“Yes?”
Ryker grabbed a piece of paper, writing down the nameDylan Landryalong with the boy’s phone number. He held it out to her.
“Could you have our investigator look into this person? His address, if he has a criminal history, that sort of thing?”
“Of course.” Heidi walked back to his desk and took the piece of paper.
“And have him bill me directly, not the firm,” Ryker said, ignoring the probing look she gave him in response.
“No problem.” Heidi folded the paper. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Ryker shook his head. “No, that was it. Thank you.”
Heidi left his office with a nod, and Ryker turned back to his inbox.
August wasn’t going to be angry about him doing a background check. He might be a little annoyed and claim that Ryker was being paranoid, but as long as Ryker didn’t do anything impulsive like go and interrogate Dylan in advance of their date, August would be fine with a little precautionary snooping.
The rest of the day went by without anything unusual happening. Ryker had meetings, both with the lawyers who worked for him and with people from other departments. When six o’clock rolled around, he decided it was time to pack it up and head home.
He was in the car when he got a text message from August saying he was working late due to a patient emergency.
Ryker sighed, reminding himself that this was nothing compared to the hell-years when August had been doing his residency. His schedule now was a vacation in comparison.
Arriving home to an empty apartment, Ryker decided to watch some TV to relax and then head to the gym on the third floor.
He sank down onto the couch, kicking off his dress boots and putting his feet up on the coffee table, and turned on the TV.
Scrolling through the various streaming services they subscribed to, Ryker wondered how it was possible to have so many shows and not want to watch a single one of them.
His phone let out a chime, and Ryker abandoned the TV remote to pick it up and read the message.
His pulse spiked when he saw that it was from the investigator. He took his feet off the coffee table and leaned forward, opening the message and scanning through the report with trepidation.
He was left feeling nonplussed.
There wasnothing. Dylan Landry lived in a studio apartment about an hour’s walk away from the university, he had a normal amount of student loans for a twenty-three-year-old, and he’d gotten two speeding tickets when he was a teenager. Other than that, his report was empty.
It looked like August might be right about him.
Attached to the file was a copy of Dylan’s driver’s license photo. Ryker leaned back into the sofa cushion and put his feet back up on the coffee table, enlarging the photo so that it filled the screen of his phone.
The picture was a few years old, and Ryker hoped that he didn’t look quite so young now as he did then. He zoomed in, examining the boy’s features.
Cute and bright-eyed, with a nice nose and a sharp jaw, he was prettier than Ryker had expected.
He understood what August had meant about his hair. It was fluffy, like he’d let it dry under a hat, and styled haphazardly.
It looked very grabbable.
Ryker wished he had a more recent picture. He couldn’t quite bring himself to imagine what it would be like to push Dylan down into his bulge when he looked that young.
He texted August.
Do you have a picture of the boy?
He waited a moment, hoping for an answer, but August didn’t reply.
Ryker put down his phone, feeling a little foolish. Of course August didn’t reply right away. He was probably with a patient.
