Operation Power Play. Justine Davis
“There is that,” Rafe said, and grinned. “Besides, you’re kind of handy where you are.”
He’d barely seen the man so much as crack a smile before, except at the wedding, so this was something.
“Thanks. I think.” He shifted his gaze to Cutter. “So what do you want, dog? Go or stay?”
The dog looked up at Rafe. “Up to you, mutt,” he said. “Nice of you to visit, but I’m good. You don’t need to stay.”
The dog reached out with his nose and nudged Rafe’s hand. Then he turned and trotted over to Brett.
“Guess he’s all yours for the duration,” Rafe said. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” he said wryly, thinking he might just need it.
He spent most of the drive back to his place wondering if he could spare the time to stop by Sloan’s aunt’s place and let her know what Rick had said. But he was still a little too ashamed at his reaction to learning about her husband to do it. Relief sparked by a good man’s death was not something to be proud of, no matter the reason. And the thought of how much she must have loved her husband, to do what she’d done, and how much pain she had gone through made him feel worse than useless. He knew all too well no words could ease that kind of pain.
So instead he dropped Cutter off at the house, spent ten minutes throwing the tennis ball for him, ten minutes that barely took the edge off the dog’s seemingly endless energy, promised him more tonight and headed back to work. He would call from there, he told himself. Safer.
And he would finally get around to marking out another running route. One that didn’t pass the path that led to the big Craftsman house.
Sloan put the last dishes in the dishwasher. She considered the meal a success. Uncle Chuck was under strict dietary restrictions and claimed she was the only one who could make those meals palatable. Sloan suspected that was as much to take some of the load off of his wife, but since that was her goal as well, she happily went along. And it didn’t hurt that they were all eating a bit healthier, she supposed.
She stopped herself from looking at the clock again. It would be five minutes later than the last time, she told herself, just as it had been all evening. Instead she got her aunt and uncle settled in with a movie selected from her streaming service, a concept they had taken to with enthusiasm.
She’d take this time to check the website and catch up with email. Her inbox had been too full for too long. She needed to get back on track. Her compatriots across the country were good people and had stepped up when they’d learned of her uncle’s ill health, but Accountability Counts was her baby, and she had neglected it for too long.
After her initial sort she had two updates on current situations, four inquiries she would refer to the appropriate military offices—no doubt after having to reassure each that most of the rank and file were honest and true—and three cases she would direct to regional coordinators, mostly concerning other family members affected in ways similar to her own. One more was local, so she would look into that herself. Then came the standard batch of praise and threats.
Thankfully, today the praise outnumbered the threats two to one. She filed the good ones to read when she had time or needed the lift and moved the threats to the library she’d created just for that. If nothing else, she’d learned that early on. Document, document, document, the mantra of anyone dealing with large entities. She read them only for tone, to see if anything unusual jumped out, anything to indicate the twisted psyche behind them would do more than just spew venom from behind the safety of an anonymous internet. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary. She had ruffled some lofty feathers, and some were on birds in a position to do her great harm in many ways.
The rest were spam, scams or phishing, and she deleted them unread. That chore done, she wrote a quick blog post on the updates, ending it with her usual encouragement.
“Don’t give up,” she wrote. “There are so many good people out there, steadfast and loyal. You just have to find them.”
Before she even clicked on the publish button, her mind was back on Brett Dunbar. She told herself he kept popping into her thoughts because she was anxious for him to call and tell her if he’d found anything out on the application.
Okay, she admitted, also because he was one of the good guys. She didn’t know why she was so certain—these days it usually took her a while before she trusted someone—but she was. Something about him, maybe the shadows that darkened his eyes, told her this was a man who understood.
It was not because he was, as Connie had said, nice looking. She would have put him a bit beyond that, but still, she wasn’t in that market anymore. She doubted she ever would be.
On that thought her cell rang. She picked it up, already irritated at the way her mind had instantly jumped to wondering if it was him. As if it were spelled with a capital H.
But that was nothing compared to how her heart leaped when she saw the number she’d seen only once before.
“Sloan?”
The way he said her name when she answered sent a little shiver through her and made an image of him, tall, lean, with those eyes and that touch of gray in his hair, snap into sharp focus in her mind, which irritated her even more. She nearly let out an abrupt answer but bit it back. Still, she needed a little distance.
“Yes. Detective Dunbar, isn’t it?”
There, that was formal enough. And she knew he’d gotten it, because there was a fractional hesitation before he spoke again.
“Am I...interrupting something?”
“I was catching up on a little work,” she said, before she realized he might have meant something else entirely. Which somehow also grated on her nerves.
Boy, it doesn’t take much for you today, does it, Miss Snarky McGrouch?
“I’m sorry. This will be quick. It seems that your aunt’s application was simply lost. It never got logged in, and my contact found it in a stack of other papers in a file cabinet in his boss’s office.”
“Lost? For four months?”
“Your tax dollars at work,” he said, his tone so wry she nearly smiled despite her mood. “Anyway, he logged it in personally and will walk it through himself. He said it looked cut-and-dried, and it shouldn’t be long.”
Sloan felt her outrage at the delay ebb away. Relief flooded her. She let out an audible sigh. “Thank you. Truly, I can’t thank you enough, Brett.”
And just like that she let down the wall she’d thrown back up when she’d answered the phone.
“You’re welcome, Sloan.”
And he’d caught it, she thought ruefully. And made a mental note not to underestimate this man. He was, after all, a detective; he wasn’t likely to miss much. But she had the feeling that would be the case no matter what career he was in.
It wasn’t until after they’d hung up that she realized that underestimating him wouldn’t be a problem, because he had no reason to ever call again. He’d done a favor, generously, because he was a good guy. And now it was over. No need to ever talk to her again.
Unless he wanted to for other reasons, personal ones. She felt herself flush and shook her head sharply. No. Just no. That way lay idiocy. He was a cop, and on the don’t-get-involved scale, that was barely a step below a serviceman.
Not, of course, that she had any reason to think he was even interested. Just because Aunt Connie was an inveterate matchmaker didn’t mean the other party she’d chosen would be cooperative.
But she certainly couldn’t fault her aunt’s taste.