I didn’t want to see Kelly at all, let alone several times that day.
It was fucking sucky that she kept talking to me, too.
I tried to ignore her as I passed but ended up not being successful because what she said caught me off guard.
“That woman that you’re married to…”
I paused with my arm on the door handle to the sheriff’s office. “Yeah?”
“Is it serious?”
I nearly snorted.
She thought we were married, and she was asking if it was serious?
Seriously?
“As serious as marriage can get,” I said as I yanked the door open and walked inside.
“But y’all don’t go out together.” She got up and followed me inside. “You’re never together, actually. I’ve seen her go everywhere by herself, even when you’re off. You’re even part of the SAR team together, and you don’t go together.”
It highly irritated me that she paid that close attention to me that she knew who I came and went with. It also irritated me that she knew Sage’s whereabouts.
We may not be what we appeared to be, but that protective instinct to make sure that nothing and no one ever touched her burned hot and deep.
I stopped and turned, leveling my gaze on Kelly.
“I’m not sure what exactly you’re hoping to accomplish by spouting out my and my wife’s every move,” I said stiffly. “But I’d really appreciate it if you kept your nose out of our business. I don’t need nor want you there.”
Kelly’s face flashed with anger, but instead of heading her off and stoking that anger any deeper, I headed inside.
I passed the conference room full of FBI agents and paused in the doorway to listen.
The FBI agents, support staff, and anyone else that needed to be there had come in droves.
After comparing his missing children with other departments, we’d found that there were about nineteen spread out over sixteen counties that were missing as well. All in the same age range, the same MO, the same everything.
Just minutes after making that connection, all of our systems had gone down.
But the FBI had shown anyway.
They’d also informed us that our system had been hacked, and that we needed to be very careful about what we shared and how we shared it now.
Because there was a serial kidnapper—we didn’t know about the killer part yet—that was highly intelligent, knew the area well, and had insider knowledge of all of our departments.
We’d called Apollo the moment that we’d known that there were some holes we needed patched, and he’d been working on it since this morning.
I made eye contact with Black who nodded his head at me, his face grim. “Gentlemen, let’s take a break.”
The lone female of the group, what appeared to be a bottled blonde but was anything but, stood up and said, “Last I checked, I had a vagina.”
Black didn’t comment.
He wouldn’t.
Because the two of them got along like oil and water. It was easier for him to just pretend that she wasn’t there.
I wasn’t quite sure what their deal was, but when she was around, Black turned into a real asshole.
