“Thank you. For choosing me. For trusting me with something this important.”
“You earned it, Drewett. Every bit of it.” Kinsley flashed a smile in Alex’s direction before focusing back on Toby. “Seriously, take the detective’s exam. You’re a natural. I’ll write you a recommendation letter myself. And speaking of people who wear shields, look what the tide washed back in.”
“Hey, Kin. Drewett.” Alex dropped his duffel bag beside his desk and reached over to shake Toby’s hand. “Heard you two had an interesting week.”
“That’s one way to put it.” Kinsley grimaced, and Alex figured he was about to hear about his tan again. “Great. I’m going to look like Casper standing next to you for the rest of the summer.”
“How was the fishing trip?” Toby asked, taking a step back to give Alex room to settle in.
“Excellent. Caught a forty-pound tuna, drank too much beer, and successfully avoided all responsibilities for eight consecutive days.” Alex pulled out his chair and immediately noticed that someone had been at his desk. His stapler was two inches to the left of where it should be. His pencil holder had been rotated forty-five degrees. And his nameplate, the wooden one his mother had given him when he made detective, was facing backward. “Izzy. I swear, I’m going to hide her car keys. Better yet, I’m going to fill her locker with packing peanuts.”
“I should probably get going,” Toby said, and Kinsley mouthedwise choicebehind Alex’s back. “Thanks again, Aspen.”
As soon as Toby was out of earshot, Alex stood and began to shed his suit jacket.
“Speaking of thanks, I appreciate you keeping an eye on Mom while I was gone.” He hung his jacket on the coatrack behind him. “Turns out, Paul is a lover of snakes.”
“What?” Kinsley let her chair drop back to its original position and stared at him with an expression of undisguised horror. It was good to be back. “Please tell me you’re talking about the plumber’s snake and not snakes, snakes.”
“Snakes, snakes. Multiple aquariums in his living room. Some of them had heat lamps.” Alex reclaimed his seat. There was something different about the bullpen, and he finally realized that a brand-new monitor, maybe seventy-five inches, had been mounted on the far wall while he was away. “What the hell is that?”
“You didn’t read through your emails yet, have you?” Kinsley glanced to her right at the new system. “We’re integrating a new software system for case assignments.”
Alex didn’t see their names on the monitor, which apparently meant they weren’t catching anything new this morning. He was already sensing the tension in his shoulders. Maybe he should have taken two weeks.
“Anyway, Paul was shown the door,” Alex replied, turning his attention back to Kinsley. “Respectfully, of course.”
“Like your mother knows any other way,” Kinsley said with a laugh. She stood and held out her hand. “Give me your mug. I need another refill, anyway.”
“Hey, I am not filling out any paperwork on the Bell case.” Alex snagged his mug before she could come around the side of the desk. “I wasn’t here, Kin. Not for any of it. Plus, you still owe me for the Scriven paperwork you left me to handle on my own.”
“The paperwork on the Bell case is already finished,” Kinsley stated, flashing him the kind of smile that usually preceded the discovery that she’d gotten away with something. “Well, the majority of it, until the prosecutor’s office requests supplemental reports. Did I not mention that Toby is remarkably gifted in that particular area of expertise?”
Alex wanted to ask how that was even possible, given that the arrest had been made the previous afternoon, but movement near the elevator caught his attention. Izzy Martinez emerged carrying a box of donuts and heading their direction with the grin of a woman who knew exactly what she’d done to his desk.
“Lanen! You’re back!” Izzy set the box on Kinsley’s desk, and Kinsley had already abandoned the offer to fill his mug in favor of a chocolate icing donut. “How was the Gulf? Did you catch anything impressive?”
“A forty-pound tuna.”
“Pictures or it didn’t happen.” Izzy perched on the edge of Alex’s desk, deliberately knocking his newly corrected pencil holder askew with her elbow. “Hey, did you hear about the new AI dictation software? They installed it yesterday. Toby was the first one to try it out. He dictated every report from the Bell case, start to finish. Done in three hours.”
Alex arched a brow and gave Kinsley a pointed stare. She had half the chocolate donut shoved in her mouth and mumbled something completely unintelligible through the icing, already backing away toward the break room.
“I just busted her, didn’t I?” Izzy said, snapping her fingers. “Damn it. Kin, come back! I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”
Izzy hopped off Alex’s desk and followed Kinsley through the bullpen, their voices fading into the ambient noise of the department. He shook his head and was about to investigate the new software himself when his cell phone chimed with an incoming call.
He wheeled his chair back, retrieved his phone from his suit jacket, and glanced at the screen. His stomach tightened at the sight of Max’s name.
“Max,” Alex said quietly, catching sight of Kinsley and Izzy disappearing around the corner toward the break room. “Tell me I don’t have anything to be concerned about.”
“I wish I could, man.” Max was about to deliver bad news. “I ran the background check like you asked. Deep dive, everything I could access without raising red flags at the office. And Alex, this guy has a serious obsession with your partner.”
“Define obsession.”
“It appears that Serra has been investigating Kinsley for months, possibly longer.” Papers rustled on Max’s end. “I found credit card records showing purchases at a surveillance equipment shop in Bismarck back in February. High-end stuff. Long-range cameras, audio recording devices, GPS trackers. But that’s not even the part that concerns me the most. It’s his contacts.”
“What do you mean?”
