“Put them in the alley and I’ll see that they’re removed.”
“By myself?” I retorted.
“Seb?” Max called.
“Not now,” I answered. “There’s like two hundred bricks in here.”
“I’m not paying my guys to—”
“I’m not going to break my back picking them all up,” I said over Luther.
“Seb!” Max called again.
“What?” I asked, aggravated, as I turned around.
He waved the phone. “It’s Quinn Lancaster.”
My heart stopped. I felt a weird sort of fear wash over my body, where I was hot and cold at the same time, breathing fast but not getting air to my lungs. Why would Calvin’s partner call me for any reason other than something happening to him? With the current rift between him and his family, I was all Calvin had.
Did that make me his emergency contact?
I swallowed the sour taste threatening to come up my throat, quickly scrambled across the uneven floor to the counter, and grabbed the phone from Max. “Hello? Quinn?”
“Hi, Sebastian.”
“Is he okay?”
“What?”
“Calvin.”
“Sure he is. Why are you asking?”
I rested my elbows on the counter and pressed a hand to my forehead. “I didn’t think—why are you calling?”
After a beat, I heard Quinn sigh. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think this was official. But that’s sweet, your response.”
“It’s not sweet. I nearly barfed.”
“Calvin and I are getting a late breakfast. I thought it’d be nice if you joined us.”
“Really?” I’d never been invited to see Calvin during work hours. He was simply too busy. And he didn’t usually eat while working. Something was wrong. “Isn’t he sort of swamped?”
“No.”
“I—oh.” I glanced back over my shoulder. Luther was busying himself by looking through a display of trinkets. “Slow day for murders, huh?”
“It’s been fairly calm lately.”
Since when?“I guess I assumed it was a heavy workload lately. I don’t see him that much,” I said quietly.
She hummed in response. I got the distinct impression that Calvin or someone else she didn’t want hearing was close enough to listen to her call. “That’s why I thought it’d be nice to take a break. Cold cases can wait an hour.”
I’m not sure what I was feeling at that moment. Confusion, for sure. I always suspected Calvin was swamped with big cases, based on how often I saw him, but was this not true? Was he working late into the night, not sleeping and eating right, because he was working on cold cases? I didn’t want to believe I was always his top priority—it seemed selfish because I knew how deeply he cared about his job—but still.
Shouldn’t he have wanted to come home to me if he had the option?
And what was Quinn trying to tell me? Was she concerned about his overworking? Not that I wasn’t, but she saw more of him than I did. Maybe she could see warning signs he hid from me. Calvin buried himself in work because when he was focused on a task, atrocities he saw during the war could be put out of mind.
