Page 112 of One Night with Number Nineteen

“I already ordered some,” Sawyer says, and I jump slightly, not realizing he’s come back into the kitchen. “Sorry,” he murmurs, running his fingers over my hip. “They’ll be here tomorrow. I’ll get them installed.”

The detective pockets her notebook and pen. “I’d advise they come with monitoring.”

“Noted,” Sawyer says. “I’ll take care of it. Are you following up on the guy from the bookstore?”

“Yes, though I can’t give you more details than that, considering this is all an ongoing investigation. In the interim”—she looks at me—“I’d like you to take some time and try to think if you knew the man from the bookstore and if there are any fans who may have…”

“Oh, no,” I say. “It’s not like that. Faye’s the one with the huge fan base. I’m just a little fish in a big pond.”

“Faye is her friend and next-door neighbor,” Sawyer chimes in when the detective frowns.

“Right. Sorry. Yes, Faye’s an author too, and she has a lot more followers than I do. My fans are…well, they’re not like that.”

The detective studies me for a moment. “Take a look, anyway,” she says. “Or maybe talk with your team, see if they’ve filtered anything out that’s odd or threatening. I’m not saying it’s definitely that,” she adds, probably because I’ve opened my mouth to protest. “Just cross your T’s and dot your i’s, yeah?”

I shove down my objection—because she’s right, because it makes sense to be prudent, even if it feels ridiculous. “Okay. I’ll do that,” I tell her. “Thank you.”

“You have my card?” she asks.

I nod, shake her hand.

And then I’m walking her to the front door.

“You okay?” Sawyer asks when I lock it and turn back for the house.

“Yes, of course I am,” I say, brushing by him.

His expression changes, shifts into something that’s very much like hurt, and I shove down the blip of guilt in me. I need to make a list, need to get in touch with my agent, my publicist, my assistant. I need⁠—

“Mom!”

I need to make sure Ollie is okay. “What’s up, peanut?”

“Can I watch another episode?”

Normally, the two he’s binged through would have been his limit, and he knows it.

But I need a little more time.

“Sure, bubba,” I tell him, ruffling his hair and then going down the hall to my office.

Sawyer follows me and I grit my teeth together as annoyance creeps like fingers down my spine. It’s not fair. I know it’s not. I chose to let him sleep this afternoon when I went to get Ollie. And he’s certainly not responsible for the weird stuff with the wineglass and the marriage license. It’s just…

I close my eyes, blow out a breath.

It’s just that this is all suddenly feeling real and big and scary and⁠—

Click.

I look up to see that Sawyer has closed the door.

He leans back against it, crosses his arms. “Talk to me, Pages.”

“I have a lot to do,” I mutter instead of doing that. “I need to contact my team and go through my emails and messages. And I need to get those cameras sorted⁠—”

“I told you I’d do that.”

I ignore him, shift through the disaster that’s my desk in search of an empty pad of sticky notes. “I need to get them sorted and send those emails and I have a book I need to be writing and Ollie needs dinner and we need to practice his songs for the winter concert next week and⁠—”