"Even if it means dealing with us kids?" Toby asked with a chocolate-chip-stained grin.
"Especially because it means dealing with you two," Sandra replied, meaning every word.
Later, as they walked to their cars in the parking lot, Terry caught her hand and pulled her close.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "For tonight, for this afternoon with Patricia, for everything."
"Thank you for letting me be part of it."
"Sandra." Terry's voice was serious now, intimate in the way that made her pulse quicken. "I need you to know something."
She looked up at him, seeing something in his expression that made her breath catch.
"I love you," he said simply. "Not just because you're good with the kids, though you are. Not just because you fit into our lives, though you do. I love you because of who you are, and I can't imagine my life without you in it anymore."
Sandra felt tears prick her eyes as the words she'd been hoping to hear finally came. "I love you too," she whispered. "All of you. This whole beautiful, complicated family."
Terry kissed her then, soft and sweet in the middle school parking lot, while Emma and Toby made exaggerated gagging noises from beside his SUV.
"Get a room!" Toby called out, making Emma dissolve into giggles.
"We have rooms," Terry called back without breaking the embrace. "Several of them, in fact."
"Gross, Dad!" Emma protested, but she was still laughing.
Sandra pulled back from the kiss, looking at this man and these children who had somehow become her entire world, and felt a contentment she'd never known was possible. She was exactly where she belonged.
34
Terry stood in front of the whiteboard in the drug task force conference room, marker in hand, staring at the timeline they'd constructed. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting harsh shadows across the evidence photos taped to the board. Baggies of cocaine, designer pills, and crime scene shots from the Blackwood rental house were all displayed.
"Run it by me again," Detective Marshall Peterson said, turning to Jeremy and Pete. "The timeline's bothering me."
Terry capped the marker and turned to face his team and the DEA detective from the Norfolk District DEA office. Jeremy and Pete flanked Marshall, all three men looking as frustrated as Terry felt.
Terry began, pointing at the timeline. "Claire Smith says it was just the five grad students staying at the house. They were there to study, and she said that, other than a few breaks for meals or downtime at the beach, that’s what they did. Although she did mention that she studied alone best and wasn’t around the others except for meals and beach time.”
"Then, on Saturday, late afternoon about four o’clock, she came into the house from the beach, heard voices, and looked through the crack of the study door to see a man in a suit talkingto Robert. She slipped back out unnoticed," Pete added. “She never saw him again.”
"That night, cars started to arrive, and she discovered Robert had invited over some of the guys from the ODU chapter of his fraternity. Mostly guys with some girls. Claire reported she didn’t know any of them,” Jeremy filled in.
"Right. And around midnight, Claire goes down to complain to Robert, and the sheriff deputies show up because of a neighbor complaint." Terry tapped the board.
Marshall leaned forward. "And no one else saw the mystery man? Then when the deputies search the house for more partygoers, they find the case with drugs."
Terry nodded slowly. "The drug analysis came back, and these aren't your typical campus drugs."
He pulled out the lab report and spread it on the table. "This is why we called you in. High-grade cocaine, 90 percent pure. These pills? Designer stuff, pharmaceutical quality. This isn't some college kid's side hustle."
"Price point?" Marshall asked.
"Street value of what we confiscated? Close to half a million dollars." Terry let that sink in. "And that's just what we found. No telling if more got moved before we arrived, but no one had any drugs on them. Nor a lot of money. I don’t think that party was for selling.”
"Gets better," Terry continued. "I ran the drug signatures through the regional database. A similar high-end product has shown up in three other busts across Virginia in the past six months. Norfolk, Richmond, and Virginia Beach."
Marshall nodded. “We’ve seen some of this shit lately.” He sat up straighter. "Same supplier?"
"Same distribution network, at least. The purity levels are identical, and the pill markings match. This isn't random dealing. It's an organized distribution."
