“What are you workin’ on?” he asked, realizing too late that it had come out wrong.
Her eyes narrowed. “Just twiddlin’ my thumbs, B. That’s what you pay me for, right?”
“Shit,” he grumbled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
“You sure about that?” JJ bit out. “I mean, you’re more than welcome to deal with these expense reports if you’d like. Not sure if you know this, but someone’s gotta pay for all the equipment, and Rhonda’s breathin’ down my neck daily to get it done.”
“Who’s Rhonda?”
JJ shot him that are you serious right now? look. “The governor’s secretary.”
Her duh was implied.
“She’s not happy that she’s been tasked with gettin’ the task force set up, either. But we do what we have to.”
Effectively put in his place, Brantley took a deep breath, headed for the storage area where they were keeping the boxes of case files the various departments and agencies had started sending their way.
“I’ve pulled out a few,” Baz said, holding a folder high in the air to get his attention.
Pivoting, he headed over to Baz’s desk, where he had a stack of manila folders.
“Let me start this by sayin’, I haven’t had time to actually look over the notes, but I was lookin’ for those that might result in us findin’ the victim alive. Figured those were worth prioritizin’.”
Made sense to him, only there were quite a few files on Baz’s desk. If there were that many who could potentially be saved versus recovered…
Picking up the first file, Brantley skimmed the pages. Two-year-old boy abducted from front yard eight months ago. Suspect that convicted-felon father kidnapped. Case went cold after four weeks of searching.
Next folder. Woman last seen jogging at a lake in downtown Austin back in January of this year. Body never found, no clues. Case cold after three months despite active parent participation.
Next. Thirteen-year-old girl disappeared. Had been talking to someone online. Believed to be older man who lured her out. Six weeks of investigating led nowhere.
Brantley looked up from the last file, glanced at Baz, JJ, then Reese.
How the fuck were they supposed to tackle all of these? These were just three of many, and if he was asked to prioritize which of these specific three was more pressing, no way could he. They were all critical as far as he was concerned.
“We need more people,” he said, slapping the file down on the desk and heading outside.
He needed air, needed time to think, to plan, to…
“You okay?”
Brantley nodded, but he didn’t look back at Reese. Couldn’t. How was he supposed to tell his partner that he felt incompetent to lead this team? Searching for bad guys was what he did. Well, terrorists mostly. That was what he was good at, strategizing a takedown, breaching a compound filled with tangos, slipping into enemy territory undetected, neutralizing a threat. Hell, he could do that shit blindfolded.
But this…
“Hey. Stop for a minute.”
He did but he didn’t look up when Reese appeared before him.
“How the hell do we find all those people?”
“One person at a time,” Reese said softly. “Trust me, I know it’s overwhelming. I’ve skimmed those files, too.”
Brantley did look up then and right into those bottomless dark brown eyes. “We need more people,” he repeated.
“I won’t argue with you there. I figured we were gonna wing it for a bit, tackle what we could.”
“And here I was proud that we’d solved three already,” he grumbled, turning away to pace.
“Don’t discredit what we’ve done,” Reese stated, his tone hard. “We’ve worked hard, Brantley. And we’ll continue to do so. Even if it’s just the four of us.”
It couldn’t only be the four of them. One case at a time, prioritizing those that were active. How the fuck were they going to make a dent like that?
No, they did need more people.
“You want a bigger team?” Reese asked.
Brantley turned to look at him. “Yeah.”
“Okay. Then we put together the reasons why and we present it to the governor. He’s got the power to approve or deny, right?”
“It’s his team,” Brantley confirmed.
“So let’s do that. Let’s sit down and write it up. How many people, what they’ll be workin’ on. That sort of thing.”
And just like that, the anxiety was past him. Reese was right. Brantley couldn’t let emotion cloud his judgment. No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t save them all. He accepted that. However, he did have the means to make a difference, and creating a task force that could at least make a dent was his objective. Had been since the day the governor presented him with the idea.
“We’ll get JJ to determine the cost of expanding HQ to accommodate. Baz can provide us with a high-level list of cases that he feels should be looked into first. We can research how many active investigations there are at a few agencies, provide those numbers.” Reese stepped forward. “If you want to do this, we will.”
