was dead. But I hesitated due to the fact he was supposed to be.
Curiosity won out and I picked it up.
“Hello?”
Silence.
“Hello?” I tried again.
Over the sound of my own heart beating in my ears, I thought I heard a soft exhale.
“Who is this?” I asked, at the same moment I heard activity at the front of the apartment. I gasped as the call dropped and left me staring at the empty bedroom doorframe in fright.
I knew how to defend myself; I’d insisted on lessons years before when Wallace kept putting me in increasingly dangerous situations. But I had not had time to outfit my new home with anything resembling a weapon.
I quietly slid from the bed, aware of every breath, and moved to the closet. I hoped for a bat or maybe even a shoehorn but only found an umbrella. It wouldn’t do much, but it was better than nothing.
I did not know who had just called, but I assumed it was the same person who’d called at the park, and any option of someone mysteriously calling me was not good. Paired with someone sneaking into my apartment—the sounds coming from down the hall were obvious—I’d gone nearly rigid with fear.
My heart beat in my throat. My sweaty hands gripped the umbrella. I’d done plenty of creeping in my time, but most of it involved the protection of a real weapon and shoes to run away, not socks and a parasol.
I crept into the hallway on silent feet and saw a large figure coming in the front door. The afternoon light blazing in the front windows backlit the figure to the point I couldn’t make it out.
I raised the umbrella, ready to strike, and let out a shout that was half scream and half battle cry.
“Whoa!” Bray said and threw up his arms. I came inches from hitting him with the umbrella. “It’s me!”
My heart nearly punched a hole right through me. I took a heavy breath and searched for my bearings. “What are you doing here, Bray?”
He wore a duffel bag looped over his shoulder. He held a set of keys in the hand he had raised like he was telling me not to shoot. “You told me to come over.”
Memory of our texting conversation fought its way back through the adrenaline screaming in my veins. “You could have knocked! You’re lucky I didn’t hit you!”
He quietly laughed and eyed the collapsed stick of black nylon in my hand. “With all due respect, that’s an umbrella.”
I shot a glare at him. “Do you want to see what kind of damage I can do with an umbrella?”
He visibly swallowed at the threat in my voice.
“Why do you even have a key?”
He paused and frowned. “Who do you think stocked your house?”
The realization landed like a stone on my head. Thought of Bray picking out groceries for me and changing my linens struck me as odd. It also put a curious warmth in my chest; he had obviously done it with great care.
“Oh,” I said, and tossed the umbrella on the coffee table, still a little rattled.
A few beats of silence passed between us.
He adjusted the strap on his shoulder. “So,” he eventually said, “it would be good to set these up facing the street. I was thinking one in the dining room and one in the bedroom.”
I thought of making a snarky comment about one at the front door to catch intruders too, but I kept quiet. Instead, I gestured to the dining room. “Be my guest.”
He still wore the T-shirt and jeans he’d worn to the park and on our fake date. I watched the muscles in his back move when he walked past me and lifted the duffel bag from his shoulder.
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked him, the words tumbling from my mouth.
He cast a look back at me. “Sure.”
I entered the kitchen and opened the fridge.
“I’ll take a seltzer,” he said before I even asked.
I smiled to myself at the thought that he knew what was in the fridge because he had put it there. I grabbed a silver can and tapped the top of it with my nails.
“So, did they, like, give you a budget and send you to Pottery Barn?”
He set the duffel bag on the dining table and unzipped it. “Something like that,” he said with a smile. He began pulling out a tangle of electronics: small circular cameras with little pedestal feet and dotted lights on their faces for night vision.
“Well, you did a good job,” I conceded and snapped open the can. I found a glass in the cabinet and poured it in.
“Thanks,” he said and took it when I offered. “For the drink and the compliment.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Something, perhaps his bulky frame in Saturday casual clothing standing in my dining room looking like a handyman come to fix my router, compelled me to keep probing.
“Is your house this nicely decorated?”
He pulled up the blinds a few inches to balance the small camera on the windowsill. Then he bent over so he was eye-level with it and left me staring at his back pockets. “I mean, I try, so I’d like to think so.”
I tore my eyes away and retrieved myself a seltzer. I snapped it open and took a sip of crisp bubbles. “Do you live by yourself?”
He stood up and turned around to face me. His eyes said he knew what I was implying with my question, and sharing might not have been appropriate, but he was going to tell me anyway. “Yes.”
The sense of relief I felt made me bite my lip. I turned back to the fridge to find a snack.
When he finished with the dining room camera, I followed him to the bedroom.
“I see you’ve been studying,” he said, and nodded at the files I’d left spread out over the bed.
“I have, yes. And I have to say, given their backgrounds, the moms, I’m not surprised they know how to run a smuggling ring.”
He dropped the duffel bag beneath the window and squatted to reach into it. “Well, yes. You don’t run an operation like theirs without background experience first. Mistakes are a surefire way to get caught.”
I sat on the foot of the bed and leaned back on my arms, watching him work. “What I can’t figure out is if they are in trouble because of the operation, or they started the operation to get out of trouble.”
“I would guess the former. You saw their files; it’s not like any of them were hard up for money,” he said, and lifted the blinds.
“So then what’s the motivation? Why would a group of moms break bad?”
“That is what I’m hoping you can tell me. It’s a piece I’m missing, and I think it will tie things together and hopefully give us a way in. Can I get a hand?” He was using his elbow to hold the curtains back while he tried to mount the camera in the window, but they kept falling forward.
I climbed off the bed and moved to join him.
“I want this one higher to get a wider angle on the street,” he said as he reached over his head. He’d attached an adhesive strip to the little pedestal foot and pressed it into the belt of wall bordering the window frame.
I stood beside him holding the curtains, a wispy drape of beige linen, off to the side. The angle put me beneath his raised right arm. I felt the heat coming off him and could smell the same minty spice I’d smelled when he first stepped onto my doorstep days before.
“Got it,” he declared with a final press into the wall. He lowered his arm in a way that brought it down as if he were looping me inside. “Sorry,” he said with a shy smile.
My face flushed and I slipped away from him. “What are these connected to?” I pointed at the newly mounted eye in my window.
Bray went back to his duffel bag and pulled out a tablet. “Me. We can keep an eye on anything suspicious.”
“What do you expect to see?”
“More of what’s in the photos. Maybe another person not yet on our radar. Speaking of, what time are we going to see Brittany tomorrow?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “We aren’t going to do anything tomorrow. I’m going to see Brittany on my own.”
He looked up from poking his tablet, about to argue, and I silenced him with a stern look.
“You can’t keep popping up everywhere I am, Bray. They’re going to catch on, if they haven’t already. Jana thought you were my husband the other day when I arrived. Clearly, they’re watching. They had flowers delivered before I even got home from coffee today, for God’s sake.”
“Flowers?”
“Yes. At the park, I told them my uncle died, remember?”
“Right. That.” He paused. “Well, that was nice of them.”
“It was,” I agreed, though the swiftness of their intervention still unnerved me.
“And in my experience, they are sucking me into their world with record speed, which is all the more reason for you to keep clear. If you want this to work”—I waved my hands around at the apartment, the cameras, the two of us standing in what was essentially a stakeout room—“then I need you to let me handle it.”
To my surprise, he nodded with a purse of his lips. “I understand.”
“Good.”
We stared at each other, and I was acutely aware there was a bed between us.
Bray’s eyes flashed back down to his tablet. “I’ll be ready to hear what you learn from Brittany ASAP though.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know, Agent Bray. Now, I’d like to enjoy the rest of my afternoon, if you don’t mind.” I held my arm toward the door.
“Yes, of course,” he said, looking disappointed as if perhaps I was going to invite him to hang out. “I’ll get out of your way. Let me know if you see anything in the street.”
“Won’t you be watching the camera feed?”
His face reddened. “Yes. Right. Okay then. I’ll let myself out.”
I smiled at his fluster as he zipped up his bag and slung it back over his shoulder. “Bye, Agent Bray. Lock the door behind you, please.”
“Of course. Have a good afternoon.”
He left me alone in the bedroom, and I realized I hadn’t told him about the mysterious phone call.