Still a bit groggy, he began to search for the fuse box, but didn’t find one in the house, which meant it must be out in the garage somewhere. Dandy. Less than an hour in and already his day was off to a rockin’ start.
Grumbling under his breath, he grabbed the spare key and a flashlight, then headed out of the front door to the garage at the side of the house. The air was still chilly, frosting his breath. He made it to the garage, his bare toes curling on the icy cement, and wrangled the door up before walking inside and turning on the flashlight. He blinked into the bright beam, giving his eyes a minute to adjust, then skirted his way around Tara’s car to the back corner where the main electrical panel was located. With a sigh, he opened the metal door and began to scan the numerous fuses with the flashlight beam, each marked with a label, before finally reaching the last one for the master switch. But instead of finding a simple switch to flip back on, what he saw had him wide-awake in seconds.
Fuck.
This was no tripped fuse. Someone had deliberately cut the wires. The coppery ends stuck out and glinted ominously in the brightness. Worse, as he scanned to the side, he found a scrawled sticky note attached to the inside of the metal door warning Tara to “cut” her losses and stop her campaign to get the climate change legislation passed.
Or else.
Whoever wrote the note left the specifics of “or else” up to the reader’s imagination, but Clint had a pretty good idea of what that meant, and he didn’t like it at all. Time to get law enforcement involved, if for no other reason than to have a police report on file of the threat.
Careful to avoid damaging the evidence any more than he already had, Clint closed the door to the breaker bo
x before hurrying back inside Tara’s house, scanning the perimeter of the property as he went. No footprints or sign of anyone else around now, dammit. He’d check the camera footage, though, to see if they’d caught anything.
After closing and locking the door, he headed back to the kitchen, only to find his daughter and Tara up and sitting at the kitchen table, an open box of cereal between them while they munched on handfuls of the stuff and watched him. Clint flinched. He needed to talk to Tara, update her on the situation, but this wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted Ashley overhearing.
“Daddy, you want some cereal?” Ashley asked, holding out a sticky hand full of pink, sugary cereal with tiny marshmallows shaped like monsters. “It’s really good.”
“Uh, no. Thanks.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, the stubble on his jaw scratching his palm. Glancing back over his shoulder, he caught Tara’s eye. While he knew they needed to talk about the threat, he couldn’t help asking, “Don’t you have any normal, healthy cereal?”
“This is normal, healthy cereal,” she said, raising a brow at him as she pointed to the box where it proclaimed to be fortified with vitamin C. “I suppose you only eat whole-bran stuff.”
“I like whole bran stuff,” he admitted.
“There’s a power outage,” Tara said, looking far too adorable with her hair mussed and those darned PJs of hers askew. Clint’s fingertips itched from the remembered softness of that material and the equal silkiness of her skin beneath his touch. He gritted his teeth against the forbidden memories as she shoved another handful of dry cereal in her mouth and chewed, speaking around it. “We should call the electric company.”
“Yeah, about that…” Clint said. “Could you—come into the living room with me to talk about it?”
She gave him an odd look, but followed him into the other room. “It’s not a power outage,” Clint explained. “Someone cut the wires to the house.”
“What?” Her dark brows drew together. She looked puzzled, but not scared. Not yet, anyway. “Why?”
“They left a note.” Pulling out his cell phone, Clint hit the speed dial button for the police department. “It’s about the legislation.”
“Damn.” Her shoulders slumped and she took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “Well, I’m not going to stop. This is too important to let some whack job shut it all down.”
“I disagree.” The dispatch desk answered and he relayed his information to the cops, far too aware of her warmth and the scent of her flowery perfume. After he hung up, he told Tara, “They’re going to send officers over to take a report, but I think now would be the best time for you to go into lockdown.” Tara opened her mouth to protest, but he didn’t let her get a word in edgewise. “I’m not saying it’s forever, but at least until we catch the person who’s doing this.”
“I can’t just hole up here in this house. I’ve got a foundation to run.” Tara threw her hands up, clearly exasperated. “I’ve got meetings, phone calls, appointments to keep and speeches to give. I’m not going to—”
“You worked from home yesterday. There’s no reason you can’t keep doing that,” Clint countered.
“Daddy, I need my hair brushed!” Ashley yelled from the kitchen, pointing to her hairbrush on the table beside the cereal box. “You know I don’t like it when it’s tangled.”
Clint took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, calling on his years of yoga practice to stay calm. “All right, honey. Just sit tight for a little bit, please. Daddy has some work to do first. Then I’ll brush your hair for you.”
As much as Ashley hated having ratty hair, she hated having it brushed even more, so it was never a simple ordeal. First, though, he had to look at that security footage before the cops got here.
Tara was still watching him, way too closely for his comfort, but at least her mulish expression had shifted to a more resigned look. “I’ll take care of your daughter’s hair. You and the police figure out who’s doing this so I can get back to business as usual.”
Good. Okay. An unexpected tide of relief washed over him and Clint gave a curt nod. Her ultimatum wasn’t ideal, but at least it bought him some time to figure all this out and focus on one objective at a time. “Thanks. And watch yourself. Ashley hates hair brushing.”
Snorting, Tara walked back over to the table, saying to him over her shoulder. “Seeing as how I’ve been doing my own hair for years, I think I got this.”
Right. Well, let her have at it, then. He went off to the living room to open his laptop and pull up the video footage. Unfortunately, when the cleaning fluid bottle had hit the keypad last night, it must have knocked the coordinates he’d entered out of whack, because the camera he’d put outside the front door to watch the driveway had taken only shots of the porch steps instead. So yeah—and right at the top of his list of things to fix ASAP. After quickly going over the rest of the footage and finding nothing useful, he went back outside to talk to the police officers who’d arrived at the curb. They went into the garage and he showed them the electrical box and the cut wires and the note, which they took into custody.
Finally, report made, he reset the cameras, called an electrician to come fix the wires, then grabbed his keys and headed out. First to grab coffees for him and Tara as well as bran muffins for all of them. Better than the sugar they’d loaded up on earlier. It would be a couple hours at least until they were up and running power-wise again, which meant they needed food that didn’t require refrigeration or the use of the electric stove. And he needed all the energy he could get.