Page 100 of Tracking Safety

A white pickup, county seal on the door, idled at the closed gate at the foot of the drive.

Ruby stepped outside, drying her hands on a towel, and went still.

“That’s the building inspector.” The ease left her voice. “He was just here Wednesday. Signed off and everything. He’s not due back till Monday.”

Ruby muttered a few more things before stepping back inside.

Caleb sent Liam back to the house before walking to meet the truck. The inspector said something through his window, and Caleb’s shoulders squared. After a long moment, he swung the gate open and let the truck through.

Jenna read it the way she couldn’t stop reading things now. Official vehicle, off schedule, on a Saturday. A driver she couldn’t make out. An open gate.

None of it had to mean anything. She just couldn’t assume it didn’t either.

She kept her voice light. “Cora, take Jonah and find something to do inside. Tell Grandma I’ll be there in a minute.”

Cora groaned but went, towing Jonah by the hand. The screen door clapped shut behind them. Freya rose from the edge of the porch and paced closer, ears forward, reading the drive the same as Jenna was.

She didn’t go in after the children. She stepped back into the shade of the doorway, where she could watch everything.

As the truck started up the drive, Jenna didn’t take her eyes off it.

She couldn’t shake the feeling more trouble had just arrived.

CHAPTER 41

Luke met the inspector at the cottages, and he knew the man hadn’t come to inspect anything.

“I thought you were coming Monday,” Luke said.

“I’m working weekends—lots of new buildings going up in the area,” Fenn said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“A heads-up would have been nice.”

“That header’s undersized.” Fenn tapped a doorway, acting as if he hadn’t heard what Luke said.

“It’s a doubled two-by-ten spanning six feet. It’s code in every county in the state, and you passed it Wednesday.”

“Codes get reviewed.” Fenn made a note. “I’m taking a closer look this time.”

He flagged the next one too, and the one after that—things that had never been violations. The man barely looked at the work. He glanced, he wrote, he moved on, wearing a patient, regretful expression that never came within a mile of his eyes.

Luke knew the difference between a man examining something and a man performing the motions of it. This was the motions.

“You want to tell me what this is really about?” Luke’s hands went to his hips.

“Just doing my job, Mr. King.” Fenn clicked his pen. “Though I’ll say—with everything that’s been going on out here lately, all that trouble and calls to the police—a man in my position has to be thorough. You understand.”

Luke went still.

A building inspector had no reason on earth to know how many times the sheriff had been to Refuge Cove. No reason to care. The fact that Fenn had brought it up at all confirmed to Luke where his marching orders were coming from.

He didn’t say so. There was nothing to gain arguing with a man who’d been paid not to listen.

When Fenn finally left, Luke stood near the cottages, his jaw aching.

The inspector’s truck rolled back down the drive and out the gate.

Luke watched it go, then turned for the house. Caleb fell into step beside him from the direction of the cottages, where he’d hung back within earshot the whole time.