But what does it mean?
Back in comfortable clothes with her hair corralled into a bun, she set up her laptop next to Reese’s and poked through his folders to see what he was working on.
He slapped her hand away playfully. “Doyourwork.”
She laughed, pulling her own stack of colorful folders out of her bag and hefting them onto the table.
David blinked at the veritable rainbow spread before them.
Reese grinned. “Are you amazed by the sheer quantity or the array of colors?”
“Both.”
“Let’s see if I can get this right,” Reese began, and Mati made sure he could see her rolling her eyes. He relished any opportunity to tease her about her penchant for what he calledextreme organization. He made it sound like a kink or something. “Green folders are for personal matters, finances are red, legal is orange, and research is yellow. Each company gets a dark blue folder and each project a light blue folder, unless they have to be in a binder. But don’t worry! Those are also the correct shade of blue, and in them are color-coded sections following the previously noted system. Oh, as do any flags, stickies, paper clips, and sometimes even highlighter colors.”
He looked at Mati. “Did I forget anything?”
“It’s a miracle you still had a penny to your name before I came along,” she said with a sniff.
“That is absolutely true,” he said so fucking earnestly she couldn’t help but smile at her keyboard.
“Wow,” David said. He looked about as terrified as Reese had once been.
“It works,” she muttered, easily pulling out the folder she needed.
Reese selected a folder from his stack. “That it does,” he agreed.
They worked side-by-side, as they often did, for a couple of hours. A few minutes in, David got up, made them swear they wouldn’t leave the room or answer the door for anyone, and promised to come back with food. Mati wasn’t sure what she was expecting, maybe a sandwich or some pizza, but he returned within fifteen minutes with huge bowls of pho.
Mati and Reese set aside their work, and the three of them dug in.
“Oh, god, this is amazing,” Reese said with a moan after his first bite.
David smiled. “I’m glad you like it.”
They chatted while they ate and exclaimed over every new combination of flavors. Reese threatened to lick his bowl when he was done.
David laughed, plucked the container from Reese’s hands, and cleared the rest of the table.
Reese stood. “You don’t have to do that. Here, let me—”
David waved him back into his seat. “It’s fine. I don’t have much to do other than call Chance and check in. I’ll see if he’s learned anything.”
Reese nodded and grabbed his phone, his face shifting through a series of emotions.
“Everything okay?” Mati asked.
David turned from where he’d been straightening up in the kitchen.
“I have some texts from Hodges.” Mati hoped she imagined Reese was getting paler as his eyes scanned his phone. “He says the police have nothing on the actual break-in, but that he and our private investigators think someone was on the property for a while. Or made multiple visits.”
Mati took a deep breath and let it out slowly, reminding herself she, and Reese, were perfectly safe in Boston. With David. “How can they tell?”
“Footprints in the snow. Lots of them, apparently. All over the property, though they’re having a hard time tracking them back to wherever they began because of the fresh snowfall.”
David came back to the table and put his hand on Reese’s shoulder. “Is that all?”
“No. It seems possible that the intruder has been poking into various sheds. There’s no sign they got past any locked doors, though. Until the other day, that is…”
