“Transmitters,” Cam said, taping three of them to the belt. “You’re gonna put this on anytime you eventhinkabout leaving your house.” He held it out to her. The transmitters protruded like bricks from the leather strap. It looked heavy, and I was grateful Cam had thought to bring duct tape. She hiked up her sweatshirt and fastened the device around her waist.
“I look like a suicide bomber.”
“Don’t parade it through any TSA checkpoints and you’ll be fine. Put some baggy clothes over it. No one will notice.” She pulled her sweatshirt down to cover the belt while Cam began typing on his laptop. He spun it around to face us, revealing a grainy aerial image of Vero’s house. “Which bedroom is yours?” he asked her. She pointed to the right rear corner of the house, farthest from the driveway. Cam began typing again. His face split with a cocky grin as he gestured to a flashing beacon on his screen. “Check it out. That’s you.” A tiny blue light blinked in the corner of the house that Vero had indicated as her bedroom. He pointed to the bulge under her sweatshirt. “You should probably take that transmitter for a test drive, just to make sure the signal’s strong enough. How far does your ankle monitor normally let you go?”
“To the end of my driveway.”
Cam nodded toward the doors at the back of the van. “Try walking to the end of your street and see if the alarm goes off.”
“If?” Vero cried, startling Arnold from his nap. “I thought you said this would work!”
Cam scooped up the shaking bundle of fur and bones and stroked the top of his head. “Relax! You’re freaking out my dog, and he pees when he’s scared. If the alarm goes off, we’ll just tell the cops that Arnold got loose and you helped me chase him down before he could run away. No one is going to arrest you for saving a damn Chihuahua.”
Vero hesitated. I didn’t blame her for being reluctant to trust Cam, but if we were actually going to try this, a test run felt like a sensible plan. If the alarm did go off, Vero would only be a few yards outside her boundary. And chasing after a loose dog seemed like a reasonable explanation. “It’s not a bad idea,” I conceded.
Vero pointed a finger at Cam. “If you screw me over, so help me, I will—”
“Listen, Martha Stewart,” Cam said through a scowl, “I don’t lie awake at night trying to come up with ways to make your life miserable. I have better things to do.”
“With your left hand or your right?”
He flipped her off.
“Both of you, knock it off!” I turned to Vero and lowered my voice. “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. No one will judge you for changing your mind.”
“I’m not changing my mind.”
“Then we should test this thing before your mother gets home.”
She drew a steadying breath. With a shallow nod, she opened the door and hopped down from the back of the van. She pulled her sweatshirt down to cover the tops of her legs, making sure the bulky fabric concealed all three of the transmitter battery packs. Camstayed in the van, watching his laptop screen. I got out of the van to keep an eye on Vero. I looked around at the nearest houses, but most of the neighbors seemed to have lost interest in us and retreated inside.
Vero strolled casually to the bottom of her driveway. She pretended to check the mailbox as she looked up and down the sidewalk. I held my breath as she put a cautious toe out into the road.
Nothing happened.
She discreetly hiked up the leg of her jeans. The monitor on her ankle was still blinking green.
She took another cautious step into the street. Then another. When the alarm on her ankle didn’t start shrieking, she picked up her pace toward the end of the block. She made it all the way to the stop sign and turned back toward the van. Cam flashed her a thumbs-up.
“She’s good,” he said.
A held breath rushed out of me, and I sagged against the bumper. Vero’s face split into a wide grin. She did a victory dance in the middle of the street, her baggy sweatshirt flopping like a circus tent around her.
“Holy shit!” a voice called out. “Veronica Ramirez, is that really you?”
Vero froze, a look of pure mortification etched on her face as Sophia emerged from the house directly behind her. Sophia strutted across her front yard in an indecently short pair of cutoffs, the kind only a twenty-five-year-old ass could pull off. I had no doubt that at twenty-two, Vero would have looked just as stunning in a pair of her own, if she hadn’t been stuck wearing several electronic devices and a sweatshirt that made her look like the Liberty Bell.
Sophia strolled toward Vero with a glossy smirk as Vero turned around. The two women stood facing each other, arms crossed and chests out as I ran to catch up to them.
“Wow, Veronica. How long has it been since we’ve run into each other? More than a year?”
“Not nearly long enough.”
“You’ve been gone so long, it’s like you were never here. Imagine my surprise when I spotted you on my Ring cam just now. I almost didn’t recognize you. You’ve really packed on the pounds.”
Vero’s eyes frosted over. “If it wasn’t for the sulfurous odor wafting from your side of the street, I might not have recognized you either.”
“Nice,” Sophia said with a snide curl of her lip. “You know, your cousin came by yesterday morning to say hi to me. Then I bumped into Javier last night at a bar. It was so great catching up with him. Like one big, happy homecoming. Funny,” she said, tapping her chin, “the whole time Javi and I were talking, your name never once came up. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I heard the cops have been keeping you on a very tight leash.”
