He started to ask her what she thought those items might be, but she continued. “I’m worried about Carly,” she said, which was not even close to what he’d thought she might want to say to him. “And Marcus, of course.”
He considered his answer. Vivienne DeMarco was leading him into a trap. Although, what that trap might be and why she would feel the need to lead him into it, he hadn’t a clue. “I think you have a right to be concerned about them.”
“Has she said anything to you? About all this?” Vivi asked as they rounded the corner to the small office kitchen.
He lifted a shoulder. “Not specifically, no.”
“What do you think about everything?”
He leaned against the counter as she made herself a cup of coffee. “I think the same thing that probably everyone else is thinking: we need to find a way to bring Repetto in.”
“What do you think our options are?” she pressed, also leaning against the counter, but turned toward him.
“Not sure I understand what you’re asking.”
Vivi took a sip of her coffee, then crossed an arm over her chest. “I mean, what do you think our chances are and what do you think the best way to pursue him is? The murder charges? The white-collar crimes? Tax evasion? There are any number of legal avenues we can pursue when it comes to bringing him to justice, do you think we’re better off with one over the other?”
Drew eyed her for a long moment. His gut told him this was some sort of test because he knew, as of this moment, they were pursuing every avenue.
“I’m not sure.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “You’ve been in law enforcement for nearly twenty years and your gut isn’t telling you anything?”
He felt his jaw clench. “I’m not in law enforcement. I’m in intelligence,” he corrected. “The kind of law enforcement you practice is different from what I do.”
“Hmm, it is, isn’t it?” she replied. Then looked at him expectantly.
“What?”
She let out sigh, as if he should know better. “What we’re doing in that room is very different from what you do, and yet you feel like you should be as competent and as capable as you are when you’re in your own realm. And because you don’t feel that way, you’re starting to feel doubt and guilt and probably a bit superfluous is my guess.”
“Do you ‘shrink’ everyone, or is this just my lucky day?” He’d meant the question to sound light, but it hadn’t.
“Let’s walk,” she said, pushing off the counter. “And yes, I do it to everyone, all the time. I don’t always talk about it or mention it, but it’s part of who I am, at this point, so you’ll just have to deal with it.”
He pushed off the counter as well, and they made their way back to the hallway. “I’m not sure who to feel sorrier for, you or your friends.”
“Me, probably,” she offered, then shrugged. “But maybe not. My point is, ninety percent of what you know isn’t relevant in that room in the same way ninety percent of what my husband knew when he left the Rangers wasn’t relevant to his current role. It’s not a projection on who you are, just what you’ve been trained to do.”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil-lis.”
“No need to get snippy,” she said as they turned down the hall leading them back to the conference room. “Because you do have something this investigations needs.”
“What’s that?” he asked. Perhaps a bit sarcastically. Perhaps.
“Certainly, we want you to look over the financials. Between your intelligence training and the businesses your family owns, you probably have the best eye for reviewing those.”
“Thanks.”
“But,” she paused at the door to the conference room and, with a hand on his arm, stopped him from entering. “The most important thing you can do is to be there for Carly.”
He stared at her, taken aback by the personal nature of her comment. On the verge of telling her to mind her own business, Drew stopped himself. She wasn’t making the suggestion to make him feel useful. By the look in her eye, he could see that this was something Vivi, as Carly’s friend, needed him to do. She needed him to look out for her friend, to make sure Carly stayed okay. So that the rest of them could focus on what they had to in order to bring this whole situation to a resolution.
“Please,” she added.
He nodded. “Of course.”
He didn’t miss the look of relief that crossed her face. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
They both stood there for a moment, then she took a deep breath and gestured with her head toward the door. “Back to the lion’s den. You going to come in and start with the finances?”
He paused. “In a minute. I want to call and check in with Carly first.”
She gave him a smile and then, much to his surprise, rolled up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.
“Thanks,” she said again, turned, and was gone—swallowed up by the investigation before her.
And there he was, holding his phone and dialing a now quite familiar number.
• • •
Drew hit “send” on the update he’d just finished for Rina, leaned back in his chair at Kit’s kitchen island, and stretched his arms over his head. After a long day, he was now at a little bit of a loss as to what to do. Carly was still at work, out on a call, and though Vivi had mentioned that Ian and some of his friends were getting together for dinner that night at Anderson’s, he wasn’t sure he wanted to join them.
“How goes it, Romeo?” Caleb asked, jogging up from his downstairs domain.
“What are you still doing here?”
Caleb chuckled. “That good, huh? Where is the lovely Deputy Chief tonight?”
Drew thought about telling Caleb where he could shove his question, but when Caleb opened the fridge and slid him a beer, he changed his mind.
“Working,” he answered.
“It must be killing her to have everyone else focused on the case when she has to keep working.”
Twisting the top off his bottle, he took a sip before answering. “It is. She hates it. But she’s hanging in there.”
“So what is the update?” Caleb leaned against the counter and crossed an arm over his chest, taking a sip of his own beer.
Drew glanced at his laptop, as if the summary he’d just sent to Rina would come to life and answer for him.
“Abbreviated version?”
Caleb rolled his eyes. “Dear god, please.”
Drew’s lips tipped into a small grin. “Okay, here goes. Vince Repetto, whose father-in-law is US Senator Buzz Laturna, has a gambling problem and an expensive wife.”
“Add a mistress into the mix and he’d have the trifecta of clichés.”
“Ha, not that we know of. But we think he may have been using at least nineteen other people in the same way he used Tony Lamot. Naomi and Brian are continuing to look into that.”
“Of course they are.”
“And the bullets that killed Sophia and Tony weren’t from Repetto’s gun. Of course, we weren’t expecting them to be,” he said, cutting off Caleb’s running commentary. “I know this will come as a shock, but the actual bullets are magically missing from the evidence, so all we have to work from is a digital image of them. Even though we know the bullets didn’t come from Repetto’s gun, Daniel’s resourceful. He’s going to try to clean up the image, then run it through the system again to see if it matches any evidence from other crimes. None of us are holding our breath that it will be the key to solving this, but it’s worth a try.”
“So, is there any good news?”
“Actually, two good leads,” he graced Caleb with a hold-your-horses look. “Repetto recently rented a yacht moored at a marina on the Potomac.”
Caleb frowned. “It’s almost November—weird time to rent a boat. Are you thinking it might be where he’s stashed whoever he’s working with?”
Drew nodded as he took another sip of his beer. “We are. Naomi and Brian are looking into that as well. Checking the utilities, CCTV, th
at kind of thing.”
“And the second lead?”
It was Drew’s turn to frown. “We don’t actually know what it means yet, but the earrings Sophia gave to Carly just before she left for Los Angles were inscribed with the string 411SB58. And before you ask, yes, we think it’s important, but, no, we have no idea what it means. Wyatt is running the number through every database he can think of and has come up blank so far. If you have any ideas, feel free to share.”
“Gun registration?”
Drew shook his head.
“Airplane registration?”
He started to say no, then paused. “I actually don’t know if he’s run them through the FAA database. I’ll text him and see.”
“See, I’m sometimes good for something,” Caleb said, raising his bottle in a mock cheer.
“I’ll withhold judgment until something comes from it.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a hard ass?”
Drew laughed. “More than once.”
“So what are you doing now? I know you weren’t ruminating on the case when I came in. You didn’t have that look you get when you’re in Agent Carmichael mode.”
The only thing that kept him from giving Caleb the finger was the fact that the guy was probably waiting for it. “I’m doing nothing.”
“Wrong answer. You’re brooding over Carly.”
Drew glared at Caleb, even though he knew the younger man was trying to get a rise out of him. “I don’t brood.”
“Fine. You were analyzing, assessing, deconstructing—”
He cut Caleb off. “Vivi told me that Ian, Dash Kent, and David Hathaway are getting together for dinner tonight at Anderson’s.”
“Ah, and now you don’t know whether or not you should go. Even though I bet the good doctor strongly recommended it, didn’t she?”
Drew picked at the label on his bottle. “She didn’t exactly recommend it.”
“Maybe not in so many words.”
He inclined his head. “Maybe not in so many words, no.”
“So are you going to go? Spend a little time with Carly’s best friends’ husbands?”
“You make it sound so . . .”
“Normal? Like something a normal guy would do if he was interested in a woman—get to know her friends?”
“You’re really annoying—you know that, right?”
Caleb lifted a shoulder. “Doesn’t mean I’m not right.”
Whether Caleb was right or not was something he decided he didn’t need to contemplate. But he did need to eat. And Carly wasn’t home yet, so he could kill some time at Anderson’s. It certainly sounded better than spending any more time with Caleb, a man that Drew now realized was annoyingly more astute than he had ever suspected. He threw Caleb one if his more imperious glares then, without a word, drained his beer, grabbed his coat, and walked out.
Dash called Drew’s name as he’d stepped into the restaurant. He glanced around to find the man sitting toward the back of the room with David Hathaway. He gave a small wave of acknowledgement and made his way toward them. It appeared that Ian hadn’t yet arrived, so whether he’d be invited to join them, he didn’t know.
Dash stood and shook his hand when he stopped by their table. “Good to see you,” he said. “You remember David from Kit and Garret’s party?”
He said hello, reaching out to shake David’s hand. Despite the fact that the two men were married to two of Kit and Carly’s good friends, he knew very little about either of them—only that Dash was one of the area’s local veterinarians and David was an arson investigator and firefighter.
“Join us?” Dash asked. “We just ordered drinks and are waiting for Ian before we order some dinner.”
“You don’t mind?” Drew asked, feeling a bit awkward.
“Of course not,” David said as a waiter stopped by to place two beer mugs on the table. “The two sodas go to the pool room,” David added, speaking to the server. “My stepson, James, and his friend Chelsea are here too,” he said, turning back to Drew.
“Can I get you anything?” the waiter asked as Drew removed his coat and took a seat.
“I’ll have whatever local you have on tap,” he said to the waiter, who nodded and moved away. He looked back at the two men. “But no wives?’ he asked in response to David’s comment about his young companions.
Both shook their heads.
“Jesse and Emma flew to Seattle today to visit her parents for a few days,” David said.
“And Matty is at home with the twins, but her mom is up visiting,” Dash said. “Her mom and my mom are good friends so, together, they’re taking care of Charley and Daphne—and Matty is getting some much-deserved sleep.”
David shrugged. “Then again, this is kind of a guys’ thing anyway. We try to get together about once a month on our own,” he added, echoing what Vivi had told Drew earlier.
Drew supposed their “guys’ night” was a good thing. He hadn’t ever been so entwined in another person’s life that he’d needed to carve out his own time. If anything, his life had been the opposite—he’d actually needed to carve out time to be with other people or he would have stayed heads down in Langley all hours of the day and night.
He was about to ask when Ian would arrive when the front door opened and in walked the sheriff. Drew noticed Ian’s lack of surprise at seeing him there and guessed that Vivi had told her husband that she’d mentioned the outing to him.
“Drew, glad you’re joining us,” Ian said as he sat down. The bartender called over and asked Ian if he wanted his usual; Ian replied with a prompt, and definitive, yes.
He had an urge to ask Ian how Marcus was doing, but since neither Dash nor David knew anything about that whole situation, and didn’t need to, he bit his tongue. Then he wondered what he would talk about without work to discuss.
He’d been on plenty of dates and attended enough business meetings to fill a yearly planner, but when was the last time he’d hung out with friends—or in this case, potential friends—with no agenda, no plans, and pretty much nothing in common? He took a sip of beer, or several, while the other three caught each other up on their wives and kids and, as he listened, wondered what he had gotten himself into. It wasn’t that he was disinterested, he just didn’t have anything to add, for obvious reasons. Well, if nothing else, he’d at least enjoy a good burger.
“You like football?” David asked him suddenly. Drew felt his heart sink a little. He was not looking forward to an evening of talking football.
“More of a basketball fan,” he answered.
“And how do you feel about politics?” Dash asked.
“At this point, a necessary evil.”
“How do you like Windsor?” David followed up.
Drew cast Ian a questioning look, but the man didn’t look interested in shedding any light on the conversation—not judging by the glint in his strangely colored eyes.
“It’s nice,” he answered slowly. “It’s beautiful—small, but pretty.”
“Think you’ll be sticking around?” Dash volleyed.
On that subject, Drew intended to stay close-lipped. He saw their intentions were good—they were scoping him out—but he had no intention of saying anything that might get back to Carly without first saying it to her.
He shrugged in response. “Did any of you watch that Knicks game two days ago?” he asked instead. It was apparently the right question, as the three men at the table promptly launched into a “discussion” about the state of basketball, their favorite teams, and, of course, who would win the title. As a bit of a basketball junkie himself, this was a conversation in which Drew could happily participate.
As he drove to Carly’s a few hours later, he realized he’d had a good time. There was a lot about that realization that bothered him. It seemed to highlight how few “good times” he’d had lately. But the night had also driven home the point he’d made to Carly a few days earlier about how few friends—real friends—he actually had. Not th
at David, Dash, and Ian were now his bosom buddies, but they could become friends and, more importantly, he saw what good friends they were to each other.
But he’d chosen his life all those years ago. And he didn’t regret it. Not truly. At least not often.
With that somewhat dispiriting thought, he turned into Carly’s driveway. The lights streaming from her porch and kitchen came as no surprise, he’d known she would be home, but they were a welcome sight.
“Come in,” she called when he knocked.
“You didn’t lock your door?” As the door swung open under his touch, he walked into what appeared to be an unoccupied house. He had heard her clearly, but he couldn’t see her. Light from the television flickered in the living room, casting the room into ever-changing blue hues.
“I’ve only been home for about fifteen minutes. I figured you’d be by sooner or later. If you hadn’t shown up in ten minutes or so, I would have locked it,” she replied from the couch.
Drew closed the door, locked it, and walked into the living room to find her lying down. She’d changed from her uniform and was tucked under a blanket with her head on a pillow and a remote in her hand.
“What are you watching?” He removed his coat and took a seat in the upholstered chair. The video obviously had something to do with horses, but beyond recognizing that someone rode an enormous animal as it hurled itself over jumps that looked at least as tall as he was, he knew nothing about what he saw on the screen.
“That’s me,” she said softly.
His eyes focused to watch Carly and her horse jump another fence that looked impossible to clear. But clear it they did, and when a score flashed up on the screen—numbers that meant nothing to him—it appeared that her trip around the course was over.
He let out a little sigh of relief, which was stupid. She’d obviously survived that long-ago ride, since she was sitting right next to him. But then, to his distress, she rewound the DVD and pressed play again.
“Is that really you?”
She nodded against her pillow. “Yes. This is one of the DVDs from the boxes Mikaela brought. Practically my whole riding career was caught on tape. Or DVD, to be more precise.”
“Those jumps look twice your size, at least.” He managed to choke out the words as he watched her sail over something that looked like two pickup trucks backed up against each other, only instead of truck beds there were round poles.
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