“Come on, Alex. This isn’t what we talked about. If you won’t take him with you, I guess I’ll have to cancel my plans.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.
“Fine.” I let out a sigh. “We’ll swing by and pick him up on the way. Happy?”
“As a clam.” She leaned over and wrapped an arm around me for a half hug. “You’re a good guy. Despite what everyone says.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I’ve got to get going. Y’all have fun.”
Fun. Right. With my four nieces and my grandfather at the aquarium. If that was fun, then I decided I’d been doing it wrong. I herded the other girls toward the truck and got them loaded in. As I drove back to the Phillips House, I thought about whether or not I ought to call Zina and warn her about the men at the diner. Based on what I’d heard, I didn’t even know if they’d been talking about her. They could have been talking about someone else.
It would be better to relay that kind of news in person, not over the phone. But if something happened or I got a sense she was in danger at all, I’d hunt those two men down and figure out what they were up to. Satisfied I had a plan, I slid a smile onto my face and cranked up the tunes. Today was about the girls and the penguins and the cranky old man I was lucky to have as my grandfather.
CHAPTER 19
ZINA
I took tentative steps forward,walking toward the place I’d called home for the past four years. The front picture window had been smashed in. Just broken glass. That I could live with. It could have easily happened from a baseball that went too far. Didn’t mean I was the target of some underground dog-fighting ring organizers.
Bodie had his back to me as I came up the walk. He was talking into the walkie clipped to his waist. I must have scuffed my boots on the sidewalk, because he turned.
“I’ll be in touch.” He clipped the mic to his belt and raised his brows. “Lacey get ahold of you?”
“Yeah. What happened?”
He moved toward the front door and I followed. “Best I can tell, someone threw a brick through your front window.”
“You sure it wasn’t a baseball?” I asked, futile hope making my voice come out an octave higher than usual.
He grimaced. “Pretty sure. We found the brick.”
“Oh.”
Bodie pushed the door open and entered the house first. Shattered glass covered the floor and spread over the couch. Thecouch I probably would have been sitting on if I hadn’t spent last night with Alex.
“There was a note tied to the brick. I need to take it into the lab and dust it for prints but wanted you to see it first. Maybe you recognize the handwriting?” He picked up a clear baggie from the table and held it out to me.
A creased piece of paper filled the bag. I glanced to Bodie as I took it. “‘Forget about the dogs or else’?”
“I guess they didn’t want to waste any words. Do you recognize the handwriting at all?”
I shook my head. It looked like a first grader had gotten ahold of a black Magic Marker. It wasn’t so much handwriting as it was thick black letters scrawled across a standard piece of notebook paper. “How are you going to figure out where it came from?”
Bodie took the bag back. “Like I said, we’ll dust it for prints. The guys were out here earlier looking for tire tracks and footprints. I’m not hopeful anything will come of it. You must have had a ton of visitors lately.”
“Hardly anyone ever comes out here. What makes you think otherwise?” That didn’t make sense. The only people that had been to my place lately were me and maybe Lacey.
“You’ve got a bunch of footprints around your house.”
“The only people who’ve been around my place are me and Lacey, and I guarantee she hasn’t been casing the joint. Not since she’s supposed to be on bed rest.”
“Hmm. Interesting.” Bodie tipped his cowboy hat back and scanned the interior of the house.
“What’s interesting?”
“Means we’re probably not dealing with an individual. There are probably a few of them. I’ll need you to check your belongings and see if anything’s missing. Then you can grab what you need. I’ll have to mark this off as a crime scenesince it’s pretty obvious we’re not dealing with a standard act of vandalism.”
“Sure. Whatever you need to do.” I tried to seem agreeable on the outside but inside I was everything but. How dare someone think they could scare me away from my own home. I rummaged through my stuff, checking to make sure my mama’s wedding ring still sat in my jewelry box and my .357 was still hidden in its case under my bed.
