“I should hope not,” Candace said with a sneer. “You always blush easy.”
Now, Andrew had to tell her the whole truth, and maybe it was a blessing that ‘the enemy’ was so close by, because as he whispered the rest of the story to her, she couldn’t have too big of a reaction without alerting Dalton, and the one constant was that everyone liked him.
“Can you please play along until this is over?”
“For him.” She nodded at Dalton. “At least Ford wants to keep him safe.”
“Thank you. And Kev, maybe stop making things worse every chance you get.”
“Me? You’re supposed to be honest with your best friends, but you kept Candace out of the loop, and suddenly, completely out of the blue, you like dudes and Bones? Which was not meant to be a pun, please ignore that.”
Anymore eye-rolls today and Andrew would give himself a headache. “I did not try to hide that I’m bi. I just don’t blurt it out in casual conversation. And you were so into the whole Kirk/Spock thing, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
Kevin grumbled, but once he’d finished bringing up everything they needed to review on the computer in place of surveillance, he relented. “Fine. I understand why you like Dalton. But Ford?”
“I do not like—”
“Are we going to get started?” Ford called, kruller in hand that he took a slow, sensuous bite of, which should have been impossible to make sexy, yet somehow, he managed.
He was easy to like too, and while Andrew knew he should be wary of Candace being right about betrayal, all he could focus on was the path of that tongue chasing crumbs.
It was going to be a very long morning.
ISAAC
Entertainmentfactorasideingetting Andrew flustered, Isaac wished he’d known about Riley’s addition so he could have voiced his dissent and prevented it. He was only wary because of the criminal element, however much that might be behind Riley like everyone else on his payroll. It had nothing to do with being overprotective of his son.
Isaac just couldn’t be held responsible for the aftermath if someone broke his boy’s heart.
As they finally started discussing the case, gathered around the front desk with Kevin in the chair again, Isaac kept being drawn to the way Dalton was drawn to Riley, and how much Riley kept encouraging it. It was awful, even if feeling that way did make Isaac a stereotype.
“Dad?” Dalton asked, as if he’d already called for him more than once. “When were you planning to do a test run on Avalon’s security?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Andrew repeated.
“The longer we wait, the more chances this person has to try again before we’re ready. I’d say it’s fairly obvious they know we’re on this, given the change in MO the other day.”
“Change?” Kevin said. “But they still got away, and preliminary reports say they didn’t leave any evidence again.”
“They tripped an alarm,” Andrew reminded him. “They’d never done that before.”
“Which I think was on purpose,” Isaac said, “a diversion to gauge where we were and what we were up to.”
“Seriously?” Riley sputtered, the others all looking equally shocked—other than Andrew.
“I was thinking that too,” he said. “It’s like they wanted to pull us out into the open and confirm we were working together.”
“That’s giving them a lot of credit,” Candace said.
“At this point, they deserve it, considering how well they’ve been fooling the police. They’re watching Avalon, biding their time for when to go back.”
“So, we set a trap,” Isaac said. “I conduct my own break-in to help fill in the gaps for how our thief keeps sneaking into these places undetected, while leaving a tempting opening in security for them to follow. I’ll lead them exactly where we want, so that when they finally go for the prize again, we’ll have them.”
“Agreed.” Andrew nodded. “And I want to help.”
“You are helping.”
