“I do,” Frank said, but he added no other context to the statement.
I kept my eyes on him. This was why he had agreed so quickly to come back and help us.
“We’re still renting in Dallas,” he explained. “And Layla thinks I can just come back to PAR. I had to explain to her that the top brass were shutting us down.” His eyes met mine. “And that I lied to you guys. That I never told you about it.”
This was a subject we’d never discussed in front of Frank—how he was about to let Shooter and Cassie be transferred away. How I was about to be fired.
“Wow,” Cassie said. She was sitting on a stool by the bar counter.Frank and I were standing, my hand resting on the dark walnut wood beside my beer.
He stared at me for a long beat, before finally speaking. “Say something, Gardner.”
“What do you want me to say?” I asked. “Do you have a question?”
“Geez, I got a hundred questions. Will it ruin things if I come back? Will it take away an opportunity from you?” He turned to Cassie. “Or you? Will it destroy the chemistry y’all have been building without me? Am I a jerk, even bringing this up?”
I had an answer to each of these questions. But that didn’t mean I knew Cassie’s answer. Or Shooter’s or Richie’s. And we were a team.
At the same time, I was keenly aware that the case we had just finished would not have come to the same conclusion under my leadership. And everyone at PAR had to know that, too.
“You are an exceptional leader,” I said to Frank.
“Hear, hear,” Cassie said, clinking the neck of her beer bottle against the side of mine.
“And you left us to fend for ourselves,” I said.
No one said anything.
I continued matter-of-factly. “You ran off on your own on that last case fifteen months ago, and I came after you. Saved your life. You still said nothing to me. That behavior was peculiar.”
Frank’s head was down, and he was abnormally quiet.
I considered the possibility of Frank Roberts leading PAR again, and something else came to mind—something that I’d only realized in the fifteen months since Frank was gone. That of all the special analytical skills represented at PAR, what Frank brought to the mix was the easiest to overlook. He supplied some sort of invisible glue. Sure, we were solving more cases than ever. But there was something absent from how the team had functioned prior to his departure.Some missing element I could sense constantly, even if my mind could not name it. Even if my logic could not identify it.
Camaraderie? Chemistry? Community?
“I’ll step aside,” I said, and Frank raised his eyes to meet mine. “But I am not giving up the title or the pay. They’ll have to invent a new title for you. And you and Poulton will have to work out those details.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “What else?”
“I need to be near my daughter. If we have to move back to Jacksonville, I will give my notice.” He stared at me, and I continued. “It’s my belief the team will fall apart without me.”
Frank motioned to the bartender for another round. He said nothing for a while, then met my eyes. “They say you have no emotions.”
“I’ve heard.”
He shook his head. “What’s humility, then?”
More drinks came, and Cassie made another toast. “To Frank Roberts, a great lead agent.”
“To Gardner Camden,” Frank countered, “the smartest man at the FBI.”
I turned to Cassie. “To Cassie Pardo,” I said. “If you didn’t put that tracker in Hemmings’s truck, we would’ve lost him on the interstate. And something horrible would’ve happened tomorrow in D.C.”
“And we’d all be fired,” Frank added nonchalantly.
Cassie’s eyes never left mine, and I saw her bite at her lip. Then look away from me.
A few minutes later, we each took another shot before walking four blocks to a hotel that Frank found on his phone. He explained that he’d gotten a text from Poulton, saying to skip commercial and take a jet if we needed a flight in the morning.
