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“About damn time you showed back up, Madden.”
She threw the pen at him, and he ducked, laughing. He grabbed it off the floor and walked over to her, holding it out. “I’m glad to see you. You get some decent rest last week?”
Charlie took the pen. “Yeah, it was good to be home for a few days. Mom went overboard with the food and the fussing. She says hi, by the way.”
Antony smiled. “Tell her I still dream about her banana bread.”
“Ha! She’ll love that. Probably send you a few pounds of the stuff. Anyway, it was good, but I’m glad to be back.” She looked around at the tables. “What’s going on here?”
Antony looked over his shoulder at the table and rubbed his forehead. “Fuck. So yeah, we pulled all the case files from a few years ago. Top said this happened before.”
“But that was a few years ago.”
“Yeah, it’s the same stuff they hit you with. We got the test results back yesterday. Same chemical signatures. Anyway, this,” he said, waving his arm at the table, “is the fucking mess of paperwork that came from that. It was so poorly handled that it almost feels intentional.”
Charlie’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s a serious allegation, Ramos.”
“I’d rather almost think that than have it be sheer incompetence. Have you looked at this shit?”
“I was waiting for everyone to come in to get spun up.”
Antony walked over to his computer and booted it up. “It’s ridiculous. If I ever meet the jackass who did this, we’ll have words. Roll on over here. Let’s start with the videos. We’ve been over them a few hundred times and there’s something there, but none of us can figure it out. Maybe you can.”
She was halfway across the floor when Simon and Audrey showed up, carrying bags from a local shop. Audrey dropped hers on the table and wrapped her arms around Charlie.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” she whispered, clutching her.
Tears shimmered in Charlie’s eyes. “Me, too,” she said. “But I am back, and I’m okay.” She leaned back and grabbed Audrey’s forearms. “I’m really okay.”
Audrey looked down at her, searching her face before nodding. “Okay. Okay.” She swiped a hand over her eyes. “Ramos get you caught up?”
“Not a chance,” she said.
“Hey! I told you what was going on!”
“Yeah, yeah. What did you get for me, Simon?” she asked. “Better yet, what did you get for the bottomless pit over there? He’s hangry.”
“His usual. Hangry man’s burrito with a side of shut it,” Simon said, tossing a foil-wrapped package at Antony.
“I can’t win for fucking losing around here,” Antony muttered, flipping everyone off.
“Awww, look at that smile. Ramos can’t stay grumpy for long,” Charlie teased, as she grabbed her breakfast from Simon and sat down to watch the video rerun.
The room grew silent, save for the sounds of pages turning, and keys clicking. Antony popped the last bit of his burrito in his mouth and pushed the back button on the video for the dozenth time. He glanced at Charlie.
“There’s something there. I just can’t figure it out.”
“And your dance partner—”
“Lesley.”
“Lesley,” Charlie corrected, “she doesn’t know who that is, either.”
“Nope. She’s never seen him before. She also doesn’t go out a lot, so she wouldn’t.”
“What about the rest of the people at the table?”
“Working on identifying them. Seems it was a section get together that expanded by the time we got there. She didn’t know most of the people at the table.”
