Page 22 of Philly
“Of course I did.”
“I mean really ask her?”
Philly turned and looked at his brother full-on this time, prompting him without speaking.
Lovell exhaled, as if disappointed in him. “She’s not popping out to California on a whim or on the FBI’s dime. This is personal to her.”
“Yeah, we already figured that out,” Philly said.
“You asked why she wanted to know about Laura, right?” Philly nodded. “A very transactional question with a hundred ways to answer. The easiest being to say it’s tied to a case.”
“An investigation,” Philly confirmed with his correction.
“You should have asked why the case is important enough to her that she’d seek you out. Twice,” Lovell said. “You’ve kept your mouth shut about whatever it is that’s between you, but whatever it is, she’s as uncomfortable as you are when the two of you are in the same room.”
“And yet she still came. To ask you about this case,” Monk said.
“Twice,” Lovell repeated.
Leo tipped his head at the point well made.
So caught up in dealing with his own quagmire of shit when it came to Callie, he hadn’t given her emotions any brain space. It was way easier to think of her as an all-business, cold FBI agent than a woman who, like him, carried baggage about theirpast. In truth, even with Lovell calling it out, he had a hard time believing she felt much of anything about the day she ended everything between them. Including their decade-long friendship.
He didn’t want to tackle his own demons about that night, let alone hers, so, of course, he’d given it no thought. Or not the kind of thought Lovell referred to.
Mantis entered the room, the cadence of his boots on the hardwood floors cutting off his ruminations and drawing all their attention. Their president paused, eyed the four of them, then jerked his head to the conference room. “We have a situation. I need you in the meeting room. Sorry, Leo, Falcons’ business.”
12
From his spot near the small river that flowed behind his house, the muted chime of his doorbell tried crawling into his consciousness. Ignoring it, he took a sip of beer, keeping his gaze fixed on the flames of the firepit. He was in no mood for company. Not after the stretch of days he’d just had.
Over the years, the Falcons had extracted hundreds of people from abusive relationships. They’d all grown up in similar situations, and the volunteer work was part and parcel of who they were as adults. But the one he and Monk had just returned from hadn’t gone like any of the others.
They’d had a few change their minds, they’d had some ask to be taken back, they’d even had one try to kill herself. But this one, well, they’d never walked in on a man dragging his wife’s body to the garden.
He and Monk put a stop to his cover-up and called the police—tricky business since the asshole was one of them. And when they discovered that the woman he’d been about to bury wasn’t actually dead—yet—they’d clung to a tiny shard of hope that Stacey Harris would survive.
For three days they stood watch over her while she lingered in a coma. Call them crazy, but they weren’t going to trust the police to protect her. Not after learning a few of the douchebag’s colleagues knew how he treated his family and had said nothing, done nothing.
The only saving grace of the entire shitty situation was the bastard wouldn’t walk away unpunished for what he’d done. And Stacey’s sister, Nicole. She’d rushed to Bakersfield from her home in San Diego the day of the attack and immediately begun the paperwork to take custody of her niece. Her husband and her own daughter—twelve-year-old Anita—had come with her.
The family seemed close and like good people, but he’d asked Leo to confirm. Once Leo assured him that Nicole and her family were solid people, he took his first easy breath since finding Stacey and the troglodyte.
Nine minutes before midnight on the third day, Stacey Harris succumbed to her injuries and died, leaving her daughter, Anna, to live with the consequences of her father’s actions.
He and Monk had had a long, quiet ride home.
His doorbell rang again, and again, he dismissed it. He’d only been home for three hours. He’d showered, gone for a ten-mile run, then showered again. Now he planned to do nothing more than sit, sip his beer, and stare at the fire.
Only Callie had other ideas. He didn’t need to look to know those were her footsteps treading evenly on the grass as she walked down the small hill behind his house. Because of course it was her. He had no idea what he’d done to piss karma off so bad, but clearly, he’d done something.
“Gabriel,” she said, coming to a stop beside him.
He glanced up. She wore those tall fuzzy boots over a pair of fitted jeans and a puffy black down jacket. Her hair hung loose down her back, but a purple wool cap covered her head. The lightof the flames reflected in her dark eyes, and he swore he saw a hint of empathy as she studied him.
He turned away.
“Not tonight, Callie,” he said, taking another sip of his beer. His second taste in the last thirty minutes.
