Alicia eyed both of them.
“I took you for a morning person,” Callum casually added.
She side-eyed him.“You’d better brush up on your people-reading skills.I’m only awake because you two had my boys up and ready for the day a full thirty minutes before my alarm.Want to tell me about the notes you loudly compared?I tried not to listen.Manners, and all.”
Grace scratched behind Toto’s ear.“People have been trying to call and email me, but I haven’t heard from them.”
“People, who?”
“Specific people,” Callum said.“Important people.Attorneys.”
Alicia cast her gaze between them.“Well, that sounds suspicious.”
“Sure does.”Callum let Sherlock nuzzle against his leg.“No telling who else has been reaching out.”
“Callum had tried to reach me before he showed up at the library,” Grace explained.
Alicia’s gaze swung to Callum.“You did?”
He nodded.
“And you didn’t mention that before?”She rested her hands on her hips.
The corners of his eyes tightened.His lips thinned as if he were trying to hide a smile, and something close to appreciation registered on his face.The more they interacted, the more they seemed to like one another.
“We got off to a rocky start,” he conceded.
Alicia hummed and walked toward the dogs’ leashes.“I suppose.”
“I’ll walk your dogs.”
“Is Dominic outside?”Alicia asked.
His lips twitched.“Not that I know of.”
“Is there a big baddie with a gun out there?”
“Nope.Haven’t seen any sign of that, either.”
“Then I’ll walk my dogs, thank you very much.”She clipped on the dogs’ leashes.“How did Dominic mess with her phone calls?”
“What’s the point in asking?”Grace slumped.“Unlimited resources.Dark web people.Sociopathic tendencies.That’s the answer to almost every Dominic question.”
“He’s not infallible,” Callum said, but raised his shoulders.“My office is working on how.When we know the how, we’ll have a better handle on the why.But given who’s not getting through, I’d say we have the basis for a good working theory.”His phone chirped again.“Maybe we have answers already.”
Callum answered the call, listened as they watched, and ended the call with hardly a word.Judging from his expression, that wasn’t a great phone call.Nervous energy turned Grace’s palms clammy.Sherlock threaded in and out of Callum’s boots as if the cat had heard the phone call as well and understood that things weren’t moving in the right direction.
Grace reached for her tepid coffee and wrapped her palms around the mug.“Don’t look at us like that.Spit it out.”
“As it turns out…” he cleared his throat and narrowed his gaze on her, like once again, another round of understanding had made itself clear, “it’s the office of an assistant attorney general who would like to have a word with you.”
Her stomach bottomed out.Grace mouthed, “Assistant attorney general, like, of the country?”She turned to Alicia.“What the hell is happening?I’m supposed to be dead.”
Alicia blinked her eyes wide and then let out a low whistle.“Those would be quite the phone calls to miss.”
Grace shook her head.“I’m not going through the Dominic Marino show again.”She knew nothing that would warrant that many people reaching out to her.“I can’t.”
Or worse, the government was upset that she’d ditched witness protection years ago and faked her death.That was fraud.That was a valid reason for her attorneys to try to reach her.The attorney general’s office probably wanted to throw her in jail.“They’re going to arrest me.”
