“He’s tough.” I sat down and felt the fatigue land the moment I stopped moving. My lower back, my shoulders, the stitches pulling with every shift in position. I’d been scared shitless about William for a little while. “His mom had it handled.”
“She didn’t look like she had it handled. She looked terrified.”
“Yeah, well, she’s allowed. Important thing is everyone is okay.”
The beers arrived, and we drank the first sips in the kind of silence that followed shared experiences. The search for William hadn’t been long or dangerous, but it had been real, and real had a way of burning off the pretense between people.
A couple of guys at the bar were watching a basketball game on the mounted TV, volume low. Two more shared a booth near the door, jackets still on, having a quiet conversation that indicated one of them had a rough call and the other was listening.
Martinez sat at the far end of the bar. Phone in hand, a whiskey in front of him. He’d lifted his glass in our direction when we walked in—friendly enough, not an invitation. Could mean something, could mean nothing.
Reeves came through the front door about ten minutes later. Civilian clothes, scanning the room the way young officers did—mapping exits, reading the temperature, calculating whether he could afford to stay.
Donovan caught my eye before Reeves was halfway across the room and flagged the waitress. By the time the kid pulled out the empty chair beside Vance, a draft was waiting for him.
Reeves looked at the glass. Looked at Donovan. His jaw tightened once and released—gratitude held just below the surface, managed the way a man managed it when he knew exactly what had just happened and was glad nobody was making a thing of it.
“Thanks.” He sat and wrapped his hand around the glass.
Vance asked him about a training drill from earlier in the week, and Reeves answered with the careful precision of someone who took the work seriously enough to replay every decision. A good cop. Young, underpaid, running DashDrop deliveries until his shift started and probably headed back out to drive more after this beer. His eyes were shadowed. His shoulders sat lower than they should have.
But he’d live. And he would get a pretty young wife out of it all, I had no doubt.
I was listening to him walk through a room-clearing sequence when the front door opened hard enough to let in a draft, and Seth Briggson walked in.
He’d changed out of his normal gear but not his disposition. His gaze swept the bar, found our table, and stayed there while he ordered at the counter. He took his drink and came straight over, dropping into the chair at the end of the table like a man filing a territorial claim.
“Evening, gentlemen.” The word carried a weight it wasn’t designed for.
Vance’s eyebrow went up a fraction. “Seth.”
“Heard you had some excitement tonight.” Briggson took a pull from his beer and set it down hard. “Missing kid, Jolly tracking through the trees. Real Hallmark movie stuff.” His eyes found mine. “Word is you were already on scene when the call went out. At the mom’s house.”
“I live next door.”
“Right. Neighbor. Gotcha.” He let the word sit, turning it into something with corners. Donovan glanced at me to make sure I wasn’t about to jump over the table and slam Briggson’s face into the wood. “Must be nice having a K9 team on call. Rest of us have to wait for dispatch.”
“The kid was six and alone in the woods,” Donovan said. “We responded. That’s what you do.”
“Whatyoudo is train dogs, Hughes.” Briggson looked at me. “And put on school assemblies, apparently. How was that? I heard Jolly was a big hit with the PTA moms.”
I’d known the assembly would make the rounds. A contractor bringing his K9 into an elementary school was exactly the kind of story that traveled fast through a department.
“The reptile show fell through. We stepped in. Nobody got bitten.”
“Cute. Real community-minded.” He leaned forward, and something shifted behind the usual bluster. His eyes were sharper than his mouth. He looked at me now with something that wasn’t just antagonism. It was assessment. “What I’m wondering is when the K9 training we’re paying you for starts taking a back seat to all the extracurriculars. School shows. Neighborhood search parties. Cozy evenings next door.” He tipped his beer in my direction. “You’re spreading yourself a little thin for a consultant, Garrison.”
The observation was more precise than his usual buckshot, and it landed close enough to register. Not because hewas right about the work suffering. Because the fact that he was watching my movements closely enough to connect those dots meant someone was paying attention.
Especially if it was a dirty cop who was already suspicious of everything and everyone.
Vance set his beer on the table with a quiet tap. “Ben did the school a favor on his own time. The search tonight was a departmental response. Nobody’s billing hours for either one.” He looked at Briggson with the flat patience of a man redirecting traffic. “Anything else?”
Briggson held Vance’s gaze. His jaw flexed. Then something shifted—not surrender, but a recalculation. He sat back in his chair, lifted his beer, and drank without answering.
He didn’t leave. He just stopped talking, which was almost more unsettling. Briggson in full complaint mode was a known quantity. Briggson silent, watching, turning his glass in his hands was different. He sat there for the next twenty minutes like a man running a tab on everyone’s conversation and keeping receipts.
Not unlike what Donovan and I were doing.
