I choose the one I already know our order to.
The half-hour it takes for our food to get here is enough time for me to wash, unpack the dishwasher, and pick up a few things from the floor of my bedroom. I’m taking containers out of the paper bags when Kade taps twice on the door and comes inside without waiting for a response.
“Damn, they deliver fast,” he says.
I smile over at him, meeting his dark brown eyes. Kade always looks like he’s just come from the beach, or at leastsomewhere windy. He places his motorcycle helmet on the table, shakes his mop of long, dark curls out of his eyes, and reaches for the pink scrunchie on his wrist to pull his hair up into a high bun.
“Hey, Sunshine,” he adds, grinning at me.
“And you wanted to pick up our food,” I say, realizing he drove his motorcycle over.
He scratches the carefully-curated scruff on his chin, and I know he keeps it like that because it’s the length his husband—and the third member of our team—Liam likes.
“I just got the FJ Cruiser out of the shop,” he says, shrugging off the leather jacket. “I could have driven it instead.”
“Wouldn’t have been as fun,” I say.
“Definitely not,” he agrees. “We need to go riding sometime. Maybe after this upcoming festival since I know you’re not going to let her out of your sight otherwise,” he taunts me. His gaze moves to the food I’m setting on the table, and he squints at it. “Chinese? Really? I thought you said last week that you were craving Jamaican food.”
“I said I was craving mymother’sfood,” I correct him. “She’s Puerto Rican, not Jamaican.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.”
“No one makes food like my mother. Except my grandmother, but my mother likes to say that she took all her secrets with her when she died,” I say.
Kade chuckles and picks up the photo on the television stand. “I never got to meet your dad,” he says. “Do you ever see him?”
I peer at the photo, at my mother’s beautiful smile, my father’s hazel eyes stark against his brown skin. I was always told I was the perfect blend of them both: her smile, her dark, loose ringlet hair, his hazel eyes…
“He lives in Tennessee now, so very rarely,” I say as I take the frame from Kade and put it back on the dresser.
“Did you say he was into music now?” Kade asks. “Like playing in a band?”
“He plays stand-up bass in a jazz band,” I say fondly. “Also, he’s the music teacher at one of the middle schools there.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Kade says.
“Yeah,” I agree. “So, tell me what you have for me,” I say, getting to the gritty part of why he’s here.
He laughs. “Business. Right. How dare I bring up personal details?” he teases me as he grabs a take-out container of fried rice. “Let’s go.”
Kade makes himself comfortable in the computer chair in my bedroom and begins connecting his laptop screen to the monitors so it’s easier for me to see the full scope of what’s going on. I enjoy watching him work like this. It’s all patterns and investigating the smallest details—something I can usually pinpoint, though I have a hard time linking it all together. Sometimes it gets jumbled in my head, so I’m grateful to have Kade straighten out the knots.
As he works, I sit on the end of the bed and eat my own container of noodles.
“This is for you,” he says, handing me a tablet.
I immediately balk. “Ew. Why?”
“I have a lot for you and my printer ran out of ink,” he replies.
“You know I like paper copies, and you’re a shit liar unless you’re getting paid for it,” I say.
He stares at me flatly. “I’m getting you into electronic dossiers—”
“Here we go,” I mutter.
“I told you the last three times, we were making the switch,” he says, and I huff because we’ve had the conversation a few times now.
