He smiled at her. “You were on the right track.”
“Right track?” Reese asked.
Becs recapped their eventful evening.
“You were even closer than you thought,” Brantley noted. “We found him on Twentieth Street.”
And they’d been on 23rd. Definitely close.
“Was he okay?” Becs’s tone was rife with worry.
“Perfectly fine,” Brantley grumbled. “He was on his own. Willingly.”
A complete waste of time, then.
Not that it would do him any good to let it bother him. During his career in law enforcement, he’d chased down many leads that had gotten him nowhere. That was part of it. When searching for someone, you did what was necessary to get the result you wanted. And since finding Decker had been the ultimate objective, they could count this as a win. Even if he hadn’t been missing as Z had thought.
“He’s meetin’ us at the airport,” Reese relayed, probably to keep Brantley from getting angrier than he already was.
Evan understood. They’d wasted so much time looking for a man who wasn’t missing but rather hiding that they’d neglected other cases that could benefit from the time they dedicated to them.
“Is he comin’ back to the task force?” Atticus asked.
Evan watched Brantley and Reese, waiting for an answer.
“Fuck no,” Brantley said firmly. “He can go back to Dallas.”
For some reason, that made Evan feel a little better.
Based on Reese’s expression, he hadn’t been expecting Brantley’s harsh response.
And his partner must’ve sensed the silent question because Brantley elaborated, looking at each of them as he spoke. “I know we’ve all got personal shit that takes us away from the job. That’s expected. You prioritize the way you need to. But you don’t do it like this. You don’t run off and tell no one where you’re goin’. I don’t have a problem with you needin’ time off. Take it. But tell me where you’re goin’, and by God, be there when I’m lookin’ for you. Understood?”
No one spoke, but heads nodded all around.
Evan respected Brantley for his straightforwardness. He would tell it like it was, making it simpler for those around him to follow. Evan understood why Brantley didn’t want Decker working for him. Considering he couldn’t bother to call to say he was all right, Evan figured that was for the best. A team was only as good as its weakest member. And the last thing they needed was someone who might disappear when they needed him most.
“You’ve got the next few hours free,” Reese said. “Check-out’s at nine, so be sure to do that, then we’ll meet at the airport at fourteen hundred. We’ll leave an hour before in case you want to ride with us.”
Evan noticed Becs checking her watch. A second later, her eyes were practically glowing as she looked at Atticus. “You wanna go check out the sights with me?”
“Love to.”
And that told Evan all he needed to know about where he stood with her.
***
As soon as JJ walked into thebarn, she looked around, eager for the team to arrive so she could tell them it was time to move on from this case. They had done what they’d set out to do—find Decker Bromwell—and while he hadn’t actually been missing, they had succeeded. Brantley and Reese had confirmed his whereabouts and instructed him to come home. That was the most they could hope for.
Unfortunately, no one was there. Not even Darius, who was known to sneak in early to see if he could beat her.
Her gaze shifted to the electronic board mounted to the wall. Someone had left it on last night, and the screen showed a photo of Decker and a few bits of personal information. It was the official file they’d created for him to track the various pieces of information they gathered. It was stored on a shared drive and backed up in the cloud so everyone had access.
With coffee cup in hand—the only caffeine she was allowed for the day—she walked over to it and tapped the screen to bring up the full details of the file.
JJ stepped back and stared at it, impressed by how much information they’d ascertained in such a short time. Far more than she would’ve wanted someone to find out about her if she hadn’t truly been missing, that was for sure.
A moment later, the door opened behind her.
