Page 45 of Carry on Wayward Son

“And it’s—I can’t explain it. He sees things. He notices things about me that I don’t show people, and he doesn’t make a production of it, he just—adjusts. Accounts for it.” I shook my head, not sure where to go from there.

“You don’t usually get tangled up with someone on a case.”

“No.”

“Particularly someone involved with the case.”

“I’m aware.” I pressed my hand over my eyes. “I know how that sounds. It just happened. I wasn’t planning on this.”

“Oooooh.” This time the full weight of the word, all the implications of exactly what had happened, packed into three drawn-out syllables. “Is it going to keep happening while you’re there?”

I thought about the gym and the mats and the shower and the porch and the coffee made exactly right and his hand on my nape outside the police station while I fell apart slightly and then pulled myself back together. “God, yes,” I said. “It’s too good to walk away from.”

A small snicker from the California end of the line. “Good for you,” Henley said. “Genuinely. It’s been a while.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m just saying.” Her voice held a warmth now, the teasing softening into something more real. “Be careful, okay? Don’t get in over your head.”

If only you knew, I thought. Instead, I said, “I know what I’m doing.”

“You always think you do.” She said it with the warmth of someone who stayed on the right side of the line between concern and judgment. “Call me when you come up for air?”

“I’ll call you when there’s something worth reporting.”

“There already is,” she said, and I heard the smile.

After we hung up, I sat for a moment with the phone in my hand and let the conversation settle. Talking to Henley always left me feeling like I’d set something down that I’d been carrying at an awkward angle. She understood the work in a way most people in my life couldn’t, understood what it cost and why I kept paying the price anyway, and she never made me feel like a tragedy for continuing.

I pulled the files toward me and got back to work.

The paperwork was dense and unremarkable on its surface. The language of municipal government and corporate filings and property records was designed by bureaucratic instinct to be as boring as possible. But patterns formed if you stayed with them long enough. Names appearing in more than one context. Relationships between entities that weren’t disclosed but could be inferred from timing and geography and the way money moved when people hoped no one was watching. I made notes and cross-referenced against Madden’s files and let my brain work the way it worked best—methodically, without forcing anything, following threads wherever they led.

Koa snored against my side.

The afternoon light moved across the floor, and I followed it without meaning to, hour by hour, the way you lose track of time when a case has its hooks in you.

My phone buzzed.

Jace.

I picked up. “Hey.”

“Do you have a dress?”

I blinked at the wall. “Is this some kind of weird segue?”

“We’ve got dinner tonight with the owner of the Pelican Point Bistro, who also happens to be connected to the marina. It’s the fanciest place on the island. Hence, dress.”

I thought about the garment bag I’d thrown in at the last minute on a just in case basis. “I’m sure I can come up with something.”

“Good. I’ll pick you up at six.”

Twenty-Three

JACE

She opened the door, and I lost my train of thought entirely.