Page 65 of Playing With Temptation

No, I was wrong. Before, her tone was shy; now it was timid. “Your house is bigger…I mean…I assume⁠—”

“Rae, baby, if you want to take all the kids back to my place that’s fine. I’ll text you the address and alarm code. But you don’t have to worry about the alarm, Cole knows how to turn it off and like I said, he has a key.”

“I won’t snoop or anything,” she solemnly told me.

“Rainy, I promise you I got nothing to hide. Look around. Snoop. I don’t give a fuck.”

“I won’t⁠—”

“Baby, I don’t care if you do.”

“Okay.”

Right. Moving on.

“Thank you for grabbing them. Juni will be stoked. As you know, she spent the whole weekend talking about you.”

“She’s sweet and I’m just happy my minor freakout before I got out of the car didn’t freak her out.”

It wasn’t minor. Rainy had looked like she was getting ready to hurl, or as an alternative, speed away. Maybe both.

There was a rap on the doorframe to catch my attention. Ethan was standing there with his brows pinched together.

“Dylan’s got something for us,” he whispered.

Fuck, yes.

“Sorry, baby, gotta cut this short, Ethan’s waiting on me.”

“Okay. Don’t worry about the kids. I’ve got them. Even if you’re gonna be late. Just come home, we’ll be at your house.”

Just come home.

I’d waited sixteen long fucking years for Rainy to say those words to me.

Slow was history.

Together, we’d work to get the kids where they needed to be.

Together.

Fucking finally.

One day when I retired from police work, I was applying at TC for a second career in investigations.

Nikki, our cyber tech, had a cool set up but nothing like what Dylan had. Triple Canopy wasn’t hamstrung with government funding. Thus, they didn’t have the same budget constraints the police departments had.

Not to mention, their whole complex was a tactical dream.

“Meet Tyler Mercer,” Dylan said, and pointed to a white board with a photograph of a good-looking, dark-haired man taped to the top. “Thirty-six. Never been married. No kids. Moved to Hollow Point from Atlanta where he was born and raised. His father still lives there, works as an electrician. Which is also Tyler’s occupation. His mother moved to Knoxville, Tennessee when he was twenty, she’s an attorney.”

“That’s the fucker who shot me?” I asked.

“That’s the fucker I caught on Lionel and Marybeth Robinson’s camera they have in the backyard facing the woods.”

“Doe Run?” Ethan inquired about the neighborhood.

“No, Oak Crest. The Robinsons’ house is the one on the curve of the cul-de-sac at the end of Peacock. He went through their side yard. I also caught him on Trent and Sarah Niemen’s camera five houses down. Again on Maranda Kennedy’s camera. She lives on the corner of Peacock and Hill View. It’s her camera that hits paydirt. Tyler removed his hoodie and stuffed it in her trash can. Her camera had a perfect angle for me to pull an image and run it through facial rec.” Dylan stopped and picked up a piece of paper off his desk and handed it to Ethan. “Here are the addresses you are going to want to hit and ask them if they’ll give you their footage. On the bottom are the traffic cameras he hit on his way home.” He stopped and picked up another piece of paper but didn’t hand it over, he just held it up. “This is Tyler Mercer’s information, including his address, phone number, and employer.”