Along Came Trouble(92)
She nodded. Stiff. “I love you, too,” she said, so quietly it sounded like a secret she was telling him.
The worst part was, it didn’t even move him. Didn’t do a thing to loosen the tight knot of frustration in his stomach. Her love had never been in question. It was her respect he needed. Her faith.
As she drove off, he stopped by the SUV to talk to Cassie. “What time did you log Richard Morrow out?”
She looked down at the clipboard, unwilling to meet his eyes. He wasn’t sure he’d want to meet his own eyes right now, but Cassie seemed excessively nervous considering he’d known her since she and Katie were both giggling schoolgirls. “Quarter to three.”
“He was here for an hour?”
“Yes.” She was blushing.
“What am I missing, Cass?”
She gripped the steering wheel with both hands and didn’t answer him.
Eric piped up. “He was with Mrs. Callahan for ten minutes, sir. The rest of the time he spent out here.”
The man didn’t say, The rest of the time he spent out here flirting with Cassie, but he didn’t have to. Message received.
“Thanks, Eric.”
As soon as Caleb didn’t desperately need every breathing body he could get, he was going to have to fire Cassie. Which meant Katie would be pissed at him. Man, this day just kept getting better.
His phone buzzed. Another text from the guys at the roadblock wanting his opinion on something ASAP.
As he was forcing his way past the barricades and through the crush of bodies, his phone rang. This time, it was Sean. Caleb had assigned him to run the show over at Maureen Morrow’s house.
“What’s up?”
“Weird situation over here,” Sean said. “There’s a photographer trying to take the Callahan kid’s picture.”
“You’ve got to be f*cking kidding me. Why are you calling to tell me this? Walk him off the property.”
“Yeah, sure. But the thing is, I’ve seen this guy before, and—”
Caleb stopped in his tracks. “Is it Plimpton?” Realizing Sean wouldn’t know who he was talking about, he added, “Does he look like a rat? Little guy, slicked-back hair?”
“Yeah.”
Fuck. “And he’s actually on the property?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Keep him there, and watch your back. He might be dangerous. I’m going to send a cruiser to pick him up.”
“Sure. I can do that. But here’s the—”
“Is Henry in the house yet?” Caleb raked his hand through his hair. This was bad. This sucked.
“No, he’s—”
“Get him inside the house, then call me back.”
He was about to hang up when Sean said, “Hold on, man. Let me get a word in.”
Caleb sighed, which did exactly nothing to release the tension that had him wired tight. Adrenaline and stress made a potent cocktail. “Go ahead.”
“The thing is, the photographer’s here because Richard Morrow invited him. It’s some kind of sick photo shoot or something, I guess. I didn’t think it was my call to tell the kid’s dad what he could and couldn’t do, you know?”
“Shit,” Caleb said. It was the only thing he could think of to say. Ellen’s ex was an even bigger prick than he’d thought.
“Hang tight,” he assured Sean. “I’ll be there with Ellen in ten.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The slow-motion slide of her heart into her stomach made it impossible for Ellen to unbuckle her seat belt. Caleb had to do it for her.
Her baby was playing with his father in the sandbox, and Weasel Face crouched next to them, taking their picture.
Henry wasn’t in any danger. He was perfectly content, talking to himself and shoveling sand onto the back of his dump truck with the solemnity of the very young while Richard perched on the edge of the sandbox, performing parental attentiveness.
And yet Ellen’s hands shook so hard, she had trouble working the door latch.
Again, Caleb was there, helping her out of the car, and he said, “Let me handle this,” low and cautionary, but she could hardly hear him because there was a man, a strange man taking pictures of her son so he could put them in newspapers and on the Internet, where thousands of other strangers would see the soft, downy curve of Henry’s cheeks and his innocent blue eyes, clear as a mountain lake.