Page 50 of Her Devoted HERO

Damn. Shit. Fuck.

She bent again to her purse and pawed through it until she found Detective Warren’s card. “I’m going to call the detective who spoke to me about Jean. I’m so sorry I didn’t think to do this before,” she said looking at Austin.

Austin gave a slight nod.

She got the detective’s voice mail. She left a brief message. “It’s Sunday, I’m sure he’ll get back to me tomorrow morning,” she assured the two glowering males.

“Mom, he knows Rosalie’s address,” Austin said quietly. “That means he knows our address.”

It did. It so did.

“Austin, we have no way of knowing if Jean’s murder and these crank calls are connected. We need to chill,” she put her hand out to touch his shoulder, but he jerked away.

“Austin. If there is a connection, this is actually some good news. The police will have some leads to track down with the phone calls and the flowers,” Dex said calmly. She threw him a grateful look for keeping things calm with her son.

“In the meantime, we’ll stay with your grandmother tonight. How about that?” she offered.

She saw the look of intense relief on her son’s face and felt better.

“That sounds good, Mom.”

“Go grab a cheeseburger before Dex’s friends eat them all,” she suggested.

“Do you have this?” Austin asked Dex.

What the hell did that mean?

“Yeah, we’ll get this locked down. You better grab the food before Wyatt nabs everything,” Dex gave her son another reassuring smile.

Austin nodded and picked up the tub of ice cream and headed out.

Kenna turned to Dex. “When did the two of you get so chummy?”

“A common interest made us fast friends.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kenna demanded.

“Since you don’t take your well-being seriously, Austin and I needed to team up.” Why did Dex seem even taller and wider than normal?

“Why would he turn to you?”

“You’re kidding, right? Your son has probably already googled me. He knows which way the wind is blowing.”

“Googled.” That reminded her. “Damn. I need to explain about Buddy’s report. Look, he was just making sure that you were a good guy.”

“I don’t give a shit about that.” He was angry. “What were you thinking not calling the police or at the very least mentioning this to me?”

“Huh? Why would I have mentioned it to you?” Now he was just confusing her.

“Weren’t the calls bothering you? Making you feel uncomfortable?”

“Well sure,” Kenna admitted.

“You should have told me about them.”

“Why on God’s good green earth would I have done something like that?” She put her phone and Detective Warren’s card back in her purse and tucked it back by the chair near the sliding glass door.

“Because I handle problems,” he said. His face had a hard expression.