Page 127 of Playing With Love

That felt like a punch to the gut.

“Shannon—”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m here for it, Lizzy. Happy sounds good on you.”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

When I first called Shannon to tell her I’d be emailing in my resignation I was worried she’d be pissed. Then I felt bad because I was still out on medical leave and was calling her instead of giving her the respect of a face-to-face meeting. But within minutes she’d gone from boss to friend and assured me she understood. Since then she’d called me once a week to check in on me. There were still loose ends with the ATF, when the charges got sorted with Jake Sutton and his friends, I’d have to testify, and Greg had been in touch numerous times to discuss my after-action brief. But I’d finished my official employment while recovering in Georgia.

“Business first then I want to hear about your new job,” she declared, sliding back into her Branch Chief tone. “This morning Frank quit.”

“What?”

“Quit. No notice, just walked into my office, tossed his credentials and service weapon on my desk, and told me to go fuck myself.”

I rolled my lips to stop from laughing.

“Why are you laughing? I know you want to.”

“I can’t believe he did that.” I chuckled.

“Yes, you can. He’s a disrespectful twit on top everything else he is, or I should say isn’t. If you tell anyone I said this, I’ll deny it, but as soon as he left I closed my door and danced around my desk with both middle fingers up. Good riddance.”

Damn, I wished I could’ve been there to witness that.

“My lips are sealed. But now you’re down two agents.”

“With you gone it feels like I’m down five,” she muttered and that felt good. “Frank being gone is a relief. We’ve got three new agents rolling in next week. I hesitate to say this but they have to be better than Frank. Unfortunately none of them will be you.”

“I’d say I’m sorry, but I love my new job.”

“I’d love it, too, if I worked for Carter Lenox—both of them, Nick Clark, and Jason Walker.”

Shannon was in a committed relationship with a very nice man named Elliot. They’d never married but had been together for twenty-one years so I knew she wasn’t talking about my three bosses being the hallmark of good-looking men (even though they were). She was talking about their reputations in the private security sector.

“The other thing I wanted to tell you is Melanie Hurst turned herself in.”

Out of all the players, it was the coffee shop owner Melanie that had managed to get out of Rogersville unnoticed and hide out for the last two months.

“Did she have anything interesting to say?”

“Better. She has voice recordings of her meetings with Mackenzie Archer.”

Hell to the yes.

“Tennessee’s a one-party consent state,” I noted.

In some states you needed all parties to consent to a conversation being recorded. Tennessee was not one of those states.

“Mackenzie’s fucked.”

I smiled at that. Though I’d been smiling a lot since I got home to Georgia.

“Is this privileged or may I tell Allyson?”

“Tell her, I’m sure she’ll be happy.”

She would be. I couldn’t say Allyson smiled a lot these days, but she was getting better. She’d moved back to Georgia and in with her sister Jessica. Colleen would be moving to Hollow Point next week. The other members had scattered. It hurt my heart that only a few of them stayed in touch with each other, most of them just wanted to move on from Mackenzie Archer and Nu Dawn. None of the community members stood by Mackenzie.