“Irrelevant,” I said, knowing Camila could not attend.
“Will there be discussions of murder and intrigue?”
Camila had learned to speak early and was currently reading three grade levels above her age.
“No intrigue,” I lied. “Just office politics.”
“Bo-ring,” she complained.
I took a wet towel and wiped at my face. My blue eyes were bloodshot from being up half the night, then catching the first flight to D.C. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
Camila held up the paper with the riddle. “I don’t know this.”
“That’s the point,” I said, kissing her forehead. “And no googling.”
She turned and headed out to the living room. “I’m setting my timer,” she hollered. “One hour. A second more, and you’re grounded.”
As I passed her, she was grinning. “Smile,” she said. “It was a joke. That’s what people do.”
I made a smile for her, then turned. Felt it fall.
When I got downstairs, Richie Brancato was seated at the same table where I’d unfolded Camila’s riddles, a six-pack of Red Trolley in front of him, drops of condensation thick on the sides of the beer bottles. He was taking in something on his phone.
“What’s new?” I said.
Richie ran his fingers through his dark hair, which was spiked up. He has a Mediterranean complexion, with angular cheekbones and thick eyebrows. “This lady’s griefing me about a boat I took out two weekends ago with some friends. Says it’s got a ding on the starboard side.”
He saw my face and stopped. “Oh, you meant with the case.”
I had. But I remembered a line my mother had repeated when I was growing up.A full life is full of people, not facts, Gardy.
“No. Go ahead,” I said, remembering my resolution to make more small talk. “What happened with this boat?”
“Well, I didn’t do shit to it,” he said, putting his phone away. “But she says there’s six hundred dollars’ worth of damage.”
Richie could pass for twenty-one, even though he was twenty-six. He’d joined PAR straight out of the Academy. It was a different path from the rest of us, who had all come from some dead-end assignment where we’d been exiled after making a mistake elsewhere at the FBI.
It was the dream of Frank Roberts, the man who started PAR, to build a small FBI team of experienced puzzle-solvers, not take on new agents fresh out of Quantico. But so far, Richie had proven he belonged.
“I was thinking of going down to the harbor,” Richie said. “Flashing my badge at this lady.”
“No,” I said.
Richie ran his palm along his jawline. “Throwing some weight around?” he suggested.
“No,” I repeated.
He squinted at me. “And just out of curiosity, why not?”
“Because two weeks ago Monday, you showed up in an Uber, not your Jeep. We met at the office, and you took four Tylenols. Two at 9:32 a.m. and another two at a noon lunch at the Chili Shack in Hambis.”
“So?”
“So odds are you were hungover,” I said. “It’s likely that your friends, who statistically are probably less successful than you,dinged up the boat—that is, if you didn’t do it yourself and can’t recall because of intoxication. Either way, if your name is on the rental agreement, you’re liable.”
The automatic front doors slid open then, and in came Shooter. She was back in her work uniform: faded blue jeans and a white sweatshirt with no logos on it, her strawberry-blond hair loose at her shoulders.
“I thought this was a work meeting,” she said, grabbing a longneck from Richie. “We getting drunk?”
