Along Came Trouble (Camelot 2)

“You can go do something else,” Caleb told Ellen. “If he gets bored and starts causing trouble, I’ll holler.”

She didn’t want to. It was written all over her face. She wanted Caleb to leave her house alone, leave her kid alone, leave her alone.

Whereas what he wanted to do was burrow as deep into her life as he could get. Insane, he told himself. You met her yesterday.

But sometimes life didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Caleb had spent enough time in combat to get used to the idea that there weren’t any rules, really. There was just life. And life was for the living.

“I promise not to let him run around with the screwdriver,” he said.

She sank to the floor with her back against the kitchen doorjamb, eyes fixed on him. “I guess I’m not willing to take my chances.”

“Suit yourself.”

Caleb chiseled out a mortise and screwed in the latch plate. Henry made rumbling diesel-engine sounds and crashed his trucks into one another.

Cute kid. He had Ellen’s blond hair and round cheeks, but those big blue eyes must have come from his daddy. Who Caleb really needed to check out.

Ellen’s ex was on his to-do list, but the list kept getting longer. He’d lost most of the morning to the plumbing job over at the apartments, and then to the runner Carly and Ellen had decided to take. By the time he was done with these locks it would be noon, and he still had to chew out Carly and replace the lock on her back door, plus find an hour to get over to Ellen’s mother-in-law’s place and figure out what it would take to keep Henry safe over there for the weekend.

With Carly shut tight in her house and Callahan out in L.A., the vultures were going to get restless. Caleb wouldn’t put it past them to start poking their beaks where they didn’t belong. He wouldn’t put much of anything past them.

And then there was Plimpton.

Too many variables for him to let Ellen take her safety for granted. Too much to be on guard against. She needed defenses more foolproof than her temper. Which was why this afternoon, a couple of guys were coming over to install floodlights and an alarm system on her house whether she wanted them or not.

Chapter Eight

Carly let him in the back door when he knocked.

“Jarhead,” she said with a nod of acknowledgment.

“Jarheads are the Marines, Shortie.”

“Okay. I’ll just stick with calling you ‘Killer.’ ”

“I’ve asked you a million times not to call me that.”

The nickname was short for “Lady Killer.” She’d come up with it in high school, an act of retaliation for his relentlessly teasing about her height. Even at seventeen, he hadn’t liked the suggestion that he was some sort of player who used women and then discarded them.

He expected a retort, but instead Carly just sighed. “Come on in,” she said with a half-hearted sweep of her hand. “You can yell at me while I make lunch. You want a sandwich?”

She walked around the kitchen island and started pulling dishes down from the cabinets.

Even if she’d seemed up to it, Caleb no longer had the urge to hassle her. He’d acted patient and calm with Henry for so long that he’d started to feel that way.

“Yeah, a sandwich would be great, thanks.” He leaned both elbows on the countertop and caught her eyes. “Look. I’m gonna change out the lock on your back door. Later on, I’m sending a couple guys over to install an alarm system. I’ll show you how to use it. It’s no big deal. I want you to stay in the house and not give me any shit about it. I know you hate this, but it’s not safe for you to be walking around town alone, and it’s not safe for the baby, either.”

Carly started pulling stuff out of the refrigerator—deli meat, condiments, vegetables. “All right,” she said with her back to him. “I wasn’t going anywhere this afternoon, anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“You want pickles?”

“Just make it however you make it, and I’ll eat it.”

Caleb got out a screwdriver and started removing the strike plate from Carly’s doorjamb. The lock needed an upgrade, but upgrading a deadbolt was easier than installing one from scratch. No drilling, no sawdust, and not much cleanup.

Simple. With Carly, this was all pretty simple. Why couldn’t it be simple with Ellen?