Page 10 of Honor ’N’ Duty

“Sometimes I thought the same car—a gold Hyundai—was behind me in the morning on the way to daycare and the bank.”

His eyes narrowed. “Did you get the license plate?”

“No.” She should have. Her fear for Rosa’s safety had pretty much obliterated everything else.

“That’s okay,” Kade reassured her. From the deepening creases on his forehead, she could tell it wasn’t. “Did you get a look at the driver?”

“No, not really.” God, she was terrible at the whole cop thing. “But one day when I came out of the daycare, a man was standing there, right outside the door.”

Again, Kade’s dark brows lowered. “Do you think he was waiting for you?”

“I’m not sure,” she answered. At first, she hadn’t noticed him, then as she’d walked away, a feeling she couldn’t explain made her look over her shoulder to find him watching her, just a little bit too intently to be normal.

Kade rested his hands on her shoulders, then, as if realizing the gesture was too intimate, quickly dropped them. “Anything you remember could be helpful.”

Yeah, right. With the imprint of his big, strong hands splayed over the shoulder straps of her tank top singed into her bare skin, remembering anything beyond her name was exceedingly difficult. “When I caught him looking at me, he looked away, as if he didn’t want me to know he’d been watching.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?”

Kade towered over her. The fiery amber sunburst surrounding his pupils seemed to glow as his eyes bored into her. “Um…” Yes, still exceedingly difficult to remember anything. “He was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt.”

“Did you get a good look at his face?”

Come to think of it, she had. “He had brown hair and brown eyes. And really full lips. Oh, and a scar.” Only now did she remember the scar arcing downward from his lower lip to his chin. “He was only standing about ten feet away when I came outside.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Kade said. “We’ll look at some mugshots tomorrow.”

“Mugshots?” Officer Garcia looked skeptical. “How are you going to narrow down thousands of mugshots based on that description?”

“Are you thinking this has something to do with Ms. Velez’s husband?” Sergeant Braden asked.

Instead of answering the sergeant, Kade looked at Laia, saying nothing for a moment, then, “Maybe.”

Please, no. That was precisely why she’d called Kade for help, but even then, she hadn’t actually believed it was true. Hoped it wasn’t. Now she was starting to believe it was.

“The DHS has a collection of mugshots associated with that investigation,” Kade said. “If this guy works for the same cartel, we might get lucky.” He took a black wallet from his back pocket.

His gleaming gold Department of Homeland Security badge was a horrific reminder of the past, and she shuddered with silent fear and resentment. This was supposed to be over. Josh was gone. She’d buried him two years ago. Why would the cartel be following her and breaking into her home after all this time?

Kade tugged two business cards from his wallet, handing one to Braden and the other to Garcia. “I’d like a copy of your report and anything forensics turns up. Let me know if this gets assigned to a detective.”

“You got it.” Braden likewise gave Kade his business card. To Laia, he said, “We’ll do our best to find out who did this, but it happens more often than you think around here.”

“Thank you.” Having lived in Asbury Park for most of her adult life, she knew it was true. In fact, she suspected Kade had something to do with the fact that the police were treating her so kindly and had been there for hours.

“I’ll walk you out.” Kade accompanied the officers downstairs.

Laia sighed as she crouched on the floor where Rosa kept holding up her hand for Smoke to high five, which he did perfectly.

Smoke snorted, then lowered his paw, still holding it in the air at an unnatural angle, bending it right behind the metacarpal, the largest pad of a dog’s paw. At first, Laia thought this was perhaps related to why he was limping. Then Rosa met the dog’s paw with her closed fist.

“See what I taught him?” Rosa smiled, revealing a space where one of her lower teeth used to be. “It’s a fist bump. Uncle Kade and I fist bump, so I taught Smoke to do it.” Rosa giggled, fist bumped Smoke’s paw again, then pulled her hand away, waggling her fingers in the air. “Boo-yah!”

Smoke cracked his jaws, uttering a half bark, half howl that sounded eerily like boo-yah.

“That’s very impressive. You could be a dog trainer one day.” Laia was only half kidding. Rosa possessed the same love of animals, dogs in particular, that Laia did.

The dog’s dark-brown eyes watched Laia closely while she petted the top of his head. His thick hair was long and soft, his ears tall and pointed. There was no doubting his intelligence. It was in his eyes, in the proudly erect bearing with which he held his head. It was almost as if Smoke, too, had been influenced by generations of Sampson military men.