Joel hadn’t been kidding when he said he’d be spending a lot of time at the house. Though Cami had been at Vince’s for the weekend, she heard he’d hung around since dinnertime on Friday and had used Sage’s bathroom to clean up and shower. He even slept on the sofa in the great room while one of his security crew monitored the machines.
She was glad to have missed most of that.
Tuesday evening most of them were sitting around the house taking care of paperwork and making plans when Joel grinned—an odd expression for his face considering how seldom he did it. “Gotcha.” He pressed a few more keys, then gestured to Sage to come over and sit in his spot. “Someone just logged on to the system. I’m going to go see if I can find the person trying to download information. Stay here.” He pulled a handgun from the small of his back, cocked it to load a bullet in the chamber, and put it back in the holster before heading for the door.
Cami felt her stomach drop. Joel had a gun in her house? Was that necessary? A few seconds passed as she thought about it before she realized that of course he’d be armed.
This was Joel, military to the max. He probably owned an arsenal. Maybe it should have made her feel better, safer, but somehow, it didn’t.
A long moment passed and Cami started to get anxious. She inched over to the front windows, peeking out of the corner through the curtain so no one outside would be able to see her. She saw Joel just through the trees, kneeling on the ground. He looked like he had someone restrained, but she couldn’t see who through the brush.
“Get away from there,” Sage hissed.
“He’s got someone.” Cami moved to the door and opened it a crack. “Joel, do you need me to call someone?”
He looked up at her, his face grim. “Call the sheriff’s office. And keep everyone inside.”
“What?” She looked behind her and saw everyone else watching her. “Stay here. He’s got the perp. I’ll see if he need anything else. Stay inside.”
No one else seemed interested in following her so Cami shut the door behind her and made her way across the grass. She pulled out her phone and dialed 911.
When she was told a deputy was on the way, she put away her phone.
“Get back inside, Cami. I don’t need you out here.” Joel sat between her and the person he was restraining. “If you come out, your sisters will be next. You’re a distraction. Go back inside.”
“Who is it?” After all of the stress and worry, she had to know who was behind everything.
“Go inside. There could be someone else out here too.”
Cami studied him for a moment then shook her head. “If there were, you would have incapacitated that person and be out looking for the second person already.”
He swore low under his breath. “Just go back inside. I’ll be in as soon as I give my statement to the deputy.”
There was the sound of sirens in the distance and Cami shifted, trying to see who was behind Joel.
“Go. Inside.” His brows V-ed over his eyes in anger.
“Even Cami wasn’t crazy enough to risk ticking Joel off. “Fine. I’ll see you there.” Before she reached the front door, Rosemary opened it. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know. He was hiding the guy. He insisted we stay inside.”
Rosemary put her hand on her hip. “And you just turned around and came back inside like a good little girl?”
“Hey, you want to risk his wrath, that’s on you, but I don’t recommend it. Besides,” she looked over her shoulder as the sheriff’s office truck came to a stop, “Looks like he’s got backup, and going over there now will just put us in their way. Better to watch out the window and see who they haul off.”
“So we wuss out and let him have his way?”
“Yes. For a few minutes, anyway. Give him time to take care of things and they we can all gang up on him for answers.” It galled her to have to wait when the answers were in her front yard. A second sheriff’s truck pulled into the driveway. “Looks like they’re planning a party out there.”
“Too bad we’re not invited,” Rosemary said.
Delphi sat at the kitchen island while Rosemary prowled around like an agitated lion. She may have growled once or twice as well.
Cami stood at the window, watching the deputy show up, talk to the suspect and then pull out a set of handcuffs. She tapped her foot as she watched the man haul someone away. “It’s a woman.” Cami couldn’t believe it. She stared, trying to figure out who it was. She didn’t catch any of her face, though, and the deputy pushed her in front of him, so Cami couldn’t get a clear view.
“What do you mean it’s a woman?” Rosemary joined her at the window, pulling back the curtains. The deputy had already pushed her into the back seat of the truck. “I missed it.” She strained to get a better view of the woman until the truck pulled out, then she resumed pacing.
The second deputy stayed out talking to Joel for at least ten more minutes before taking off with a written statement. Joel toward the house, his mouth in a firm line.
“Here he comes.” Cami twitched the curtains back in place and moved to open the door before he reached the front porch.
“You’re so impatient,” he said as he passed her on his way through the door.
“That’s my middle name. So who was it? I couldn’t tell when they hauled her off.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared him down.
He was, predictably, unfazed. He waited until everyone stood around, watching him, before he answered. “It was Mrs. Grady.”
Cami felt like the breath had been knocked out of her. “No way. She would never do that to us.”
Everyone else had similar reactions, filling the air with cries of disbelief and anger.
“Why would she do that to us?” Sage asked after the initial burst of questions. “Money, of course,” Delphi said, her arms crossed over her chest.
“But how could she? Does she know what she’s done?” Jonquil asked. “I trusted her.”
“I shared my cannoli recipe with her.” Rosemary said, incredulous. “I don’t share that with anyone.”
Everything Cami thought she knew about the woman fell apart. Why had she hurt them even after Cami had gone out of her way to help find Mr. Grady a kidney donor?
When everyone watched him, the hubbub quiet, Joel spoke again. “Someone offered her a whole lot of money to send the records off of the security system. She claims she doesn’t know who it is, but she needed the money, the medical bills were getting out of control. She apologized, for what it’s worth.” The disgust on his face said the apology wasn’t worth much to him.
“You ought to be able to trace the money, right?” Cami asked Joel.
“I’m sure going to try.” The determination in his eyes said failure was not an option.
Cami hoped with the information leak out of the way, this nightmare would come to an end.