Alibi (Brantley Walker Off the Books #5) - Nicole Edwards Page 0,1
over his short hair, the other pulling off his sunglasses, revealing a pair of scrutinizing white-gray eyes.
“Brantley Walker, I’d like to introduce you to Hunter Kogan. Hunter, Brantley.”
“Nice to meet you,” Hunter said, gripping his hand firmly. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Brantley joked.
Hunter chuckled. “Likewise.” He nodded his head toward RT. “Especially if it comes from this one.”
RT rolled his eyes. “Anyone who knows me knows I only speak the truth. So when I say y’all are both assholes, you can bet it’s true.”
Brantley laughed, feeling some of the tension dissipate.
“Reese is out in the barn startin’ a pot of coffee. Y’all ready to check it out?”
Hunter’s worried gaze flipped between them. “No one said anything about spendin’ the day with animals.”
“I guess I could clarify. Converted barn. No animals.” Brantley glanced down at Tesha who was sitting at his feet, staring up at them, tongue lolling out of her mouth. “Well, except this girl.”
Hunter turned his attention on the dog. “She in trainin’? Or can I pet her?”
“Very early stages, so she’d much prefer you did.”
Hunter held out a hand, let Tesha sniff. When she gave him a slightly hesitant but approving lick, he reached down and patted her head.
“Is the rest of the team here?” RT asked, glancing around.
Brantley motioned for them to follow. “On their way. I asked ’em to be here by nine. Figured I’d give you a few minutes to look around before they arrived.”
“You tell them yet?”
“No. I just told Reese last night, in fact. I didn’t want to jump the gun.”
RT glanced at the house, then the barn. “Reese mentioned you moved your offices to the main house?”
“We converted a couple of the bedrooms on the second floor,” Brantley confirmed. “Added an exterior entrance. Gives us a little more room.”
“Probably doesn’t help with work-life balance,” Hunter noted. “Havin’ an office in the house.”
Brantley chuckled. “I didn’t realize there was such a thing.”
“Only in the movies,” RT joked.
Brantley keyed in the code to unlock the doors to the barn then stepped back out of the way to allow RT and Hunter to precede him.
“Wow. This is impressive,” RT said as he scanned the interior of the barn.
Brantley glanced around, trying to see it from their viewpoint. He’d spent so much time and effort on this place, he sometimes forgot what it had once been.
Aside from the architectural design—the pitch of the roof, the Y-shaped posts that held up the rafters, and the enormous sliding door—it didn’t resemble much of a barn on the inside anymore. The exterior walls had been insulated and an additional layer of wood, which he’d white-washed, added on the interior for energy efficiency. A solid, electronically controlled door had been installed for security. The original dirt floor had been covered with concrete, then stained and sealed. The hayloft had been converted, losing the original ladder and gaining a staircase. To the right of the door, a conference room had been added, and behind that, along the wall, there was a small kitchenette, a bathroom, and a storage area.
“You did this yourself?” Hunter asked, taking it all in.
“I had some help,” he admitted. “The barn was here when I bought the property. Needed a little bit of work on the exterior, but not much. Replaced some wood, slapped on a coat of paint, added some security. Reese and I built the staircase.”
“Impressive.”
“Thanks. Honestly, I hadn’t had this in mind when I did it. I was just playin’ around out here, passin’ time while I recovered and tried to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Thought maybe it’d be a man cave of sorts, figured it was smart to safeguard it. Then once the governor proposed the task force, I knew it would be a good base of operations.”
“Since you don’t have walk-in clients, I can see that,” Hunter acknowledged.
Reese appeared, setting four empty coffee cups and a steaming carafe on the first desk he came to before formally greeting RT and Hunter.
“Help yourself,” Reese said. “Need cream or sugar?”
“This is perfect,” RT said, pouring a cup before resuming his exploration of the space.
When RT stopped at the base of the staircase, Brantley moved closer.
“That was an afterthought,” he explained. “When the team started to grow, we had to add on. Put in the staircase to utilize the loft square footage. Added the conference room.”
RT moved deeper into the room. “You’ve got what? Three thousand square feet in here?”