“I’ll pay you, Brantley,” Travis blurted. “A million dollars.”
He was serious.
“I don’t want your money,” Brantley said, keeping his voice level. “You’re family, Travis. I won’t take your money. But we will find her. I can’t promise it’ll be me, though. I’ve got a brilliant team and I’ll utilize them the best way possible. We won’t stop lookin’ until we find her. That’ll have to be enough.”
He didn’t look happy, but there was a little less strain around his mouth. “It’s more than I have now.”
“That’s not true. We never stopped lookin’ for her. JJ’s got alerts set up in the event she’s seen. She runs facial recognition software all the time. We haven’t left you high and dry.”
Brantley wanted to find the woman, too. Could they dedicate more time, more resources to finding her? Yeah. And he would.
“I need to know my kids are safe,” Travis said, a plea in his tone, something Brantley had never heard from him before.
“I understand.” Brantley stood. “We’ll keep at it. I’ll juggle the remodeling I’ve got underway and make this a priority.”
Travis got to his feet. “What remodeling?”
He explained about adding a conference room to the barn and Reese’s idea to convert two of the bedrooms into offices and add the deck to the back of the house.
“I’ll take care of it,” Travis stated, walking around his desk.
“What?” Brantley shook his head, laughed. “No, that’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” Travis’s face was stony. “I owe you, Brantley. I owe you and Reese for bringin’ my baby girl home. I can never repay you completely. So let me do this.”
Because he knew Travis was a man who didn’t want anything for free, Brantley agreed. He would take Travis’s assistance because it was a surefire way of ensuring things got done.
***After meeting with Trey, showing him around, Reese ended up working from the kitchen island for much of the afternoon to avoid JJ and Baz. Then, with JJ keeping an eye on Tesha, he rode with Baz to meet Charlotte Miller, a.k.a. Charlie, at the Coyote Ridge bakery at fourteen hundred to discuss the opportunity with the team.
After only fifteen minutes, Reese understood why Baz was so fond of the woman, and it had nothing to do with her appearance, although she was attractive with her flawless dark skin and shiny black hair. The makeup she wore accentuated her full mouth and light brown eyes, the hairstyle professional. But it wasn’t her beauty that made him like her for the role. It had everything to do with her demeanor. Charlie was the no-nonsense type who didn’t beat around the bush yet managed to have a conversation without intimidating someone into submission.
“I live and work in a small town,” she explained. “As you can understand, there’s not a lot of room for advancement in a PD the size of ours.”
Reese had a feeling she was understating her difficulty advancing. More than likely, it was the fact that she was a black woman in a predominantly white male force. Women, regardless of their skin color, had difficulty enough advancing despite their education and ability.
“Have you considered movin’ to Austin? Or even San Antonio?” Reese asked, merely curious about why she would remain there if she was looking to move up in the department.
“No. I don’t care to hire on with a big department. Red tape’s a pain in the ass and the bigger the department, the more they weave.”
Made sense.
“You have a problem with travel? Our task force is charged with assisting all branches of law enforcement in the state,” Reese explained. “And based on previous cases, we’ve been known to cross state lines.”
“I thought it was relatively new,” she said, her inquisitive gaze shifting to Baz, then back to him.
“We are. Officially, we’ve closed three cases. One just last week. Unofficially, four if you count the one that spurred the decision for the task force in the first place.”
“And we’ve got a storage area full of case files from departments all across the state,” Baz told her. “All needin’ our attention.”
“Are you taking point on these cases?” she asked. “Or are we workin’ for the individual departments in that regard?”
“We’re our own entity,” Reese explained. “We work independent of all law enforcement agencies. As you’ve probably experienced, it’s in our best interest to work with the departments, not against them. We’re not lookin’ to step on toes, but we are lookin’ to get the job done.”
“I admire that.”
“Brantley Walker, the man in charge,” he continued, “has decided to restructure from the jump. He’s clearly got a plan in mind and hirin’ is necessary to implement it.”
“Three teams with three people on each team,” Charlie said. “Baz told me.”
“Four teams if you count me and Brantley. As of now, there are two team leaders in place. Baz has one team, Trey Walker the other. We’re lookin’ for a third.”
