his team's investigations.
"I am." He unlocked the desk and hiked up the leg of his jeans. The small holster for his secondary weapon went around his calf and was cinched tightly against his leg. He checked his weapon, making sure a bullet was in the chamber. The safety was on the handle of the automatic. When he applied pressure to fire, it eliminated the gun's firing safety.
"I have a tail on Clare and Amber. Nothing close, and they know the final destination so if they lose them in traffic, they can find them again, but if shit goes down, I want her to have back up not too far away."
"Roger that." He respected the hell out of his boss, and things like this were the reason.
"Speaking of which, we've moved to the first cul de sac of the development, so if you need us, we'll be there in short order." Terrell's voice brokered no discussion on the matter.
"Dude is on his back porch." Watson's voice came through his earwig. "Coffee and the paper."
"Same as the last two Saturdays," Rayburn announced. "I want a life like that. Same old thing, day after day."
Watson snorted, "You'd die of boredom."
"Probably." Rayburn chuckled.
"All right. I'm heading over." Brody waited to get an acknowledgement before he dropped his earpiece into his desk drawer, brought up the fake screens which masked what he and Amber were actually doing, and headed into the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of coffee and ambled into the backyard. He pretended not to notice Erik and walked into the expanse of lawn at the rear of the house. He stood staring at the carpet of green and then moved and stared at a different spot.
He heard Erik's chair slide against the flagstone as he got up. It was working. He moved to another spot and stared at the grass intently.
"So, watching the grass grow?" Erik came up beside him and stared at the same patch of lawn as he was looking at.
Brody pointed to the far corner. "What do you think about a greenhouse, right there?"
Erik narrowed his eyes and then swung them to the other corner. "That area has direct sunlight. It would be better there."
Brody's head snapped around to blink at his neighbor. "Is sunlight important?"
"Well, yeah." Erik chuckled his response.
"Shit. I don't know anything about building a greenhouse, but Amber is researching plants, and has bought some seeds. I think Clare has rubbed off on her. She's mentioned wanting a greenhouse so she could grow her own plants."
"Ah, it's started. Yeah, Clare has definitely rubbed off on her."
"Hey, would you mind if I took a look at how you built the one you constructed for Clare?" Brody took a sip of his coffee after he popped the fifty-million-dollar question.
"Clare really doesn't like anyone going inside, but since she's not home, she'll never know." They turned and walked toward Erik's backyard. "I had to get the city to put in a new water meter, and then I had the irrigation system professionally installed, but other than that, I did it all. The kit is pretty straightforward. Damn, I wish you'd been here when I was trying to get mine together. It probably would've taken half the time. Four hands are better than two."
"How's this, I'll buy a steak dinner if you help me with mine." It was a dinner he'd never buy and a construction project which would never see the light of day, but his neighbor didn't need to know that.
"And drinks, man."
"Deal." Brody laughed as they approached the greenhouse.
"This is Clare's pride and joy." He opened the door using a key on his key ring.
"She locks it?"
"Hell, it's alarmed at night, too." Erik laughed. "She has some pretty special plants in here. I disable the alarm when I get up in the morning. I made the mistake of coming in to get the garbage once without turning it off. I had a headache for a week." He reached up and tapped a foghorn shaped piece of metal. "The damn alarm speaker is right at the door."
"Ouch, man, that had to suck."
"No worse than trying to get Clare to stop fussing at me. The woman does not like anyone in her space." Erik stood inside the door and stared at the raised beds.
"How does she reach the panels in the ceiling?" Brody walked into the building and his eyes scanned everything. There were a couple bags of natural fertilizer stacked under a workbench and three of the