"No, it's mental health leave," he said, turning a steak.
"Ah. The job getting to you?"
"It's Ethan."
Ed raised an eyebrow. "Ethan?"
"He worries me. He's drifting. Mia leaving is hitting him harder than he lets on." Noah adjusted the coals with the edge of the spatula. "I figured I could kill two birds with one stone. Take a mental health break for a few months, spend real time with him, and..."
"And look into Ashford," Ed said, grinning.
"If I'm at work they've got me doing all manner of hours. I can't stay on top of that and keep digging into his activities at the casino."
"You really think Ashford is colluding with the cartel?"
"I think it's bigger than we once thought. I think even Ashford isn't at the top of the chain."
Ed was quiet for a moment, watching the smoke rise. Then he shook his head. "Let me give you a piece of advice from an old man who spent thirty years watching people try to fix things that were broken beyond repair. Sometimes the law can't touch a man like Ashford. Sometimes you have to accept that and move on before it eats you alive."
Noah didn't look at him. He turned another steak, pressed it with the spatula, watched the juice run.
"And sometimes if you move on, people get hurt," he said. "People who don't deserve it. People who trusted someone to do something about it."
"Noah."
"I've seen what happens when you let go, Ed. I've been on the other end of those calls. I've knocked on the doors. I've sat in the living rooms." He set the spatula down on the edge of the grill. "I can't be the guy who looks the other way."
Ed studied him for a long moment, then nodded slowly. The argument was over but Ed's expression said he still wasn't wrong.
"Just make sure the cost doesn't come out of your kids," Ed said quietly.
Before Noah could answer, Natalie appeared at his side and slipped her hand through his arm. "Hey. She's going to open gifts. Ready to join us?"
"Sure thing."
Noah let her lead him across the yard to where Mia was sitting in a lawn chair surrounded by wrapped boxes, Ethan beside her with his arms crossed but a small smile on his face that Noah was grateful to see. The afternoon sun was low enough to throw long shadows across the grass. Out on the lake a fishing boat drifted past the dock, its motor cutting softly through the still water.
He looked at his daughter, about to open gifts for a life she was building somewhere else, and his son, trying to hold together a life that was changing whether he wanted it to or not, and he thought about what Ed had said.
Let go. Move on.
He couldn't.
4
"Tell him I'll meet wherever he's comfortable. Coffee shop, parking lot, I don't care. But it has to be soon." Noah leaned against the kitchen counter with his phone pressed to his ear, listening to O'Connell run through the details. A former pit boss at the Ashford Royale Casino had been recently let go, and was now apparently willing to talk about what he'd seen during his time on the floor. It was the closest thing to a break they'd had in months. "Just get me a name and a date. I'll be there."
He ended the call and set the phone down. The house was quiet. Natalie had taken Mia to drop her off at a friend's for the night, and Ethan was upstairs in his room with the door closed, which was where Ethan spent most of his time when he wasn't being actively pulled out of it. The remains of Ed's barbecue sat in foil containers on the counter. Noah covered them and put them in the fridge.
There was a knock at the front door.
He wasn't expecting anyone. He crossed through the living room and opened it to find Callie Thorne on his porch, a manilafolder tucked under one arm and her hair still damp from the rain that had started sometime in the last hour.
"Thorne," he said, surprised. “Come on in.”
She stepped inside and looked around the way people do when they haven't been somewhere in a while, checking what's changed. "Place looks good. You look good. Less tired."
"Real sleep will do that instead of pulling fourteen-hour days." He closed the door behind her. "Coffee? Tea?"
