Page 75 of Something Tangled Something True (Rosa Ranch #1)
SPY ZADDY
“So, should I ask why you have this type of equipment lying around your house?” I ask Ezekiel, staring unabashedly as he unpacks his equipment from the small black-and-gray fabric case.
He peers up at me, his eyes void of humor, but his response makes me laugh anyway. “Probably not.”
“Oh-kay then.”
Zeke walks around the house, scanning every inch, but paying special attention to items like paintings, picture frames, light fixtures, smoke alarms, and the carbon monoxide detector.
Everything seems to be going smoothly until the room fills with a shrill beeping. It stops quickly, as does my heart.
Zeke’s heavy brows pull taut, spine rigid as he removes the pale-blue lampshade from the wall sconce, unscrews the lightbulb, and checks each piece for a positive signal. He comes up empty-handed at first, but the same loud tone blares over a screw at the base.
“Ry, could you turn the power off to this side of the house, please? I’ve gotta take this apart. ”
Ryder works quickly, as does Zeke, and a few minutes later, we’re staring at a tiny black camera the size of my pinky nail that had been peering at us through the center of the hollowed-out screw.
A chill wracks through me, and I shake like a leaf. All the private moments we shared have been anything but this whole time.
Invasion of our privacy doesn’t begin to describe what’s wrong with this situation, and as Zeke combs through the rest of the house, he finds four voice recording devices and another camera that was hidden in my room.
“The night the door was open,” I cry. “When they tried to kill Nugget. They came here to bug our home, Ry!”
He pulls me into his lap, wrapping his arms around my waist, and rests his chin on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispers, his voice hoarse.
Zeke clears his throat, quietly dragging our attention back to him. “That’s—” He scratches at the nape of his neck, much like Ryder does when nervous or anxious. “Well, Lola, that’s not possible. This software is far older than anything you’d get on the market now.”
“So, what does that mean?” Ryder asks, swiping hot tears from my cheek.
“It means that while Lemmon has likely been surveilling you for years , even while you were married, there is some good news.”
Has my gut really been wrong this whole time? Hearing Zeke confirm it was Lemmon leaves me questioning every interaction I’ve had with her since returning.
“Please enlighten us as to how my ex-wife bugging my fucking house could possibly come with any good news.”
Zeke chuckles humorlessly. “She doesn’t have a live view.
These devices stayed on because she hard-wired them directly into the electric, but she’d have to be physically present to extract anything from them.
” He shrugs. “My best guess is that she came here for exactly that reason and left the hot dog in Nugget’s bowl as a distraction.
When she didn’t find anything useful, her responses continued to escalate. ”
Zeke's conclusion and overall believability of the series of events leave me wondering what exactly his job was as a Marine. He never gave us much insight, and I wasn’t really around to be privy to those details anyway.
“Is there any way to prove all of that?” Ryder asks.
“I’m going to take these home and see what I can get off them.
I don’t feel comfortable listening to the audio recordings unless absolutely necessary, and I don’t believe the camera hidden in Lola’s old room would be of any help, so I’m not going to invade your privacy any further.
I’m thinking the camera in the wall sconce should have everything I need to pin her with at least one crime, if not several .
The angle it was positioned at includes the living room and a partial view of the kitchen and entryway. ”
“Thank you, Zeke. I’m starting to think I’ve barely scratched the surface of what you did in the military, but I appreciate you using some of that expertise to help us out,” Ryder tells him, reflecting my thoughts.
“It’s not a problem, Ry. I sincerely hope that you never have to find out the answer to that question,” he says, standing and squeezing Ryder’s shoulder before traipsing out of the house without another word.
“Ry,” I whisper.
“Yeah, darlin’?” he asks, dazed.
“I think your brother might’ve been some elite spy,” I answer, unsure whether I’m joking or not.
“I think so too,” he wheezes out on a laugh, the sound breaking the tension between us.
The rest of the night, it’s like we’re two ghosts, unable to speak or feel, merely passing through the house in silence as we get ready for bed. Ryder tucks Nugget into his room in the closet, and I pray we don’t wake up with our house on fire or whatever Lemmon has planned for us next.