kids.”
“I’m not ready to settle down just yet, but when I do, I’d love that,” he says. “Until then, Cassel can be my child. I’m going to tell him it’s past curfew then chew him out like a good dad.”
“You do that,” I joke.
“When Kevin went to the bathroom and I told you I was getting something, I was actually cornering him in the bathroom,” Leland says.
No wonder Kevin was looking a bit wide-eyed when he returned. “Oh no.”
“I told him that if he ever hit her, hurt her, or yelled at her, I would find him, and I would destroy him. I was going to tell him how I was going to destroy him but then I remembered you telling me that not everyone needed explicit details on the way I would split open his nuts and pluck his balls straight from the cord and… well, you get the picture. But I didn’t even have to threaten him much before he gave me this long speech about how he promises he’ll do the best he can for her. And he’s sorry I’ve seen things that make me think he possibly wouldn’t. Blah blah. It was really sentimental and I started feeling weird, like he was attacking me with his niceness, so I washed my hands just because I felt dirty and left.”
“Well, I’m glad he knows you mean business. Henry wanted to talk with us some, so what if we see if he’s ready to do that right now?”
That seems to snap him right out of it. “Ooh! Yes, I love harassing… I mean, talking to Henry.”
“Harassing. You can just say it.”
“Whatever you say, Fiancé.”
I shake my head, but I know that I’d let him call me anything he wants.
“Oh, and I bought Sarge. That fucker was expensive, but there was no way I was letting him go back. I thought about asking you, but she showed up wanting him and I just threw money at her in a panic. I almost gave her your car.”
I look over at him with wide eyes. “Don’t give my car away!”
“I’m sorry! I panicked!”
“But I’m glad you got Sarge. He’s a pretty nice dog. Just promise me you’ll never bring ten dogs home again.”
He whistles as he stares out the window like he has no idea what I’m talking about.
When we get to the department, Leland and I head inside and over to Henry’s office. I knock on the door and Henry calls us in.
“Close the door,” he says, since he’s probably going to talk about something he shouldn’t share with us.
“Ooh, what are we up to behind closed doors? I’m flattered, but I’m getting married,” Leland says.
Henry doesn’t even look at him as he waves at the seats. “Okay. So between you and me, we got some stuff out of Anna. It sounds like they were able to connect her to the organization they shut down, seeing as her father was one of the men arrested. According to her, she was given a sum to retrieve the blueprints for the weapon. She used some of the money to con Mateo, Sami, Aidan, and Hutson into helping her. According to Hutson’s statement, she convinced him she was in love with him and so he did as she asked, only questioning later when she was done using him, but he never did anything about it.
“Mateo claims that he did what the army had asked of him and says he knows nothing more. He might get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist because he’s claiming he’s ‘just like Jackson and knows nothing,’ but hopefully, we can pin down the money he got in correlation to the operation. It’s been a bit of a mess, but we’re slowly getting bits and pieces from each of them. We are positive at this point that it was Anna behind it instead of Hutson. It sounds like she even hired them a time or two after as well just to do little things because she knew she could trust them.”
“So you have enough to arrest Anna and Hutson?” I ask.
“Definitely Anna. Hutson will do time, but I can’t tell you how much at this point. He might weasel his way out of doing his entire sentence by playing the naive card. He claims he knew some but not the extent of it. It’s a waiting game at this point,” Henry says.
“But Jackson’s safe from the repercussions, right?” Leland asks.
“They’re going to want to pull