Page 49 of Ultimate Justice

“Sure.” He nodded. “But first, let’s check out your room.” He went to another door and flipped on the lights.

Noah’s room was twice as big as Marlie’s but definitely more suited to a young boy’s taste. The carpet was gray-blue, and the walls were a light-blue. Even the comforter on the bed was blue.

Noah’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “This is my room?”

“Yep.” Evan leaned against the door jamb and crossed his arms, tightening and molding his shirt over thick biceps and chest muscles.

Noah sat on the edge of the bed. Blue hopped right up next to him, as if that was where he intended to sleep.

“Say ‘thank you,’ Noah.” He’d probably never had a bedroom this big.

“Thanks, Evan.”

He watched Noah with an impassive expression. Must be a federal agent thing, keeping all your inner thoughts a secret from the rest of the world. But were these magnanimous gestures and kindness sincere or merely a means to an end?

Housing them here worked to his advantage. He needed Noah for his investigation, and he needed her to help get information from Noah.

When he turned to her, the look of impassivity in his eyes was gone. In its place was a warm hint of genuine caring. She mouthed the words, “thank you.”

He grinned, then mouthed back, “you’re welcome.” And when his eyes dipped briefly to her lips, her heart fluttered, forcing her to confront what was now as obvious as an elephant perched on a picket fence.

Coming here was a mistake. A big mistake, because she was attracted to him. Worse, she liked him, but thoughts like those would get her nowhere.

His entire life was about finding missing children. Living with someone like that—a man who dealt with the extreme depths of parental grief she’d personally experienced—was unfathomable.

While she might be physically attracted to him, it didn’t matter.

She wasn’t for him, and he wasn’t for her. Not today. Not tomorrow.

Not in this lifetime.

…

Evan listened to Tony Wong’s update, keeping an eye on Noah at the same time. The kid really did have a good arm, throwing the tennis ball for Blue to retrieve and tossing it again when Blue raced back with it. The eight-foot-high HOA fencing conveniently hid his backyard from the street but not from the blaring mid-afternoon sun.

“The Yukon was clean,” Tony said. “No trackers.”

Through the windows, he also watched Marlie putting away the last of their lunch dishes. He’d never wanted to kiss a woman so badly in his entire life. “Were there any hits on the prints at Marlie’s apartment?”

“Negative,” Tony continued. “Most were Marlie’s and Noah’s prints, although we did find a few partial glove prints. Vinyl, most likely.”

He’d bet her lips were as soft as they looked, her mouth as sweet as the nectar he and Gracie used to suck from the honeysuckle flowers at his parents’ house.

Would she want him to kiss her? Just because she’d thrown herself into his arms didn’t automatically mean the answer to that question would be a resounding “yes.” At the time, she’d been scared out of her mind. Fear did things to people, made them do things they wouldn’t normally do.

“Evan, you there?” Tony said louder.

“Uh, yeah.” Christ, his head was stuck way too far up his ass. Not that there was ever a good time in his world to let himself get derailed by a beautiful woman but if there ever was one, this wasn’t it. “Any good latents on that tub of marijuana?”

“The techs are on it, and I sent bud samples to the forensic botany unit at the University of New Haven. I asked them to put a rush on it.”

“Thanks, Tony.” That university had the largest cannabis databank in the country, similar to CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System for human DNA. Like humans, marijuana had a genetic fingerprint. If anyone could track those buds to where they were cultivated, they could. “Send me their report as soon as it comes in.”

“You got it.”

Noah had abandoned the ball in favor of watching a cluster of monarch butterflies flitting around a patch of purple asters. Could be there was another upside to him being here. Experiencing some normalcy could be good for the kid.

Evan tapped his phone on the side of his leg, pondering Tony’s report. If they weren’t tracked from the farmers market to Marlie’s place, then how did they find Noah there?