“Trust me, you do,” I told him, thinking about the mistakes I made and ones I was gearing up to make.
Coop gave me what I needed to clean out the garbage that had collected over the years.
A past that I allowed to rule my present.
“Right. I brought home the SITREP.” Coop pointed to a folder on the counter, changing the subject, and at the same time, my phone rang.
I pulled it out of my pocket and frowned at the name.
“Yo,” I greeted. “I thought you’d be in the air.”
“Delayed,” Myles grumbled. “Owen called and told me about the scene—”
“It’s all good,” I cut him off.
“All good? Owen said Z brought up your past and Evette was there.”
My head dropped forward and I let out a sigh. There was no getting around Myles. He wouldn’t let a topic go until he had all the facts.
“Z pulled his normal fairy godmother shit and dangled the idea of Evette putting herself out there with Delilah. I wasn’t down with that, we exchanged words, Z voiced his opinions, then I left with Evette.”
“Yeah, Gabe, I know all of that. I also know Evette took your back. Which I have to say is impressive. Not many people would step to Zane and call him out. You told her?”
Myles’ question hung between us. He knew I didn’t talk about my past with outsiders. I didn’t advertise how I’d grown up. But Evette wasn’t an outsider.
“I told her. Some of it before the shit that went down in the office, most of it after. I can’t say she knows everything but she knows enough.”
There was a beat of loaded silence then Myles pressed. “And you’re good?”
“I wasn’t. I was pissed as fuck. Evette calmed me down then Cooper pulled my head out of my ass. So, yeah, I’m all good.”
“What’d Coop say?”
“Huh?”
“To pull your head out of your ass. What’d he say?”
My gaze lifted from the floor to Cooper. He was leaning a hip to the counter, arms crossed over his chest, smug smile on his face.
“He told me I’m acting like a cry baby bitch and offered me a tampon.”
Coop let out a bark of laughter and at the same time, I heard Myles chuckle in my ear.
“Does Coop need stitches?”
“Not this time. Though he calls me a coward again he might need a cast to go with the stitches.”
“Sounds like he did you a favor,” Myles surmised.
A favor didn’t cover what Coop had given me.
Time to move the conversation along.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked and opened the file Coop brought home.
“We’re meeting up with Wolf and Abe when we get to California. Abe says he knows a few places a person who doesn’t want to be found might hide.”
Wolf and Abe were both retired SEALs. They also lived near Riverton.
“And Phantom? Has he been in touch?”
“Only two hundred and sixty-five times. If we’re in Cali long enough we’ll hook up with Phantom and his team. They’re getting ready to leave on a training exercise. Wolf’s keeping an eye on Kalee and Piper while they’re gone. We’ll help with that, too, if we can. But our priority is finding Delilah.”
“Do you think she’s still there? Or was she ever there to begin with?”
I picked up the report and quickly scanned the first page full of Garrett’s notes on the locations Delilah had used when she bounced her IP address.
“Garrett’s pretty confident Delilah’s in Riverton,” Myles noted. “We’ll see if Kevin and I can track her.”
I flipped to the next page and found the news article about Forrest Lawson’s body being found in a landfill.
Uninterested in the reporter's account of a body being dumped I went to the third page. The police report.
“Looks like Forrest Lawson had a rap sheet,” I told Myles. “Petty bullshit—breaking and entering, larceny, trespassing, and grand theft auto. No violent crimes or weapons arrests. No gang affiliation.”
“How the hell did a low-level criminal get hooked up with Abrams?” he asked.
“Good question. Hang on, I’m gonna put you on speaker, Coop’s standing here.”
I did that and put my phone on the counter and kept skimming Forrest Lawson’s long albeit boring arrest record. Finding nothing that stood out I moved to the coroner’s report.
“Autopsy said cause of death was a single GSW to the back of the head.”
Coop shuffled the paper and pulled the police report toward him and tapped one of the paragraphs I’d briefly perused.
“Forrest’s car was found parked at his residence. No forced entry, no blood in or around his