Page 93 of Falling for Her

“Hunting? No, I’m not going to let him shoot a gun.”

I chuckle. “It’s called toad hunting because you have to hunt in the mud for them.”

Her face looks like she’s going to be sick. “Hunt in the mud?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Eww. No way.” We hear footsteps, and I move away from her. “Good morning,” she says when she sees Asa. “Your father was just explaining to me what toad hunting is.”

“Yeah.” He rubs his eyes.

“Sounds gross.”

“It’s not gross, Finley.” He smiles at her. “And you don’t have to hunt them. You can just hold the box.”

“Hold the box?”

“Well, we have to put them in the box when we catch them. Then we let them free again.” She looks from him to me, waiting for me to say she can’t do it. I press my lips together and raise my eyebrows. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

“Fine,” she gives in. It’s at that moment I know she would do anything to keep my child safe and make him happy. “But the minute I say, ‘Enough⁠—’”

“It’s enough,” he finishes for her. I smile at her, nodding my head.

I get dressed for work, and when I come back downstairs, the two of them are on the couch watching his television show. I kiss him on the top of his head and motion to her to follow me to the front door.

She puts her coffee cup down. “I’m going to go lock the door.” It’s a lame excuse.

“Okay,” Asa responds, not caring in the least.

At the front door, I slip my hand in hers as I pull her into the office out of Asa’s line of sight. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.” I bend to kiss her lips.

“Okay.” She sighs in my arms, and I have to force myself to walk out of there.

I follow up on a couple of leads, trying to pinpoint Randy, but it’s like he’s deep, deep into hiding. Ever since the break-in at my house, he’s been MIA. He hasn’t shown up for work. He did meet with his parole officer, but after that, it’s like he disappeared. I don’t find him at any of the places where he usually hangs out. After checking his home and finding no sign of him, I call him. I’m not surprised when it goes straight to voicemail. “You need to keep your eyes and ears open. I want to know if you hear anything else.” I look out the window. “I’ll be in touch.”

Disconnecting the call, I head back to the office early.

I’m walking to my desk when my phone rings.

“Hey, we got a tip that shit is going to go down next Friday,” Johnson tells me.

“How good is your tip?” I ask her.

“We caught him this morning with enough drugs to take out a small town. He snitched for a lesser charge.”

“Okay, I’ll ask around and still pretend that we don’t know anything. I’m just afraid that if I keep leaning hard on my source, he’s going to skip town, and that will leave us with nothing.”

“Yeah, you should back off a bit, let us work on our other sources. I’ll touch base next week,” she says and disconnects.

I knock on the doorjamb to Captain’s office. “Got a call,” I announce, and fill him in.

“Okay, stay on top of it,” he instructs.

“Listen, Asa’s mother is going to be back earlier than I expected. I’m going to need the weekend off,” I tell him.

“That’s fine. If the drop is next Friday, you’ll have a busy week. In fact, been a while since you took time off. Why don’t you just be on call this week?”

“You sure?”