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Drex blew out his breath. “He went straight to the spot where he caught me crouching down.”
“Oh, shit,” Gif groaned.
Mike muttered something more profane.
Drex watched Jasper go down on one knee and bend toward the floor until his head almost touched it. He shone the light along the baseboard and underneath the cabinet. “He’s looking for it. Feeling around.”
“He didn’t buy your lost skewer excuse.”
“We are royally screwed,” Mike said.
Drex lowered the binoculars and grinned into the darkness. “We would be if that’s where I had planted the bug.”
Chapter 9
Talia?”
She raised her head from reading off her tablet and looked across the breakfast table at Jasper. “Sorry. I was catching up on the news.”
He was staring thoughtfully into his coffee cup. “When I got back from the store last night, you and Drex were so engrossed in your conversation, neither of you realized I was there until I spoke. What were you talking about?”
“His boyhood in Alaska.”
Jasper looked at her and sputtered a laugh. “Alaska?”
“Of all places.”
“Anchorage?”
She shook her head. “Remote, off-the-map spots. Another cup of coffee?”
“No thank you.”
She left the table to make herself a refill using the fancy machine she’d given Jasper for Christmas. It had taken her weeks to learn how to operate it, and she was still intimidated by the technology. While she waited for it to go through the brewing process, she filled Jasper in on what Drex had told her about his upbringing.
He said, “Sounds very rugged and romantic.”
“Or bleak.”
“It strikes me as a woeful tale spun by an aspiring novelist who’s creating a rakish persona for himself, fashioning himself after Jack London or Ernest Hemingway.”
She returned to the table and curled a leg beneath her as she sat down. “You think he made it up?”
“Talia, it reeks of hogwash.”
She laughed, sipped her coffee, picked up the one remaining bite of cupcake on her plate, and held it out for Jasper. “Last chance, or it’s all mine.”
“I wouldn’t dream of depriving you.”
She popped the bite into her mouth. “Ummm. Chocolate cupcake. The breakfast of champions.” She washed down the cake with another sip of coffee. As she returned her cup to the saucer, she said, “If Drex is lying to impress, why hasn’t he regaled us with stories of derring-do in the wilds of Alaska? He does the opposite. When it comes to talking about himself, he artfully changes topics.”
Jasper said, “One wonders why.”
“Apparently you wonder why.”
“You d
on’t? You’ve been taken in by the dimple?”
