Chapter 4
“Let’s walk through it again,” Cruz says.
“We’ve walked through it a hundred times already.” I push my chair away from my desk and stand, circling the tiny, suffocating cubicle I’ve been confined to after last night’s screwup. Jones and Hadley are on Hawthorne now while Cruz and I “regroup.”
I step to the left, then toss a wad of paper halfway across the bullpen, banking it into the trash can.
Agent Carson high-fives me on the way back to his desk.
“What’s left for us to even walk through?” I ask Cruz. “Hawthorne is a criminal, but we don’t have enough proof to arrest him, so instead we are wasting government money babysitting him.”
Cruz stands and tosses a wad of paper from even further back and…sinks it, of course. “You know, I thought you’d be happier after finally getting some action last night,” she taunts, flipping her long dark hair over her shoulder.
She’s been hanging around a bunch of guys for too long. I press my lips together to keep from telling her off, then wince. My bottom lip is bruised, and the physical reminder of Amelia’s wild kiss gets my blood pumping faster. The woman drew blood. She was as terrifying as she was beautiful.
I push all thoughts of her from my mind. I need to focus. Like I should have last night.
“You know what I mean. We don’t have any proof of Hawthorne’s crimes. Nothing that will hold up in court at least.”
The guy has “untouchable aristocrat” written all over him. Nothing happened at the restaurant last night. Well, something happened. Something I’m trying hard to forget about. But nothing with Hawthorne. He was on his phone the whole time. He didn’t even order a meal, only a drink.
Which doesn’t prove anything. Maybe he was hiring hitmen to take out someone in Russia while he sipped wine. Some people are straight-up psychos.
“We don’t get the luxury of choosing our assignments. We still have to follow him and figure out what he’s up to here,” Cruz says, looking down her nose at me. We get it. She’s tall. She’s also tough as nails and I’d never dare cross her.
“Fine, let’s walk through it again.”
She starts at the beginning. With the list of suspected art crimes of Liam Hawthorne. Nothing is concrete. The man shows up in a country, only for an ancient artifact or priceless work of art to disappear or be replaced by a forgery a week later. The only pattern we have on his M.O. is that he visits each location before it’s hit. Beyond that, all we’ve got is a physical description from one security guard who almost caught him when he stole something from the Louvre.
After each heist, zero footage remains, anywhere. Street cams, security cams, and even social media. He disappears without a trace. Someone with that kind of tech ability is extremely dangerous. It makes me wonder why he allows himself to be seen entering the country at all. It’s like a game to him, testing us to see if we’ll catch him before he disappears again.
But all those crimes look petty when compared to his most criminal act.
The murder of Scarlett Winthrop four and a half years ago. Scarlett Winthrop was the daughter of a European dignitary, who moved to the U.S. when she was eighteen and found fame in Hollywood because of her connections and looks. She was killed on the night of her twenty-first birthday in her penthouse, while dozens of party guests continued the celebrations downstairs.
Some friends.
The killer was never found, but it was rumored that Hawthorne had been in love with her and was at the party that night. A very drunk couple claimed they saw him head upstairs around the time of death. But that’s all it was, rumors. No traces of DNA were found, and the video surveillance had been completely erased so no one could be identified coming or going the whole night.
It’s also believed that whoever killed her took a priceless emerald ring that had been a gift to the Winthrop family from a monarch over a hundred years ago. Scarlett’s friends swore she wore the ring that night to celebrate, but it was nowhere to be found. The ring is worth over forty million dollars. The Winthrops want the killer brought to justice and the priceless heirloom returned. But our only suspect, Liam Hawthorne, disappeared four years ago. Only to turn up in Phoenix of all places.
His disappearance tells a story all its own. Only guilty people run. I thought we’d bring him in for questioning the second he landed, but the boss wants evidence first. Guys like that don’t say a word, then go free on technicalities with the help of their fancy lawyer. But if we can find out why he’s here and if it’s connected to Scarlett’s death, we can keep him locked up.
I scrub a hand down my face, wishing for the hundredth time that simply “walking through it again” would bring to light the final missing piece of evidence everyone else overlooked. I’ve poured over every case file, every note, everything. But it has yet to yield any results.
My personal phone buzzes and I welcome the distraction.
Ward:Dinner at six.
I’ve been busy since moving back to Arizona and haven’t had a chance to catch up with my friend. Now he’s giving me no choice. It’s not that I’m avoiding him, I’m just… okay I’m avoiding him. Ward is happy now with Lyndi and Crew, I don’t want to do anything to ruin that.
I haven’t seen them since they got married almost a year ago. It was a small ceremony in Ward’s parents” courtyard. And afterward, Lyndi sent me home with some of her homemade desserts. I thought their love had made me nauseous. Turns out it was her cookies. I didn’t know it was possible to get food poisoning from baked goods. Now I know what it’s like to quite literally lose my cookies.
I haven’t had a chocolate chip cookie since. Which is a shame because they used to be my favorite.
Caleb: Is Lyndi cooking?
Ward: Not a chance. She almost burned down the house last week.
Lyndi is a wonderful person, the one woman in the world I didn’t mind handing my closest friend off to, but cooking isn’t a skill she possesses.
I lock my phone and slip it into my pocket. It’s time I visited them.
“I’m heading out.” I stand and shut my laptop. “Let me know if you come up with anything more on Hawthorne.”
“I’m not doing your homework, Harris.” Cruz chucks a pen at me. It misses and I smirk at her.
“But I know how much you like being the teacher’s pet.”
Her black eyes shoot daggers into my soul. I’m the only one who knows about her crush on our supervisor, but I’m a good partner, and won’t tell. Not yet anyway.
Thirty minutes later I’m standing in front of my old home.
Well, not mine. Ward owns it. But I lived with him for my years in between active duty and the academy when we both worked at the local fire station. The house looks different, though nothing on the outside has changed. The grass is freshly cut, and there’s a Spider-Man bike in the corner of the driveway, but that’s not what’s new.
When we got back from Iraq we were two broken dudes recovering from war and we carried that darkness with us, letting it permanently cloud over the house.
Lyndi and Crew brought the sunshine back for Ward. I couldn’t be happier they found each other.
I didn’t think I needed someone like that, but ever since my mom passed, there’s an ache in my chest I can’t seem to fill. But it’s an ache I’ll have to learn to live with. I keep telling myself the harder I work, the more good I do in the world, the better it will erase the pain loneliness causes. Because I have no intention of ever settling down with a woman. My dad used my mom repeatedly, and I refuse to become like him. Only showing up when it was convenient for him, and only long enough to take more money, and break her heart all over again.
“Uncle Caleb, catch me!”
I glance around the house, searching for the voice belonging to a very rambunctious six-year-old.
“Crew?”
“Up here!”
I tilt my head back so far my neck cramps. He’s at the top of the tallest tree in the yard, standing on a very thin branch and waving with one arm.
“Crew!” I sprint beneath him ready to catch him if he falls. “What are you doing up there?”
“I climbed up with my spider webs.” He spreads his fingers like he believes he truly is Spider-Man.
“That’s pretty impressive buddy, but you better get down now before you give me a heart attack. Even Spider-Man has to be safe.” My voice wobbles when he steps onto a lower branch, and I hold out my arms, trying to anticipate his next move.
Crew pouts. “Ugh. That’s what Mom says too.” And then he leaps.
My heart leaps with him, relocating back to my chest when he falls safely into my arms with a thud.
I can’t have kids. This one stresses me out.
I haul him over my shoulders like a sack of potatoes and he giggles as I push open the front door.
“Hey guys, look at the cat I saved from the tree,” I holler.
“I’m not a cat.” Crew laughs, bouncing along on my shoulder.
“Crew?” Lyndi rounds the corner. “Ward! I thought you put the ladder in the shed.”
“I did.” Ward joins us.
Crew squirms in my arms so I put him down. “I did it all by myself, Daddy.”
I go still, taken back by Crew’s reference to Ward, but no one else is fazed by it. I knew it was only a matter of time before Crew called him Dad, but how long was I away? My best friend is a dad. And I’m—
“Hungry?” Ward interrupts my train of thought.
“Yes.”
“Well come on, stop standing there like a weirdo,” Lyndi says. I follow her toward the kitchen. “I didn’t slave over this meal all day for nothing.”
I stumble over a toy on the floor.
She turns around and shoots a smile at me over her shoulder. “I’m teasing. Ward told me.”
“Come on, man.” I glare at my friend.
“It’s okay, I only cried for a little bit,” Lyndi says.
Exactly what I was afraid of.
“She’s kidding.” Ward laughs. Actually laughs. “Did you forget how to take a joke while you were learning to save the world?”
Me? He’s one to talk. He was an emotional brickwall for five years. What kind of weird Marvel multiverse did I land in where the grump of all grumps is telling me to lighten up?
Lyndi squeezes by me in the dining room, and only when she doesn’t fit do I realize what’s wrong with her.
“You’re pregnant?” I gape at her, and then Ward. That little devil. He got his wife pregnant and didn’t tell me? Scratch that. Obviously, I didn’t need that info.
Lyndi gasps. “Do I look pregnant? Ward, you didn’t tell me I was getting fat!”
A grenade drops into the pit of my stomach and I wait for it to explode. Did I seriously misread that?
“What? No, I’m sorry.” I frown at her stomach. The stomach that looks like it’s holding a full-sized basketball under her black shirt. I don’t know kids very well but I’m pretty sure they start out like that.
A laugh breaks through my worries. “I’m sorry, that was too fun,” Lyndi says.
“It serves you right for avoiding us for the last month,” Ward says with a pointed look. He’s right. They are my family, and I should have come over the second I got back to Arizona.
“Alright, alright, I have been properly chastened.” I hold my hands up in surrender. “You’re glowing, both of you.” I poke Ward’s stomach. “And your dad bod is coming in nicely.”
He gets me in a headlock the second the words are out of my mouth.
“I can still take you, Special Agent.”
That was before. With two quick moves, I’m out of his grasp and ready to take him to the ground.
“Boys,” Lyndi chides, “no wrestling at the dinner table.”
“We can only do that on the trampoline,” Crew pipes in.
I ruffle Crew’s hair as I snag a seat beside him. “I don’t want to embarrass your dad when he loses. How about I take you on instead?”
“Challenge accepted.” Crew squints his eyes and punches a fist into his other hand. We shake on it as Ward and Lyndi sit on the other side of the table.
“Alright,” I blow out my cheeks, “tell me everything I missed.”
“I’m getting a sister!” Crew says. Then launches into everything he’s going to do with the baby when she comes out. Nerf wars, wrestling, and bike races. The kid is in for a rude awakening.
The adults pass the food around the table as Crew chatters. Why did it take me so long to come over? I was so worried about intruding on their perfect family, but now, I don’t want to leave.
They aren’t perfect; there’s permanent marker on the table, and scuffs on the walls. They are normal, and I need normal.
After Lyndi tells me about some of her latest sewing endeavors, all of which go entirely over my head, Ward fills me in on the business. The one he swore up and down he’d never be a part of but is now getting ready to take over.
“Uncle Caleb, guess what?”
I turn my attention back to Crew who can only go without talking for a total of thirty-five seconds. “What, buddy?”
“I asked a girl to be my valentine.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “But it’s June.”
His shoulders droop. “I know. That’s why she said she had to ask her mom.”
My shoulders tremble as I try to suppress the laughter. But laughter is the best stress reliever, and this kid is like magic that way. My screwup last night hardly feels relevant in the grand picture when I’m sitting here surrounded by a family full of love.
I bite down on my bottom lip and the pain rears up, reminding me of my moment of recklessness. There’s nothing as reckless as love. The very idea of it is out of the question for me.
There was a reason I picked the FBI. Relationships in my line of work can become a liability in a minute. And I don’t have anyone left to protect.