It wasn’t the admission of love that caught him off guard. Reese had spoken those words numerous times already. But what he hadn’t done was say them in public, loudly enough for anyone to hear. He hadn’t whispered or looked away or appeared embarrassed by it in any way.
And while that made Brantley’s heart fuller than it had ever been, it also made him feel incredibly guilty.
“I … uh…” He sighed, set his fork down. “I should probably mention…” He swallowed, overwhelmed by nerves.
“Somethin’ wrong?”
Brantley figured that depended on how Reese looked at it, so he spit out the words. “We’re unemployed.”
Reese’s expression fell. “We’rewhat?”
“The … uh … the task force. It no longer exists.”
“The governorfiredus?”
“You could say that, sure.” Brantley reached for his tea. “But it’s cool.”
“Cool?” Reese leaned forward, lowered his voice. “You think it’s cool that we’re unemployed?”
Brantley exhaled and blurted out, “No, I think it’s cool that we’re gonna literally go off the books. You know, do this on our own.”
*
“I think maybe your blood sugar’s low,” Reese told Brantley, staring back at him.
He wanted to take the task force private? As in run it like a business? On their own?
Brantley set down his glass. “Hear me out.”
Reese lowered his fork, forcing himself to relax as he waited to hear Brantley’s big reveal.
“Let me preface this by sayin’ the governor made the decision, not me.”
“The decision to what?”
“Disband the task force.”
Reese frowned, sitting up straight, trying to understand what Brantley was saying. “What do you mean disband? I thought you said we were fired.”
That was something he would understand. The being fired part. After all, Reese had been privy to the conversation with the governor after they’d recovered Dante and returned him home. The man had not accepted that Dante had come up with the plan on his own, insisting his son was incapable of such an egregious act, accusing Brantley of reaching. They hadn’t exactly left the hospital in the governor’s good graces.
“This was a decision the governor made before the incident with Dante.”
Before? “How longbefore? And why’s this the first time I’m hearin’ about it?”
The waitress chose that moment to swing by to check on them, but rather than wave her off, Reese held up a finger, asked for two coffees. If he had to guess, this was going to be a long night. Might as well fuel up now.
“The Monday before Christmas, I got an email from Governor Greenwood tellin’ me there’s a good possibility he’ll have to officially disband the task force. Somethin’ about gettin’ pushback regardin’ the allocation of the budget. Accordin’ to those in opposition, the governor should’ve been dedicatin’ the money bein’ used for us to the law enforcement agencies already in place.”
Reese nodded. “Makes sense.”
It was one of the questions he’d had from the beginning but never voiced: why would the governor want to create something on the side when he could invest more in what he already had?
“It does,” Brantley continued. “But Governor Greenwood truly believed the task force provided somethin’ the other agencies couldn’t. We didn’t have to deal with the bureaucratic red tape, we could focus our attention on whatever we needed to focus on, and so forth.”
Reese had no argument there. They did have more leeway than the police and sheriff departments.
“You’re sayin’ all this in past tense. So it’s real. The task force no longer exists?”
