“No.”
Atticus frowned.“What is it?”
Slade shook off the thoughts flooding his brain, refusing to give in to the insecurity eating away at him.
“It’s nothing.I’ll take half, you take half.We’ll meet at HQ when we’re done.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.It’s a good place to start.”
“I thought so.”Atticus nodded toward his phone.“I sent Becs a list and asked her to identify any kids whose parents either own or work at a place that would have the equipment to move a statue of that size.Or access to one.Figured we’d talk to them, see if one of their trucks disappeared for a little while.”
“Good idea.”Slade took a sip of juice.“Maybe we could grab lunch before we head into HQ for the meeting?”
“I’m actually meeting Carson for lunch.You wanna join us?”
As though he were an afterthought?No, thank you.“I’m good.Y’all enjoy.”
Forgetting breakfast, Slade spun on his heel and left the kitchen.
“Slade!”
“Shoot me the list.I’ll do my part.”
With that, Slade walked out of the house, hating himself for letting his insecurity ruin what started as a damn fine morning.
Chapter Twenty-One
Brantley leaned against the kitchen counter, sippingcoffee and trying to work through the day in his head.They were meeting with the team to discuss the case, and he wanted to be ahead of the game.As it was, he was still mentally digging through the information they received yesterday and getting nowhere.
Which meant he needed to get ahead of this, and there was only one way to do that.
“Did you get a chance to look at the information Darius digitized?”
Reese closed the dishwasher and pressed the button to start it.“Not in depth, no.I glanced at what Becs sorted.She won’t be able to map it out until she understands the objective.”
“Did she ask what it was all about?”
Reese shook his head.“I could tell she wanted to, though.”
He appreciated that about her.Becs was very professional and, for the most part, she stayed in her lane until she needed something to accomplish her task.He wasn’t sure how he was going to relay this to the team just yet, so he was grateful that she wasn’t asking questions.It was one thing to ask them to locate Meredith Prescott.That was their job.They were a missing persons task force.It was something entirely different to go down the road of a conspiracy theory.
Only one case had they taken that required them to understand the why, and that was when Dante Greenwood, JJ’s ex-boyfriend, staged his kidnapping and dragged JJ into the plot.They generally left the why of it to the police.
But a conspiracy theory … that was a whole other beast.
Regardless of how he presented it, Brantley wasn’t sure any of them were going to be professional once they sprang this on them.Maybe that was the issue.Perhaps they shouldn’t be bringing the team in on this.They could deal with it on their own until they had more information.Since he wasn’t prone to conspiracy theories, it made sense.He could look for actual proof that there was a case before wasting their time with something that might be nothing.
He exhaled heavily, remembering what Reese had said about information they’d obtained but held back because they didn’t want to disrupt the wedding.They’d kept information from him because they didn’t trust he could handle it at the time.No, holding back from the team wasn’t an option.He hated that Reese had done that to him, and while he understood—at least on some level—he didn’t care for the feeling of being coddled like he wasn’t capable of handling the information during a stressful time.
Brantley snorted.“If only.”Shaking off the thought, he turned to face Reese.“Before we meet with the team, I want you to walk me through everything you found.”
“It wasn’t so much what I found,” Reese said, his tone somewhat defensive.“Luca found the information, although he didn’t put it together at the time.JJ did.”
“Put what together?”
“I honestly don’t know.Not yet.I can show you the folders and files, and you can see the anomalies that JJ identified.But that’s all they are at this point.We didn’t dig into it.”
