Chapter 13
Ben
Donovan was staring at me like I’d grown a second head.
He’d been doing it for the better part of ten minutes, ever since I’d made the mistake of telling him where I’d been that morning. He was leaning against my kitchen counter with a beer in his hand and an expression that fell somewhere between awe and clinical fascination.
“A school assembly,” he said. “An elementary school assembly.”
“It was a K9 demonstration. Jolly and I have done them before. Hell, you have too.”
“We’ve done them for law enforcement conferences. Military training facilities. Corporate security expos.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Not for rooms full of six-year-olds sitting crisscross applesauce on a gym floor.”
“They sit in rows, actually.”
“Oh, well. That changes everything.” He took a sip of his beer. “When you called this morning and said you had a meeting, I assumed you meant Rawlings. Or maybe Vance. Possibly even a secret rendezvous with someone from NASA. Instead, you were performing for children.”
“Jolly was performing. I was just holding the leash.”
“Does the Nobel committee know about this? Because I feel like there should be some kind of humanitarian award for a man who willingly subjects himself to a couple hundred screaming kids before nine in the morning.”
I rolled my eyes. “For fuck’s sake. It wasn’t that bad.”
“Of course it wasn’t. You probably loved it.” He studied me over the rim of his beer. “How many kids asked if Jolly could find their missing pets?”
“One cat.”
“And how many asked if he sleeps in your bed?”
I didn’t answer that.
“He does, doesn’t he?” Donovan grinned. “Big, tough K9 handler. Sleeps with his dog.”
As if Donovan’s K9 hadn’t always slept with him too. “He has his own bed. He just doesn’t always use it.”
“The kids must have eaten that shit up.” He set his beer down and crossed his arms. “So, let me get this straight. You’re telling me the school had some reptile show lined up, it fell through, and you just happened to volunteer?”
“Kayla mentioned it. The assembly was about to be canceled. Two hundred kids were going to be devastated. Jolly and I were available.”
“Kayla mentioned it.” He repeated the name like he was tasting it. “And you said yes because you’re such a generous member of the community.”
“I said yes because it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Right. No big deal. Just Ben Garrison, the man who once told me he’d rather eat glass than make small talk, standing in front of a gym full of first graders giving a forty-five-minute presentation.
Because his neighbor mentioned it.” He picked his beer back up.
“This neighbor. The one who drinks lemon ginger tea.”
“Are you done?”
“Oh, not even remotely.” He was enjoying himself far too much. “Tell me something, Ben. When’s the last time you volunteered for anything that didn’t involve a firearm or a security clearance?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
“That’s what I thought.” He lifted his beer in a mock toast. “Kayla Cafferty. The woman who turned Ben Garrison into a man who does school assemblies. I’d like to send her a fruit basket.”
“Please shut up.”
“PTA meetings? Chaperoning field trips?” He was ticking items off on his fingers. “Book fairs? Are you going to be one of those dads who builds sets for the school play?”
“Fuck off.”
“Just trying to understand the trajectory here.” He let the silence settle for a beat.
Then his expression shifted, the teasing still there but carrying an edge now.
“So what’s the real play with her? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re putting in a whole lot of effort to get a single mom into bed.
I mean, she’s hot and all, but that’s a lot of work for some pus—”
“Stop talking.”
My voice dropped into a register that had nothing to do with banter. Low, flat, stripped of everything except the warning underneath it. The same voice I’d used exactly twice in Afghanistan, both times right before things went very wrong for the person who didn’t listen.
The kitchen went still.
Donovan’s grin didn’t fade. It died. He looked at me, and I watched him realize that the man standing across the kitchen from him was not the same man who’d been trading jokes thirty seconds ago.
I hadn’t moved. Hadn’t raised my voice. Hadn’t done anything except let him see what was behind the door he’d just tried to open.
“Don’t talk about her like that.” Quiet. Final.
Jolly had lifted his head from his bed in the living room, ears forward, body tense. Reading the room the way he read every room—looking for the threat.
Donovan set his beer on the counter. Slowly. “I was out of line.”
“You were joking. I know that.” I did fucking know it. Damn it. We’d joked like this for years. I couldn’t pinpoint why my hands were clenched into fists right now.
“Still out of line.” He meant it. I could hear it. Whatever he’d been expecting when he’d pushed that button, this wasn’t it. “I’m sorry.”
The silence sat between us for a few seconds. Heavy.
“It’s not like anything,” I said. “We’re neighbors. We’re figuring things out.”
“Ben.” His voice was careful now, picking through terrain he knew was mined.
“I have seen you take fire, get blown up, and walk through situations that would break most people, and not once have I seen your face do what it just did. Over a joke.” He held my gaze.
“Whatever this is, it’s past the figuring-things-out stage, whether you’ve caught up to that yet or not. ”
I didn’t have an answer. He was right, and the fact that he was right sat in my chest like something I wasn’t ready to look at directly.
He picked his beer back up. Took a long sip. The gesture was deliberate—unhurried, casual, signaling that we were moving past it.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m glad.”
“You’re glad.”
“You’ve spent seven years caring about exactly two things. Jolly and the job. In that order.” He shrugged. “Nice to see a third thing make the list.”
“We haven’t— I haven’t— It’s not—” I ran my hand through my hair. Jesus fucking Christ. Someone just shoot me. “Can we just fucking work now?”
“Please. I’m going to have to start charging you by the hour otherwise.”
Jolly put his head back down on his paws. Satisfied that the humans had sorted themselves out. Tail thumped once.
We moved to the dining room. The suspect photos still covered the wall under the harsh overhead light, and looking at those faces in neat rows never got easier.
“The dealer from the second raid,” I said. “Useless?”
“Completely.” Donovan pulled up a chair and straddled it backward, arms folded across the top. “Kid had been working for his supplier less than a week. Didn’t know the supplier’s real name, didn’t know where the product came from, didn’t know anyone up the chain. He was a warm body behind a table.”
“And the two buyers?”
“In town for a weekend. Bought from the cabin twice. Couldn’t tell you anything about the operation beyond where to show up and how much to bring.” He shrugged. “Second raid gave us product and arrests, but zero intel on the supply chain.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “So, almost as useless as our first raid that had zero arrests.”
“Pretty much.”
I walked to the wall and stood in front of the high-risk cluster. Vance. Martinez. Reeves. Briggson. Four faces staring back at me under bad lighting, none of them giving anything away.
“Why are we keeping Vance here? We know he’s not dirty, right?”
Donovan shrugged one shoulder. “As much as we can know about anyone. Yeah, I’m moving him to low.”
I moved his picture, still staring at the others.
“Briggson’s tantrum the other night after the arrest,” Donovan said, following my gaze.
“He was definitely fucking pissed.”
“That he was. Maybe because his bad guy buddies could’ve been busted. But, honestly? If I’d been on the team eight years and got left off a live op, I’d have been in Vance’s face too.”
“Same.” I’d landed in the same place days ago. Briggson’s reaction was consistent with a dirty cop who’d lost control—and equally consistent with a territorial cop whose pride took a hit. Neither version proved anything.
My phone buzzed on the counter. Jace.
I picked up and put it on speaker. “What’s going on, Jace?”
“Financial updates.” No preamble. No jokes.
Just Jace in work mode, which meant he’d found something worth being serious about.
“Starting with Briggson. He’s clean. Lives within his means, no unexplained deposits, no unusual spending.
His biggest financial vice is a fishing magazine subscription.
” A beat. “He also donates more to charity than anyone else in the department. Has for three years running.”
Donovan raised an eyebrow.
“Doesn’t rule him out,” I said.
“No. But he’s low on my list.” Keys clattered.
“Martinez—the one you said is always on his phone. History of online gambling. Got himself in a hole about two years back, racked up debt, appears to have pulled out. The gambling’s stopped, at least online.
But there have been deposits the past few months that don’t match his pay schedule. Few hundred here and there.”
“Source?”
“Unknown. Could be family loans, side jobs, selling junk online. Could also be a local game. It’s worth watching, but it’s thin.” More typing. “Now. Reeves.”
Donovan leaned forward.
“Similar surface pattern to Martinez—irregular cash deposits, few hundred at a time, no clear source. But Reeves has two phones.”
“Two phones?” I repeated.
“Personal phone registered in his name. Prepaid phone, purchased with cash, three months ago. And over the past month, the personal phone has called the prepaid several times.”
“He’s calling himself.”