Alex rubbed his nape and peeked at Jason. “He’s lucky to have you, too.”
Hardly. Landed with Jason’s epic spiralling mess of misadventures . . . The man wasn’t lucky. He was a saint. “Well, who wouldn’t be to have all this?”
Alex giggled; Mary jumped up on the couch between them and licked Jason’s face.
Strange to go from all that company to cruising around in Owen’s car, alone. They left Mary with Alex, and Jason had accompanied Owen to the station, Owen insisting Jason take the car—go check out the area, do something nice for himself. He’d take a patrol car home tonight.
“You’re allowed to do that?”
“After a late shift, yeah. It’s fine. We’re rural, some things that might be frowned on in the city aren’t out here.”
Jason slunk his attention down his chest and lingered at his hips. “Will you be coming home in a belt? In that enormously intimidating belt holding up your important instruments?”
A groan. “Eyes up so close to the station, sweetheart.” Fingers steered his chin up toward a slow, simmering smirk. Owen handed the car keys over the console. “Have a good day. Night too, if you’re sleeping when I get back.”
“I mean,” Jason bit his lip. “You can wake me? It must be very hard getting out of the belt—”
Laughing, “No belts. I like my job.” A pause. “Some cuffs on the other hand . . .”
Owen slipped out of the car, and Jason watched his backside all the way to the station doors. Sighed, and double-checked the message threads on his phone.
Cora: Sorry, not at home today.
* * *
Carl: Cora’s? 49 Gum Drive. Key under the flowerpot on the porch. I always let myself in.
Right, got it. Good. He headed for Gum Drive, making a stop on the way, then swung a left into the cosy cul-de-sac and slowed to a crawl.
One of these houses was Cora’s . . . Forty-nine—wow, okay, first letterbox he looked at. Like what he was about to do was . . . written in the stars.
He rolled his eyes at himself and parked, then scooped his magazine from the passenger seat.
Like most of the houses in town, Cora’s had a weatherboard façade with a creaking veranda that Jason hoped didn’t harbour any snakes. The veranda was crowded with brightly coloured pots and garden ornaments. Plenty of places for a snake to hide.
He jogged to the front door, searched under the pots. Nothing but bugs and loose soil until he finally found the spare key under a terracotta frog and let himself inside. The hallway was . . . not what he expected. White, white, white and a splash of steel. Minimalist. Industrial—
An alarm blared through the house, rising and falling in rapid beats.
Crap. He retraced his steps to the entrance—
Call Carl.
He called Carl.
“What’s the code to the alarm?”
“What?”
He peeked out a window. The noise had the neighbour opposite opening his door and squinting in his direction. Jason spoke louder over the noise, repeating himself.
“What alarm?”
Foreboding uncoiled in his gut. “Cora’s alarm.” He thought of the key under the frog. Not a pot plant, but close enough. Right? “Forty-nine Gum Drive.”
“That’s right.”
“Terracotta frog?”
“Frog? I’m so confused right—oh wait. Fat frog with the twisting tongue?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the neighbour’s. Forty-six.”
Chapter Fourteen
Brilliant. He’d broken into a stranger’s house.
Not exactly what he’d had in mind.
Mumbling fucks, he scampered away from the windows through which emerging neighbours might spot him and out the backdoor to a yard of grass, a fence taller than him, and some scruffy lavender beds.
Not much he could do except cry behind a bush until the siren and Neighbourhood Watch—stopped. God. How long did an alarm wail on for?
Twenty minutes?
He dropped his phone and Google’s unhelpful search to the grass and palmed his forehead. No, wait. How long had it been so far—
Five. Five.
Let him turn to dust right here and be done with it. He couldn’t handle any more oopsies. If this were his town, if he knew the neighbours as Jason, he’d be able to laugh something like this off. Hell, he’d rock up to them and explain the situation and get them to find him the code. But he wasn’t Jason making a mistake. He was Carl, and no one here would expect this from Carl. They’d think he was simply up to no good, and Carl might be known for all his follies and subsequent fines, but that didn’t make him a criminal. Jason couldn’t make the neighbours uneasy about Carl.
He let out a slow breath to calm himself. At least this oopsie he could get out of without anyone the wiser. If he could just wait out the torturous sound.
The alarm cut out.
Fantastic. Sirens must be on a shorter timer here.
He crawled forward for the phone he’d tossed away a second time—
Boots. A shadow.
That rather impressive belt . . .