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“How long does all this take?” she asks quickly and sharply enough that it catches me off guard.
“It depends on how much work you’re willing to do on your end.”
She sighs, looks away.
I frown, lean forward. “Rowan is there a reason you’re wanting to rush this?”
The detective pauses, then stares me straight in the eye. “That’s an entirely different level of trauma that we will have to unpack one day.”
Just then, my cell phone vibrates on the desk. I glance at the screen where a text from Emma pops up:
Emma: I need to talk.
THIRTY-FIVE
ROWAN
I never thought I’d be the woman who spies on her husband. In fact, I loathe that kind of woman. Yet here I am, hiding in the back of a parking lot, headlights off, parked between two massive Duallies with American flags hanging from the back windows. Last Call is crowded tonight. The bass from inside thrums through the window I’d cracked open. Sprinkles of rain sneak in, splattering on my forearm.
I’ve been here for an hour and forty-seven minutes, arriving exactly ten minutes after my husband, who unsurprisingly, was totally oblivious to the fact that he was being followed.
I watch a trio of rowdy cowboys push their way out the front doors. The music blasts through a puff of smoke that rolls out with them. I shake my head. It astonishes me that people still smoke cigarettes.
Next to them, a two-door baby-blue Smart Fortwo, the size of a matchbox car, squeaks into the parking lot. It also astonishes me that people actually buy these tiny cars. Coffins on wheels, I call them.
I watch a tall, thin, bleached-blonde in a mini skirt and cowboy boots duck out of the car. After checking her lipstick in the side mirror, she saunters across the parking lot. I envy that kind of confidence, the kind I’ve never had.
The kind my husband desires.
My attention is pulled to my phone, beeping in the console. I click the screen.
Kellan: We got Alyssa’s credit card statements
Me: So?
Kellan: What do you mean so
Me: We’re off the case
Kellan: We’re not off, you’ve walked away from it. The feds might have taken lead but they want to work with us.
Me: Bullshit
Kellan: They need us. They don’t know the area like we do.
Kellan: What the hell is going on with you?
Me: Nothing. What do the statements say? Anything interesting?
Kellan: Some fed kid is going through them now.
Me: What’s a fed kid
Kellan: Some Gen-Z’er who smells like patchouli. I don’t even think she’s legal to drink.
Me: I have a feeling you’ll find out soon enough
Kellan: No, I only have eyes for emotionally unavailable women who wear masculine dress shirts
