Lily squeezes my hand before ducking into the car. When I climb inside, I can tell something is wrong. Lily’s staring down at her phone, with her hand covering her mouth.
“Lily, what’s wrong?”
She flips her phone so I can see the screen. “Someone broke into my house.”
The video shows two masked men breaking into one of the downstairs windows and disappearing inside. I open the middle console and grab my phone. We both left our phones in the car while we were inside since we couldn’t bring them into the visitation.
There are multiple notifications from her security system on my phone since she gave me access to her account.
“Fuck,” I bite out before connecting a call and starting my car. I toss my phone into the cupholder when it connects to my car.
“Detective Martinez.” Carlos’s distracted voice comes through the line, and I can tell he didn’t even look at who was calling.
“Carlos, it’s me. I’m with Lily. I need your help.”
“Uh, I’m a little busy. What’s up?”
I step on the gas as I turn onto the main road. “Two men broke into her house. We saw it on the security camera feed on our phones.”
“Fuck.” His voice gets muffled as he yells a command to someone. “Are they still there?”
I glance over at Lily, and she shrugs.
“We can watch the camera on the way, but my guess is that they’re long gone. I think the first notification wasalmost forty minutes ago.” I look at Lily again to confirm I’m remembering the time correctly, and she nods.
“Okay. Wait. On the way? Are you going over there?”
“Yes, but I’d prefer to have the police there with us.”
He barks out a laugh. “Well, thank fuck for that. Let me make a call. If you get there before me or the uniforms, please, for the love of everything, don’t go inside.”
“Thanks, Carlos.”
Lily grips my forearm when I disconnect the call. “Chris, he’s right. You can’t go in. Please. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Don’t worry, baby. I’m not going to do anything stupid when you’re with me.”
“Chris, I’d really like you to not do anything stupid when you’renotwith me, too.”
With a grin, I reassure her, “Well, we don’t have to worry about that today, do we?”
She shakes her head with a laugh. “I suppose not.”
We make it to her house just as the first cop car is turning into the driveway behind us. I sure as hell hope that Carlos told the cops the owner of the house was also on her way here. They park behind us and jump out of their vehicle, jogging over to my car.
“Are you the homeowner?” he asks as I roll down the window.
I point to Lily. “She is. I called Detective Carlos Martinez about the break-in.”
The cop clearly has no idea who I am as he looks at me, confused as to why I would call a detective directly about a break-in instead of nine-one-one. He shakes his head and looks over at his partner. “Let’s go clear the house.”
Lily and I sit in silence in my car as we wait. Grabbing her hand, I cradle it between mine, her skin cold andclammy. I take it as a good sign when the cops emerge just minutes later, holstering their guns as they walk back to my car.
The one I talked to before stops at my open window. “Whoever broke in is long gone. We’ll get someone over here to dust for prints. It looks like they got in through a window at the back of the house.”
“Yes, we have a video of that we can send over,” I provide.
He nods. “Okay, great. I think Martinez will be here shortly. You two can go in, but don’t touch anything. Just a warning; they were clearly looking for something.”
