Page 14 of Philly
“If you don’t want to share, you shouldn’t have brought it up in front of me, Leo,” Joey replied, her eyes narrowed on her significant other.
“He’s nosy. Not one of his better qualities,” Philly said. “He mentioned it in front of you so you would insist on knowing. Then I’d feel bad about you not knowing and tell you both everything so that he can be in the know, too.”
Joey stared at him, then transferred her gaze to Leo. Leo shrugged. “I am nosy. It makes me good at my job. Besides, it’s not official business, so it’s not confidential.”
“And you like to be the one helping the club,” Joey added.
Leo shrugged again. “Yeah, I do. I’m kind of offended you went to Ava and not me,” he added with a pointed look at Philly.
Philly shook his head. “I’m not getting into this with you. If you want to help, you work it out with Ava. If I start talking to you, she’ll be pissed at me, then Mitch will be more pissed at me than he already is because I pissed off his wife. That’s more drama than I need.”
Leo grinned. “Fair. I’ll talk to Ava. Mitch will be on my side. I’ll let you know.”
“Will you be at Rita’s tonight?” Joey asked. “We’re having our last planning meeting for the Halloween party.”
William Warwick—former president and Joey’s grandfather—hosted a huge party every Halloween. It was the event of the year for the locals, and several years ago, responsibility for the elaborate haunted house transferred from his kids to his grandkids. This year, they’d enlisted a few of the Falcons to help fill in as extras in the 1950s zombie diner they had planned.
“I’ll be there. Lovell and Scipio, too. Lovell had some ideas about what to do as the cook,” he replied. Lovell had agreed to play that part but hadn’t shared his plans yet.
They said their goodbyes, and he finally made his way to his truck. After climbing in, he checked his phone. A text from Mantis and an email from a lumber mill.
He hadn’t lied when he told Ava that Callie would be back. But he’d go to his grave before acknowledging the twinge of disappointment that curled through him when he didn’t see her name on his screen.
8
It took six days for Callie and Lyda to decode and translate Liza’s files. Of course, the decoding had taken much longer. In the end, Callie had to stop thinking about the letters as letters and start treating them as symbols. They were letters. But her mind couldn’t separate decoding them from trying to read them, trying to make them make sense, and it kept slowing her down. Once she forced her brain tonotthink of them as letters that should make sense but didn’t, it had gone a lot faster.
Letting herself into her small Foggy Bottom apartment in DC, she hung her jacket up on the coat rack and dragged her roller board to her room, dropping her computer bag in the tiny office as she passed.
Despite the fact that it was only nine o’clock at night—even earlier for her body clock—exhaustion washed through her at the sight of her bed. On a sigh, she turned from the temptation. She only had a few days of leave left, and she wanted to comb through the files in a way she hadn’t had time to in New Mexico. She also needed to eat, although she had no idea what her cupboards held after almost two weeks away.
Kicking off her heeled boots, she changed from her jeans and sweater into a pair of leggings and a thick FBI sweatshirt, then wandered back to the kitchen. Not bothering with the refrigerator, she checked the freezer and found a bag of Trader Joe’s frozen dumplings. Good enough.
As she heated the pan, she turned her mind to Liza’s files and the question that had been teasing her since she and Lyda completed the translations. Why had Liza kept the information—dates, observations, and potential theories—from her official records and left the USB to Callie? It was interesting data, but there was nothing concrete. Nothing to tell her why Liza had gone to that club when she had or what she thought she’d find.
Her stomach twisted, imagining that night. At the thought of Liza caught in that chaos. Had she died quickly? Or had she been injured, aware of what was happening, frightened, perhaps thinking of her mother? In the end, had she figured out that she’d been set up? Callie didn’t have proof of that, not yet, but she’d find it.
Turning the stove off, she tossed the bag of dumplings back in the freezer. She’d eat later. For now, she had work to do.
Callie tappedthe stack of papers against the surface of her desk, aligning the pages, then slid her slim findings into a folder. Glancing at the clock on her computer, she watched it roll over from one minute to the next. Still fifteen minutes to go before she met with her supervisor, assistant director in charge, Greg Chrome.
A knock on her door sounded, and she called for them to enter. A second later, Nate Erickson poked his head in.
“You got a minute?” he asked. She nodded and he slipped inside, moving more gracefully than such a tall man should.
“What’s up?” she asked. “Please tell me nothing’s gone sideways on the Navios case?”
He grinned. “Nothing’s gone sideways on the Navios case. The prosecutors are delighted—their words, not mine—with the evidence we handed over.”
She let out a small breath of relief. She’d stepped into that case a month ago when she’d traveled to Mystery Lake to talk with Gabriel about Laura Nolan the first time. She’d set aside her questions to help deal with the very recent murder of Lina Kato’s father.
“While you’ve been away, Chrome has been on a rampage,” he said.
She made a face. “Worse than usual?” Chrome had joined the team a little over a year earlier and, in his short time, had made it clear that it was his way or the highway. When anyone questioned him, he touted his closure rate. But what he failed to note was that he only agreed to take on the most straightforward cases—cases that local law enforcement could close on their own—and that the turnover rate of his team was the highest in the Bureau. That second fact was anecdotal, but it was a hot topic at the water cooler.
“I’ve been offered a job in the Chicago office,” Nate said.
“Take it,” Callie replied without missing a beat.
