Sue coughed.“I think that information is outside of the remit of any current investigation.”
So yes.
“Tell Kincaid I need to talk to him,” Javi circled back to his original request.“It’s about what Joel found out.”
He hung up on Sue’s question and grabbed his sunglasses off the dash as he drove out of the lot and into the midday sun.
Larapulledsomenotesout of her wallet and handed them to Drew.
“At least one thing that I’d recognize as a fruit,” she told him.
Drew nodded, gave Javi a shy smile, and took off toward the food truck parked at the far side of the playground.
“He doesn’t seem to hold a grudge,” Javi remarked.
“You saved him,” Lara said.She put her sunglasses on top of her head and gave Javi a look.“It was my other son you tried to put away.”
That wasn’t exactly…
How had Sue put it?Unavoidable and understandable.Also, forgiveness wasn’t what Javi needed today.He watched Lara as she repacked her huge floral bag with various parenting equipment and snack-related goods.His stomach rumbled as she picked up a package of Snackables.
“No time for lunch?”she asked, and pointedly ripped it open and took a bite herself.
“I was at the hospital,” Javi said.He left out the sandwich he’d eaten and thrown up.The details seemed undignified.Lara chewed, swallowed, and ran her tongue over her teeth.She looked at the open snack in her hand like she regretted the petty move, folded it over, and stashed it in her pocket.
“The missing agent.I saw it on the news.”She waved her hand at her phone.“The algorithms haven’t caught up that Dad’s dead.I still get all the FBI updates.”
Javi nodded.He took his jacket off and slung it over the bench.There was blood on the cuff of his shirt, and he caught Lara’s gaze on it before he rolled the sleeve up.
“It must have been hard,” he said.“You and Joel were friends.”
Lara blinked.“I wouldn’t say that,” she said.“She brought some of Dad’s stuff around to get it out of the office.Something you could have done.”
Javi glanced down.“I could,” he admitted.“Just seemed kind of final.You’d think that would have been the funeral, but—”
“You missed that.”
“I was at the funeral.”
“But not at the memorial,” Lara countered.She stopped, pinched her nose, and started again.“Stop interviewing me, Javi.If you want to know something, just ask me.”
“Will you answer me?”
“I don’t know,” Lara said.She crossed her arms.“You have to ask first.But, for the record, I wasn’t dodging your call.I’m just busy.So, what do you want to know?”
“Did your dad ever tell you why he stepped in for me?”he asked.“After Phoenix.”
Lara started to answer, but stopped as her brain caught up with the question.She unfolded her arms and looked disarmed.
“Oh, um, no,” she said.“Although that’s what Joel asked too, when she was dropping off Dad’s stuff.She wanted to know if my dad had ever worked with Everett Kincaid.He’s the FBI director in LA?”
“We’ve met,” Javi said.
“Well, yes,” Lara said.She sat down, her attention on tracking Drew and not really on the conversation.“I suppose you would.I saw him on the news.I told her Dad didn’t talk to me much about work, but we worked out that Dad and Kincaid had both been in Atlanta at the same time.Back when I was a kid, actually.Me and Mom were there too.Funny how careers can start in the same place and end…differently.Maybe that’s why Dad liked you?There was a time he was slated to be the head of the FBI one day, you know.Or at least running somewhere like LA.Instead, he ended up here.”
“What happened?”Javi asked.
“I was a kid,” Lara said.“What did I know?At the time I thought it was the best thing that ever happened to us.We moved to California, even if it was Plenty and not someplace cool, and we got to stay here.No more moving or fighting or me being picked up from school by agents.It was only later I realized that Dad probably didn’t enjoy it quite as much, but it meant he kept his family so…”
