“Have faith. Remember tracking?” Robin asked. “I was finessing the tracking on shitty video tapes back when I was four.” He made an adjustment to the tape player and...
Blurry and way too pixelated security footage appeared on the screen, from what looked to be that very same video camera positioned probably up along the roofline of Devonshire Place’s garage.
“This screen is too large for this poor little low-res video,” Robin said as he found the remote and selected the picture-in-a-picture option for the VCR’s input, which made the image from the tape much smaller.
They all leaned in toward the TV to get a better look.
And yes, the driveway was in much better focus now, with the timestamp showing the date and the time in a military format.
At the very bottom of the video frame.
“Boom,” Robin said again.
“And suddenly paying Gavin LaCrosse for some cheap and easy video editing—and years of hush money—adds a littlewhatto at least one of the fucks,” Jules mused. He smiled at Robin. “Thank you.”
“I really like it when you let me help,” Robin admitted, smiling back at him.
“I really like that you want to help,” Jules said.
“Oh for christsake,” Sam said. “Will you just kiss him already? He wants you to kiss him, and you definitely want to kiss him, too, so kiss him. Jesus, Cassidy, I’ll turn around if you really need me to, but you know, thisisone of the perks you get by not working for the FB-fucking-I.”
Jules was laughing as he stepped toward Robin and yeah, kissed him.
It was almost unbearably sweet, just as it had been the first and last time Jules had kissed him here in this very same room.
And just like that other time, Robin felt himself melt intoJules. He wrapped his arms around this man who was his heart and soul as Sam continued his rant.
“If Lys was here, I’d kiss the shit out of her—simply because we’re that much closer to being done with this motherfucking ball-breaker of this fucking stupid case that I hate the living fucking shit out of. Oh shit, I mean, shoot, I mean...” He cleared his throat.. “Hey, Bill.”
Uh-oh. Robin pulled back to see that yes, indeed his tiny nephew Billy had opened the conference room door and was standing there, wide-eyed.
“You said a bad word.” Billy was looking at Sam as if he were the devil incarnate.
Robin started to leap to Sam’s rescue, but the former SEAL was already on top of it, getting down on the floor to be on Billy’s level.
“I apologize,” Sam said. “I didn’t see you there, and yeah, I said some grown up words that, well, Ash doesn’t like it, either, if I slip and say them. So, I am truly sorry.”
“Mama says don’t sayhate,” Billy told Sam with that dead seriousness that little kids could deliver with complete sincerity. “SayI don’t like thatinstead.Hate is stupid.” He gasped. “But don’t saystupid.”
“Got it,” Sam said, trying to not laugh, but unable to keep a smile from slipping out. “Your mama’s pretty smart.”
“Did she send you here with a message for us?” Robin was pretty certain he knew the answer to that.
Billy nodded. “Food’s here,” he said.
“Wow, great, thank you for telling us that, but... did you... maybe forget and just open the door without knocking?” Robin asked the little boy.
Billy looked startled and then quickly backed up a few steps to knock—a tad too late.
“Hmm,” Robin said. “Hard to hear that. Can you tryknocking a little more loudly?” He went to the door to show the kid.
Billy tried, but then stopped, holding his hand in close to his chest, his face tightening. “Ow.”
“Okay,” Robin said quickly. “Well, don’t do that then. How about instead of knocking with your hand you knock with your voice?” He raised his voice. “Knock knock!”
“Knock knock,” Billy bellowed back.
“There we go,” Robin said as across the room Jules started to laugh. “Okay, now go run back to tell your mom that we’ll be right there.”
