Leland tossed the bar towel onto the counter. “From now on,” he snapped, “it’s serve your own damn self.”
Boone blinked. “That’s not really how bars work.”
“I have faith you’ll figure it out. I’m calling it a night.” Leland stepped out from behind the bar and headed for the parking lot by way of the house.
Behind him, Boone asked, “What’s got his ass in a knot?”
Alec answered, “Five foot six. Blue-eyed blonde. Works for my wife. MIA lately.”
Leland kept walking, ignoring the comment and subsequent laughter. He didn’t slow down, which only made his so-called friends laugh harder.
Chapter 13
Alec looked at the clock and shut down his computer. Sunday evenings he reserved for Emily. They’d had plans: dinner out, something she didn’t have to prepare. Then a walk on the beach or a quiet evening at home. But the Bellamy case had other ideas.
If he left now, he could still salvage some of the evening.
He was heading out, shutting off lights as he went, when he heard his name.
“Alec. Before you leave, you really need to see this.”
That was enough to make him retrace his steps. Callan’s office door was open, and he paused on the threshold. The full-day’s growth of beard on the man was impossible to miss.
“Have you gone home at all?”
“I showered and caught a few hours of sleep in the downtime room.”
Alec looked at him. “No razors, huh?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Never mind that. Three days of fighting footage that refuses to sync, and this pops up.”
Callan angled his laptop toward him. A still image filled the screen.
Grainy. Pulled from security footage. Alec stepped closer, frowning. “Is that—”
“I wasn’t sure at first,” Callan said as he started scrolling. “Until I found more.”
Julia Dykstra. In clubwear, sitting at the bar, talking to a dom at the club he and Leland had visited only days before.
Tension coiled in his chest. Plans had changed again.
He left Callan’s office, pulling out his phone. Distracted and scrolling for Dev’s contact, he collided with his wife. Petite as she was, she would have ended up on the floor if he hadn’t caught her by the arms.
“Where’s the fire?” she asked, slightly winded.
“Sorry, sweetheart. What are you doing here?”
Smiling, she raised a bag with her company’s logo on the side. “We had to cancel dinner, but you still have to eat. Hi, Callan,” she added, glancing past him.
Her smile froze and her eyes narrowed, part squint, part disbelief.
“I worried something like this would happen,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. When she looked up, anger vibrated off her in waves. “Leland Hale is a dead man walking.”
***
As Leland reached for another stack of forms, one thought kept replaying in his mind: be careful what you ask for. When he’d requested weekend assignments, Dev had taken him at his word and cleaned out his inbox. Background checks, case reviews, supervisory reports on the new guys—administrative work everyone hoped landed on someone else’s desk.
Now it was nearly nine o’clock on a Sunday, and Leland was still in the office working his way through a pile of paperwork half a foot deep.
