Chapter 42
“ C ongratulations,” Leo said when Callie walked into HICC the next day. Alone. She’d had the night and early morning with Gabriel. Time to shut the world out and simply be with each other. But when the sun rose, life rose again with it.
“Thanks,” she said, a wry smile tugging at her lips. She and Gabriel had done a one-eighty in their relationship, and it was almost embarrassing how little everyone seemed to question it. Not even Daphne, whom she’d called that morning.
Her sister had squealed like a thirteen-year-old girl, then let loose a string of swear words long enough that even Gabriel blushed.
By the time they ended the call, the entire town probably knew how Daphne felt about them eloping.
Her people had also booked her a flight to Mystery Lake in February, the soonest she could make it due to prior engagements.
She’d tried to blow off those engagements and arrive within the next few days, but Callie had told her to wait.
She wanted to focus on the case, bring Liza’s killer to justice, then take time away with Gabriel to relax and unwind.
A novel concept for her to consider, let alone crave, but for the first time in her life, she did.
She wanted to sit on a beach and drink cold beer or maybe lounge on the deck of one of those overwater huts in the South Pacific.
She wanted to hear about Gabriel’s life in the twenty years they’d been apart.
She already knew him in the same way he knew her.
But she wanted the details, the mundane things like his favorite color and whether he watched true crime shows.
And she wanted to learn those things without the specter of a killer hanging over them.
“Any chance I can get set up in a conference room?” she asked as Leo handed over a stack of files.
“Of course. And everything in those printouts is on our secure drive, so you have it electronically as well.”
She followed him up two flights of stairs to the top floor of the building.
From the outside, the headquarters looked like little more than a glorified shed—a massive shed, but a shed, nonetheless.
The casual observer would never see the eighteen inches of reinforced materials behind the metal siding, securing the structure against attacks.
And inside, well, shed was the last word she’d use.
Everything, from the windows to the chairs to the coffee to the equipment, was top-of-the-line.
Not masquerading as a home, as some office environments tried to do—no, this was clearly a workplace, but a workplace intended to make life easier for employees when, sometimes, the work they did would be anything but.
“Will this be okay?” Leo asked, opening a door to a large rectangular room, easily twice the size of the one they’d used before heading to Utah.
It had a massive screen anchoring one of the short walls while the long wall opposite the door was nearly a wall of windows—probably bulletproof and reflective from the outside, but she didn’t ask.
She smiled. “This is perfect.”
“You want me to stay and go over the updates?” Leo offered.
“Is it all in the secure drive?” He nodded. “Then I’m good,” she said, already visualizing the information.
“Your final background check cleared while you were in Utah, so you now have access to all the databases HICC does. If you need help finding anything, holler.”
Excitement vibrated through her body, making her feel…
giddy? She’d never been giddy before in her life, but it felt the way her books described it, a flutter vibrating through her body.
She had autonomy, was surrounded by the best of the best in the field, had access to everything to make her job easier, and she had Gabriel.
She fought the urge to quash her own happiness, to not let herself feel it. Everyone else at HICC seemed to have it all—purposeful work with good people, healthy private lives (although not so private, she was learning), and balance. Why couldn’t she have it, too?
She decided then and there that she could. Not only could she have it—after all, it was staring her in the face—but she was going to grab hold of it with all her might.
Old habits died hard, though, and she accepted that she’d probably be looking over her shoulder for a while, waiting for someone to criticize or tell her she wasn’t good enough.
But she wouldn’t focus on it, or anticipate that, as she’d done in the past. And she’d give herself grace when it happened.
“I will,” she said to Leo, stepping into the room. Setting her computer bag on a chair and the files on the table, she turned and looked at her colleague.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked with a nod to her cheek, then her hands.
“I’m good. These don’t hurt at all,” she said, brushing the tiny marks on her face. “And my sister had some special vitamin E thing delivered to the house this morning to help prevent any scarring. The hands are more annoying than painful, thanks to the bandages.”
“And the rest of your body?”
“Still a little sore from the fall, then ten hours in the car, but I’ll live.”
“I’m sure that’s not all you’re sore from, but I won’t go there,” he said on a chuckle.
“Inappropriate,” she said, though she couldn’t help but laugh as she said it.
“Yeah, well, you’ll get used to it around here. Did Philly ever tell you how we all found out about Mitch and Ava?”
“No, he didn’t,” she said, flipping open her laptop.
“He texted me, Collin—our colleague you haven’t met yet—and everyone in the Warwick family, including his parents and grandfather , a message telling us all that they were sleeping together and that she’d agreed to have a baseball team worth of kids with him.”
She barked a laugh. “He didn’t.”
“He did,” Leo replied. “It’s a great company and I love working here, but it’s special. In unique ways.” His eyes slid to the table and the items she’d set there. “On that note, come find me if you need something or feel free to text.”
“Thanks, Leo,” she said, meaning it more than he knew.
There were a lot of things in life she was grateful for, but she hadn’t often had the chance to be grateful for people .
Her sister, Liza and her mother, her grandparents.
But so many people had let her down, her parents being top of the list, followed by every adult in their small town who knew what they were like and did nothing to stop them. The tides were changing, though.
He smiled, a full, sincere one. He understood. “Any time,” he replied. “Now, I’ll let you get to it.” And with that, he turned and walked away, shutting the door behind him.
When the door clicked closed, she turned to the files.
She could work on a computer as well as the next person, but she liked paper.
She liked the feel of it. She liked that she could spread twenty pages across a table and see all the information at once, move it around to find patterns and connections.
Thirty minutes later, she’d identified the key areas she wanted to focus on.
The data HICC had collected—informed by Liza’s files and the information Rian Nolan provided—formed the skeleton of the case against Aiden Nolan.
Now she needed to flesh it out. Once she did that, she’d fill in any gaps, then distill it back down to only what they’d need to make a case.
Which Stella would then hand over to the FBI.
Looking at the information spread across the table and taped to the windows, she smiled. Then she got to work.