Martinez hadn’t been a traitor. He’d been someone with a drinking problem who didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. He’d deserved to be fired, and I was pretty damned sure that’s where the investigation into his actions would’ve led.
But he certainly hadn’t deserved to die for those sins. I wished to fuck he’d reached out to somebody. Hell, I would’ve been the first person to tell him he’d fucked up and he had to pay the price for that, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
It was the end of the world now, at least for him.
Jolly rested his chin on the center console, his eyes on me. Patient. Present. Not asking for anything. Just there, the way he’d been there for seven years, through everything I’d ever carried.
I put my hand on his head. He exhaled, a long, slow breath that I felt more than heard.
I sat there a while longer.
Chapter 25
Kayla
Something had happened at the department.
Ben had been around a lot the last couple of days but quieter than usual—and for a man who’d turned economy of speech into an art form, that was saying something.
“Someone at the department died” was all he’d given me, standing in my kitchen two days ago with a glass of water he wasn’t drinking. Brief words delivered in his usual even tone, except the air around them was different. Heavier.
I didn’t push. We had our agreement. If it was work stuff he couldn’t discuss, I wouldn’t pester him with questions. But still, I wished there were something I could do to help lighten his load.
Jolly had noticed too. Every time Ben sat down, Jolly would cross the room and press his body against Ben’s leg. Not the purposeful positioning of a working dog. A check-in. Then he’d trot back to the fence gap to play with William,and ten minutes later, he’d circle back to Ben again. Running his own diagnostic.
This morning, the heaviness was still there, but lighter around the edges. Ben had come over early to ask if William and I could help him with something.
He’d bought a dining table.
A dining table. For the man who’d been eating off the kitchen counter since he moved in, whose house contained a coffeemaker, a dog bed, and what I suspected was a single towel.
I didn’t make a thing of it. Neither did he.
“Left side’s catching on the doorframe,” Ben said from behind his end.
“Which side is left? I’m walking backward.”
“Your left.”
I adjusted my grip on the table’s edge and lifted. The solid oak surface had looked manageable in the back of Ben’s truck. It was less manageable sideways through a doorframe that had apparently been designed for people who didn’t own furniture.
Ben had the heavy end. He was moving through the hallway with the controlled efficiency of a man who’d carried heavier things through narrower spaces, and I was shuffling backward in socked feet, trying not to take out a light switch with my elbow.
“Almost there. Two more feet.”
“You said that four feet ago.”
The corner cleared the frame, and we were through. Ben guided his end down first, then came around to help me lower mine. The legs hit the floor with a solid thud, and we stood there looking at it.
Round. No head of the table. Everyone equal.
The dining room looked different with something in it. The bare walls hadn’t changed, but the table anchored thespace, gave it a center of gravity it hadn’t had. A reason for the room to exist.
Ben ran his hand across the surface. Oak, medium finish, simple lines. Nothing fancy. Built to be used.
“Fits,” he said.
“It does.”
