Chapter 16 #4
“Oh, for the love of—” I snapped and hurried back to the couch, worried I’d miss something if I was gone from the window for too long. I gripped his beefy shoulder and shook it. His skin was hot and smooth under my hand. “Calvin Bray, wake up. I need your assistance, please.”
His eyes fluttered open, and he blinked up at me a few times. Embarrassment filled his face when he saw me glaring down at him. “Did I—?”
“Fall asleep on the job? Yes. But we can worry about that later. Come here and look.” I tugged on his arm. He was still sleepy enough his arm stretched all the way out while my hand slid down until our palms touched.
“What’s going on?” he said groggily.
I squeezed his wide palm and yanked him off the couch, sending the throw blanket to the floor. “You know, you really need to work on your nocturnal endurance since half the shady shit you need to see seems to go down at night. Come to the window. The moms are up to something.”
At this, he snapped to attention. His hand tightened around mine, and he let me pull him to the window. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know. I heard a car door outside, so I looked out the window.
I just saw Jana and Sandra pull up in that car, and then Melanie came home.
” I pointed at the scene still playing out across the street.
Melanie had opened the garage and pulled the SUV inside.
Light poured out from the open garage, casting the driveway in a golden pool.
Melanie climbed out of the driver’s door and closed it. She too wore head-to-toe black.
“I know I’m only one day into nannying, but I don’t think you go on three a.m. diaper runs with your gal pals dressed like that,” I whispered.
“Definitely not,” Bray said. “They are coming home from a job.”
Right as he said it, Melanie came to the edge of the garage and swept the street with her gaze. When her eyes landed on my apartment, both Bray and I gasped. We ducked at the same time, landing crouched shoulder-to-shoulder on the carpet below the window.
“Do you think she saw us?” I asked, heart hammering.
“Let’s hope not. Shit, we need to see what they are doing though.”
We stared at each other from inches apart. Our breath mingled. I could still smell his shower somehow. His eyes shone in the dim TV light.
“What were you doing out of bed?” he whispered, like the thought had only now occurred to him.
A heat wave instantly burned my body. I felt like I had A sweaty sex dream about you woke me up written on my forehead. “I, um … woke up and needed something to drink.”
I couldn’t tell if the answer satisfied him, because he was suddenly distracted by a thought. His eyes lit. “The cameras.”
“What?” I asked, still reeling from thoughts of my dream.
He spun away from me, still in a crouched position, and crawled to his bag by the couch.
The curtains were closed, but we still needed to stay low, just in case.
“The security cameras are recording right now. We just need to look at the live feed and we can see what they are doing in the street.” He dug in his bag and pulled out his tablet.
“Good idea,” I said, and moved to join him.
He’d sat with his back to the couch’s end and glanced up to see me crawling. The color spotting his cheeks made me realize he had a view straight down my camisole. He quickly looked away as I scrambled to sit next to him.
“Do you see anything?” I asked as if my heart wasn’t pounding.
He tapped at the screen to bring up the app.
Soon, we were staring at a black and white live stream of the street.
I leaned in to see the small screen, and neither of us made an effort to move when our bare arms pressed together.
He was hot and solid, and the feel of his skin touching mine quelled the nerves coursing through me over what we might witness.
He used his thumbs to pinch the screen to zoom in.
Jana had returned to the sedan parked at the street to open the trunk. From it, she pulled a duffel bag, which looked heavy by the way she hoisted it.
“I thought their operation had slowed down. What do you think is in there?” I whispered.
Bray shook his head. “Hard to say.”
She carried it up the driveway to where Melanie stood at her SUV’s open back. She slung it into the back of the SUV alongside another duffel bag already sitting there.
“Money?” I hazarded a guess. “Black market binkies?”
Bray shot me a look.
I playfully grimaced.
“Whatever it is, we need to find out,” he said. “Maybe they are into other things to compensate for their slow business.”
“And to pay back their pissed-off supplier,” I added.
We watched as on-screen Melanie shut the SUV’s back hatch.
She then pecked Sandra and Jana each on the cheek before they parted ways.
Melanie’s garage door slid closed, sealing off the light and view of her with it.
The other two made their way back to Jana’s car where they climbed in and drove off screen.
We continued watching Melanie’s house. Not a single light flicked on, as if she was used to prowling around in the middle of the night.
“Do you think you can get into their garage tomorrow?” Bray asked.
I considered. Though we’d popped in there to gather the wagon to head to the park that day, the garage hadn’t been part of the tour, and maybe for a reason. Maybe the incriminating evidence wasn’t only stashed in Melanie’s office like I had thought. Maybe she kept it locked up in her car too.
“I can probably come up with an excuse,” I offered. “If nothing else, I can pretend I got lost in that house looking for something.”
He nodded in approval.
“I still can’t believe you’re going to make me go to work tomorrow when there’s a hitman out there looking for me.”
“I promise you the Brownings’ house is the safest place you can be right now,” he defended.
“You say this after we literally just witnessed Melanie Browning engage in criminal activity.”
“If that were the case, I’d cross the street and arrest her right now. We need more evidence still.”
I growled at him, and he had the gall to smile. “You are unbelievable.”
His eyes softened and he gave me a steady look. “Erin, I’m doing everything I can to keep you safe, okay?”
The sound of my name on his lips called me back to my dream. To when he’d whispered it in my ear as he’d touched me in a way I hadn’t been touched in far too long.
I was suddenly too hot and bothered to be sitting in the dark and whispering secrets with our bodies pressed together. I wanted too much more.
“I’m going to go back to bed,” I announced and pushed myself to stand.
He looked up at me with a pang of regret, as if he wanted me to stay up with him all night. “Okay. I’ll stay out here and watch for anything else.” He nodded at his tablet.
“Good night, Agent Bray,” I said and headed for my room.
“Good night, Erin.”
The sound of my name followed me like a lonely shadow full of longing.