Page 23 of Caged

Following Maxwell’s lead, I made direct eye contact. “Partially, sir, I pushed her buttons, relentlessly, trying to make her act out. I deserved the hit.”

Her head whipped about forty-five degrees before she recovered from the shock and turned forward again.

I’m not the asshole you think I am.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t suspend both of you right now.”

I didn’t hesitate to answer, “Because Maxwell is the best chance we have for finding Wendy.”

Dad asked, “Maxwell?”

“Because Sheppard’s intuition and insights are invaluable. The case will suffer if you pull him from it.”

It was my turn to be shocked.

We waited while my father stared at us, deciding what to do. I relied on my training to keep my muscles from twitching at the discomfort of being in his crosshairs.

“Consider this your first, and only, warning. If I so much as see one of you give the other a dirty look, I’ll suspend you both.”

“Yes, sir.” We answered in unison.The Marines trained us well.

“Clean this place up.” He looked at his watch. “I want you both in my office in an hour with an update.”

“Yes, sir.” We waited for him to leave before moving.

Dad turned around and yelled, “Get back to work, all of you.”

If it weren’t for the sound of the trash clinking as we tossed it in the bin, you could have heard a pin drop in our office.

Before getting back to work I washed my face with the water from my bottle. There was no way in hell I’d risk leaving the office and having to face my brothers after what had just happened.

The side of my mouth was tender where she’d split my lip.

If I wasn’t worried about starting another fight, I might have complimented her on throwing a hell of a punch.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her stretching her right hand. It hurt like hell to punch someone and her hand would swell before long, but she didn’t need me telling her that.

I typed up my notes, creating a time line with links and photos, and emailed them to Maxwell.

“Thank you.” My mail icon alerted me to an incoming message. “I’ll combine these tonight and we-”

Her phone alarm went off. Because, of course, she set an alarm for ten minutes before we had to be in my father’s office.

Her printer whirred to life and started spitting out pages.

I’d thought she was crazy when I realized she’d bought a printer for her office when the company had a fancy one for everyone to use. When I’d asked her why, she explained it made her life easier and kept her from losing her train of thought while she worked.

After sharing an office with her for eight weeks, I could see the benefit. I’d never dared to use it, but for the first time, I was grateful she had it. If she’d had to wait for the shared printer, she might be late.

No. We might be late; because, like it or not, we were a team.

And I wasn’t about to fuck up twice in one day.

Everything she does makes sense, in hindsight.

“Ready?” she asked as she grabbed the papers and put them in an orange file folder. Everything about this case was color-coded orange. Post-it notes, highlighters, folders.

Catelyn Maxwell was one well-organized, extremely efficient, pain in my ass.

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