The words found a gap in my armor that shouldn’t still be there. I raised a finger. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t remember you?” His voice dropped. “I’ve been trying to forget you for ten years. I haven’t managed it yet.”
My damn heart skipped a beat. “You chose this land.”
“You chose the badge.”
“That’s not how it happened.”
“That’s exactly how it happened.”
We glared at each other while the cicadas in the grass around us screamed their heads off.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out and glanced at the screen.
Unknown number.
I took two steps down the bank away from Kayden. “Senior Constable Delaney.”
A breath rasped. “Sapphire.” The voice was high and thin and cracked in the middle of my name. It took me a second to place it.
“Lyle?”
“Yeah. It’s me. I, I umm ...”
I’d dealt with Lyle Henderson maybe twenty times in four years. Drunk and disorderly. The occasional bar fight. A handful of nights sleeping it off in the lockup. The worst time was when he’d tried to ask me out while he’d been clutching onto the prison bars, glaring at me with his dopey eyes. My skin still crawled thinking about it. He always sounded like a man trying to be as bold as his brothers and never quite pulling it off.
This wasn’t that voice, though. He was scared.
“Lyle, what’s going on?” I kept my tone easy.
Kayden cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Bruce and Wayne didn’t come home last night,” Lyle said.
“Okay.” Nothing alarming about that. “They probably had a big night at the Rusty Swagman, and they’re sleeping it off.”
“No. It’s not that.” His voice tightened. “They weren’t going to the pub. I’ve been ringing them since this morning, and it just rings out. Wayne always answers my calls, even when he’s completely smashed.”
Kayden had moved to the creek’s edge, and crouching, he picked up a flat stone and turned it in his fingers, pretending not to listen. He wasn’t fooling me.
“Where were they going?” I asked Lyle.
Lyle paused, maybe deciding how much to give me.
“Lyle. Talk to me.”
“Bob called Bruce yesterday.”
The hairs on the back of my neck lifted. Bruce. The man who’d taken a swing at me in the station. The man Bob had released without a charge sheet an hour later.
“The Sarge called Bruce? What for?”
A longer pause.
“Lyle. You’re clearly scared for your brothers. So, you need to tell me everything you know.”
