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Clare nodded. “Yes, you probably will.”
“I got out of the chair.” Selena grinned. Her phone chimed with a new text, then two more right after it. “Gotta go. Alex is ready to go to breakfast.”
Clare kept her mouth shut about Selena’s boyfriend and how he had her at his beck and call.
Selena gave her a quick hug. “Laters.”
“Bye, hon.” Clare watched her go, then turned to Peter. The sparring partners had wandered off.
Peter had a look on his face.
“What?”
His expression shuttered. “Nothing. Wanna look at the file?”
“Yes.” They walked together to where she’d left her heels, then to the elevator and up to the office level. Cold Cases was on the floor below. Her office was at the end of the hall, and she had a back door up to an apartment most people didn’t know she had on the top floor, above the safe house apartments. Floors between housed other departments. Supplies—and the undercover closet. “I appreciate you not mentioning it in front of Selena.”
“When will you tell her you’re looking into her father’s disappearance?”
Clare gave her assistant a little wave, motioning with a finger. Lena nodded. “Probably around the time there’s an answer to give her, rather than a whole lot of questions she’s already got.” Clare checked her appearance in the mirror by her credenza. She smoothed down her hair before she sat behind her desk and slid the chair in. Her keyboard was covered with missed call notes Lena had left. It was going to be a busy day.
Peter stood in front of her desk. “You’re determined to find him?”
The young man had changed a lot since she hired him after he and his twin brother had completed their community service hours with her company. No way was she going to let talent like that go to waste—or get corrupted by a man like their late father, who’d been determined to see them come under his wing.
The twins had been smart enough to steer clear of him.
Now she was honing those instincts and putting the skills they already had to good use. Peter was now training under Bob Davis—another man she’d hired while on probation. While Simon practically ran her cyber division.
“Why don’t you let me know what you found?” She settled back in her chair. “Then I’ll know if it’s even possible.”
Teaching the girl to take care of herself was only part of it. Much like with the business Clare ran, there were moving parts.
The end all amounted to one thing, though.
She would finally feel like she’d made amends for the things she’d done.
Peter handed her the file and sat. “Davis found the sheriff at the time of Selena’s father’s disappearance. He had old files in his garage he’d forgotten about. The case file was tucked away.”
Clare opened the file, determined to reopen this case. “Talk me thorough it.”
THREE
Lieutenant Gage Deluca surveyed the street. Just another flop house in another rundown neighborhood. Was the missing girl here?
Sergeant Liam O’Connell pulled the SWAT van over to the side of the street where the targets in the house wouldn’t be able to see them.
Piled in the back were three officers, the five of them in matching black cargo uniforms. Bulletproof vests. Helmets. They jumped out and huddled on the sidewalk. “We’ve run this a hundred times.” They’d been working together nearly four years. “Let’s do it clean.”
Gage turned to lead the way down the cracked sidewalk, past an overgrown lawn. A rottweiler behind a chain-link fence stared at them as they passed. Growled. Gage left him to it, not wanting to get tangled in a war over who was alpha here.
“Let’s go.” He needed his three officers to speed up, not amble each other into being slower and slower. Generally they goaded one another and wound up tussling like siblings. The one upmanship worked great when they directed that energy at the job. The task at hand.
They won, it meant he won.
Success meant he secured his spot as the new SWAT lieutenant in Benson PD. Gage wasn’t going to accept anything else.
“White house?” Dakota Masterson called from behind them.
