Free Body Heat by Brenda Novak

as he was within range, and she’d never have a clue.
    He’d never dreamed he’d have such a golden opportunity to plant them. Detective Lindstrom had called him on her way home from work to complain about Sophia and to tell him she wished she could be working with him instead, and she’d mentioned that Sophia was goingto Mexico tonight. The second those words were out of her mouth, he’d known that it was time.
    Under the guise of saying hello to Officer Lawrence, who was dating a distant cousin of his, he’d stopped by the station first. He’d had to sit around shooting the bull with Grant for more than an hour before Grant finally excused himself to go to the restroom. Then he’d stepped into Sophia’s office and set the pen on a ledge under her desk. Even if she found it, that pen would look as if it had somehow fallen out of one of her drawers.
    Bugging her office had taken all of five or ten seconds. He was back in his seat before Grant could flush the toilet. When Grant returned, Leonard casually said he had to be at work early in the morning and should be getting home.
    From there, he’d driven down Sophia’s street to make sure her neighbors were in bed, parked a good distance away and walked to her house. He’d been prepared to break in; he’d brought the tools. But that hadn’t been necessary. He’d found her spare key under a decorative turtle in her front planter. Maybe, because she carried a gun, a baton and a Taser, she wasn’t as worried about safety as another woman might be. Or, more likely, she left that spare key where it was for Rafe’s benefit. She loved Starkey’s boy. He knew that from how much she’d talked about him when they’d worked together.
    Now he just needed to figure out where to place the pretend plug adapter. He wanted it somewhere central. That would increase his chances of picking up most of her conversations. So, tempted as he was by the bedroom—simply because that seemed like even more of an invasion of privacy, which she deserved—he avoided it. The transmitter should go in the living room, he decided. The livingroom was between the kitchen and the bedroom, plus the screened-in porch at the back. He’d be able to listen in on more conversations there than anywhere else.
    Turning in a circle on her living room rug, he searched for the outlet he wanted and spotted one behind a table that held nothing but framed photographs. If he had his bet, this outlet never got used. She’d probably forgotten it was even there.
    â€œPerfect,” he murmured once he’d had a chance to test the device using his transmitter. “And now for the car.”
    Striding into the kitchen, he checked the keys hanging on hooks near the cupboards, identified the set that went with the cruiser sitting out front and walked outside to unlock it and put the pen under the dash. This was the trickiest part, since he could be spotted by any neighbor who happened to get up for a drink of water, so he made quick work of it. Then he locked up and headed back down the street.
    He was whistling by the time he reached his vehicle. Maybe it’d taken a while to collect the money he needed, and it had taken even longer to catch Sophia on a night when she was out of town…
    But his patience had been well rewarded.
    Â 
    It was after midnight and the man who’d walked away with her photographs of José and his wife hadn’t returned. Sophia wasn’t sure how long she should wait. Had he given up and gone home? Was she sitting here, wasting time? If he hadn’t been able to get any information, there was no guarantee he’d come back to tell her….
    The cantina was beginning to empty, but the table at the front was still occupied. The man who’d called her a puta and one of his friends had followed her into the bar andseated themselves close to the door. They’d stayed there ever since,