“Joe,” she gasped, sagging a little. “You startled me. I didn’t see you.”
“No shit. But we all saw you,” he said, his hand warm on the back of her neck. “You and your vicious pet lion.”
Kylie looked down at Vinnie, who’d fallen asleep at her feet, mouth open, snoring at maximum volume. She scooped him up. He snorted and snuggled in, setting his head on her shoulder, going right back to sleep.
And back to snoring.
“Ruthless guard dog on the job,” Joe said, steering her away from the vendors and toward where he’d parked. “Are you wearing my sweatshirt?”
“Yes, and your spare sunglasses too,” she said. “It’s my disguise.”
His mouth quirked. She was pretty sure he was laughing at her on the inside.
“What did you learn?” she asked.
“Not here.”
When they got back to his truck, he took a call on Bluetooth.
“Four a.m. tomorrow,” Archer’s voice said. “Be locked and loaded.”
“Ten-four.” Joe disconnected with a flick of his thumb on a button on his steering wheel.
Kylie stared at him.
Joe kept his gaze on the road.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Tomorrow’s job.”
“Four a.m., locked and loaded?” she repeated. “What kind of a job is that?
“The kind I can’t talk about.”
She sighed and tried to let it go, but curiosity killed the cat and all that. “Is this job dangerous?”
He spared her a quick glance, eyes amused.
Right. All his jobs had the potential to be dangerous. Very much so. It hadn’t been too long ago that Archer had been shot on the job. And Joe himself had taken a bat to the back of his head in a terrifying incident as well. She was thinking about that, the differences in their lifestyles, when his phone rang again.
It was Molly on speaker that time. “I need backup on Dad,” she said.
Oddly enough, this had him looking far more tense than needing to be “locked and loaded” tomorrow morning at four a.m. He pulled the truck over and took the phone off Bluetooth. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He listened and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. Got it. I’ll take care of it.”
Then he disconnected and speed-thumbed a long text. He sent, waited a minute, got a response that he read, and returned with another, a short one this time, before he started driving again.
All without a word.
Kylie couldn’t hold her tongue. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
“This would be a lot more satisfying conversation if you used more than one word at a time,” she said.
She thought maybe she detected the slightest exhalation from him at that. His version of a sigh. “My dad’s got some problems I need to take care of,” he finally said.
Her heart squeezed with worry. “Do you need any help?”
He slid her a look.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m good at helping.”
This got her a ghost of a smile. “Thanks, but this one’s all on me.” He stopped at a light. “My dad’s got a lot of medical bills,” he said. “I try to pay them all, but sometimes he hides the mail.”
“Why does he do that?”
“God knows,” he said on a mirthless laugh. “But apparently a collection agency called earlier and he threatened them quite inventively. They called the cops.”
She didn’t know what to say to this. “Did he get arrested?”
“No. I’ve got friends on the force. It’s taken care of.”
He was quiet for the rest of the drive. Must have used up all his words. Kylie spent the time thinking about what kind of guy takes care of his dad and sister with everything he had.
A good guy, she decided, and sighed. Dammit.
Joe pulled up in front of her apartment building, and she looked over at him in surprise. “How did you know where I live?”
“I know a lot of things about you,” he said, coming around to open the door for her and Vinnie.
“Like?”
“Like the fact that someone else also knows where you live, someone who shouldn’t.” He pulled her out of the truck and walked her to her front door. “Keys?” he asked.
“Hold on.” She was searching her bag, but couldn’t find them. Then she remembered the rush she’d been in that morning. Vinnie had gakked all over her rug, throwing up the pinecone he’d eaten at the park the night before. She’d stepped in it with her bare feet, which had pretty much set the tone for her entire day. “I think I must’ve forgotten them this morning,” she said. “I was running late and almost missed the bus. Crap.”
Joe didn’t say anything, just pulled something from one of his pockets, and not five seconds later her door clicked open, faster than she could’ve used her key in the first place.
“Wait—” she exclaimed. “Did you just break into my apartment?”
“That would be illegal,” he said and discreetly slipped the small tool back into his pocket. He nudged her inside and bent to pick up an envelope on the floor, taking in the handwritten Kylie on the front.
Same as before with no stamp or postmark.
“Another one,” she breathed. She set Vinnie down and took the envelope from his fingers. She realized she was staring at it like it was a rattlesnake ready to strike when she realized that Joe was quickly and efficiently walking through her apartment and looking hot as hell while he did it.
When he came back to her, he nodded at the envelope. “We’re all clear. Open it.”
“It might be nothing.”
“All the more reason to open it.”
Right. But she didn’t want to because she knew—as Joe clearly did—it wasn’t nothing.
Vinnie trotted off toward the kitchen, stopping just short of the doorway to lift his paw and poke at the air. When he was satisfied that he wasn’t going to encounter a glass door, he happily made his way to his water bowl.
“What was that?” Joe asked.
“He has trust issues.”
Joe let out a low laugh. “Well, at least we know where he gets them from.”
“Hey,” she said. But also, it was true. With a deep inhalation, she opened the envelope.
This time there were two Polaroids. The first one was of her beloved little penguin—sitting in a jail cell this time. “Is that . . . Alcatraz?” she asked in shock.
Joe took it in, mouth dialed to Not Happy. “Yeah.”
Kylie pulled out the second Polaroid and stilled in confusion. There were two items in this pic, one of a small entry table, ornately handmade. The other was a bench to match. She stared at them both before Joe turned the photo over in her hand. On the back was a scrawled note:
Authenticate the table and bench as Michael Masters’s work for the auction listed below and you’ll get your carving back. To do this, make an appointment at the auction house where the items are being held. You’ll ID yourself, authenticate, and sign off on the items. They’ll contact me when you’ve done so.
“I don’t understand,” Kylie said. “This table looks like my grandpa’s work, but I know all of his pieces that are out there. This never hit the market. But it couldn’t have been something he had in his unsold inventory either, since everything burned.”
“And the bench?”