“Let’s skip the dance, Serra.” Laura set the glass down between them, her fingertips lingering on the condensation-slick surface. “What do you want?”
Beck studied her face, weighing how direct to be. Laura Mitchell had always appreciated straightforwardness, even when her position as sergeant prevented her from reciprocating with the same openness. She walked a careful line between personal loyalty and professional obligation, and he respected her for it, even when that line worked against him.
He decided to test the waters.
“Heard something interesting today,” Beck said, keeping his voice pitched low enough that it wouldn’t carry past their corner of the bar. “Divers up at Terrapin Lake. Sounded like they were looking for something specific. Someone specific.”
“News travels fast.”
“It’s my job, Laura,” Beck replied with a slight shrug. “Did they find anything interesting?”
She reclaimed his glass and took another sip before answering. He couldn’t tell whether she was deliberatelydelaying her response or genuinely weighing how much to share. With Laura, both were equally likely.
“The tip was bogus.” Laura tilted her head in a way that conveyed a practiced indifference, the kind of gesture that said these things happen and moved on. “Levick got some anonymous tip about a body, but the divers spent the entire day searching that lake and found exactly nothing. Let’s just say the captain is furious about the wasted resources on what turned out to be a fishing expedition.”
A smile spread across her face as she registered her own unintentional pun, and Beck couldn’t stop his smile in response.
“Nice one, Sergeant.”
“I have my moments.”
Beck absorbed the information, turning it over carefully. The police didn’t mobilize a dive team on a whim. Anonymous tips were a dime a dozen, and most of them went nowhere. For Shane Levick to have convinced the captain to authorize divers, he must have believed his source was credible. More than credible. Compelling enough to justify the expense and the manpower on nothing more than someone’s word.
“The tip was reliable enough to mount a full search operation,” Beck said carefully. “Levick must have believed his source pretty strongly to put his reputation on the line like that.”
Laura released her hold on his glass and shifted on her stool to study him with renewed interest. She didn’t speak right away, and the silence between them was deliberate, as though she were testing whether he’d fill it with something incriminating. He didn’t blink.
“You thought we were looking for Gantz in that lake, didn’t you?”
Beck remained silent, neither confirming nor denying, but his lack of immediate denial was answer enough. Laura sighed and dragged the beer glass back in front of her.
“If it had anything to do with Gantz, Kinsley would have been involved. But she wasn’t even at the station yesterday. She took the day off after closing the Scriven case.” Laura paused, clearly monitoring his expressions for a reaction before continuing. “She’s working on some old case now. Something about tapes found in a foreclosed mansion.”
Beck noted the deliberate shift in subject. Laura was feeding him just enough information to redirect his attention, a technique he recognized because he used it himself during interviews. Offer something mildly interesting to steer the conversation away from the thing you actually wanted to protect. It was effective, and he filed the maneuver away without comment.
“Seriously, Beck. You need to drop this thing with Gantz.” Laura’s voice softened with what sounded like genuine concern, though whether for him or for the people his digging might affect, he couldn’t tell. “Everyone knows what he did. The only reason he walked was a technicality that George Aspen exploited.” She turned the glass slowly on the bar top, leaving a trail of condensation on the wood. “And while Kinsley and I don’t always see eye to eye, I feel for her. She and Alex spent over a year hunting Gantz down, building what they thought was an airtight case. And then her own father takes something he overheard during one of her private phone conversations and uses it to blow up the prosecution’s case from the inside. I don’t understand how she even talks to the man, let alone has dinner with him every week.”
Beck lifted his glass from in front of Laura and took a measured sip, giving himself a moment to process. Everyone in Fallbrook seemed content with the official narrative.
End of story.
No one questioned the convenient disappearance of a man who had courted publicity at every turn during his trial, a manwho had smiled for cameras and teased reporters with promises of a tell-all book. People didn’t question it because they didn’t want to. The disappearance was a mercy that spared the town from having to coexist with a freed killer, and poking at it might reveal something uglier than the comfortable silence they’d all agreed to maintain.
He reached for his wallet and extracted a ten-dollar bill, placing it on the bar beside his glass.
“Thanks for the advice.”
Laura rested a hand on his forearm before he could stand, her touch light but deliberate.
“I’m just trying to help.” She held his gaze for a beat, and something in her expression shifted. The professional guard she’d been maintaining during their conversation lowered by a fraction, replaced by something warmer and more direct. “Anyway, my daughter is at a friend’s house tonight. I wouldn’t mind some company.”
The sudden swing caught him off guard, though it probably shouldn’t have. Their encounter in his hotel room the other night had established a precedent that Laura seemed interested in repeating, regardless of whatever warnings Kinsley had issued about keeping her distance from him. Part of Beck wondered if this was her way of changing the subject, a more personal form of the same redirection she’d been employing recently. But another part of him, the part that had noticed the elegant line of her neck when she’d thrown her head back in laughter and the intelligence in her dark eyes when she’d pieced together his interest in Gantz, didn’t particularly care about her motives.
After all, two could play at this game.
Information flowed in both directions, and a night spent in Laura Mitchell’s company might yield more than either of them intended to give away. He glanced toward the exit, then back to Laura, taking in the challenge in her gaze.
“Lead the way, Sergeant.”
