Read Fool Me Once (Codie Snow #1): A Romantic Suspense Series for Free Online Page A

got out of the car when Pete did and followed closely behind.   Better to ask for forgiveness than beg for permission.
    As they got close, the pacing man shouted, “Hi, officer.  What can I do you for?”
    Pete’s voice was firm.  “We’ve had complaints that the music is too loud.  I need you to turn that down.”
    “Oh, yeah.  Of course.”  The guy turned and walked into the house from a door inside the garage.  Pete continued to saunter closer so that he was inside the space in short order.  Codie was moving too, appearing as a shadow, but close.  Before she actually walked into the garage, she noticed the faint scent of weird chemicals, a sicky sweet smell that made the coffee in her stomach feel sour.  She saw Pete’s gait slow before he touched his belt.  Scratch that.   He touched his gun, a weapon she’d almost forgotten was there.  Apparently, something had his hackles up, and he was thinking there was more to this call than merely loud people.
    She was starting to suspect it too.
    The volume of the music blaring from the house dropped, but that didn’t stop the hairs from standing up straight on Codie’s forearms.  She knew down deep in her bones that something was wrong—dead wrong.
    “Codie,” Pete said, without turning his head to look back, “I need you to get back in the car, and I want you to duck low, out of sight.”
    “Shouldn’t—”
    “ Do it, ” he said, his voice low but scary, letting her know there would be no arguing.  He tilted his head and spoke into the mike attached to his shoulder.  Codie thought he was calling for backup, but she couldn’t be sure.
    She started to walk backwards, really not sure if the cop car would keep her safe, but she knew it was more the idea of out of sight, out of mind .  If the bad guys couldn’t see her, she might not be a target.
    Before she could move any farther, though, the door from the house into the garage banged open and smoke trailed behind the man in a big cloudy puff.  “Hands up where I can see them.”  It was an order, and it wasn’t quiet.  Pete had suddenly turned formidable—and scary.
    “But—”
    “Now!”  Codie was frozen, just watching the action.  The guy dropped his cigarette on the concrete floor of the garage and held his arms out—probably not the way Pete had wanted him to, but it was definitely easy to see that he wasn’t holding anything.  With lightning speed, Pete had the guy cuffed and was patting him down, asking him questions.  Codie couldn’t hear a lot of what was said, but the guy answered one question loudly enough that Pete understood.
    “My old lady’s in there tryin’ to save it.”
    Pete marched the guy out of the garage and didn’t even look Codie in the eye as they passed her and he opened the back door to the cruiser, practically stuffing the guy inside.  “I’ll find her.”  Once he closed the door, he said to Codie, “I’d remind you to get in the car, but I’m sure he reeks of toxic shit.  Just stay close to the car, got it?”  She nodded and watched him walk back through the garage, this time with his gun in his hands.
    She knew the timing was bad, but Codie was finding Pete’s masculinity to be a hell of a turn on, and she wondered why she’d rebuffed his more recent advances.  She’d have to rethink a Codie-and-Pete combo.
    As Pete made his way through the garage again, she could hear the guy making noise in the cruiser—shouting, maybe?  And then it sounded like he was banging on the window, but his hands were cuffed, so she didn’t know how he could do that.  She turned around to glance and saw him pounding his head against the glass, and when she looked, he started shouting at her.  He looked panicked, but there wasn’t anything she could do, no matter what the guy was saying.  She shook her head at him and turned back around just in time to see a woman with frazzled blonde hair run out the front door.  She had a pitcher in her hands,