Rising Storm (Westin Force #2) - Julie Trettel Page 0,74

secure the door, Silas laid out copies of all the pictures we’d taken, including a few extras he procured of some of our most questionable suspects.

“We can’t do a full board. Patrick will be back, and he won’t be happy if you’re planning to put Jacob Winthrop on it as a possible person of interest,” Grant tried to reason.

“I’m aware, but this room was designed for just such cases,” Silas reminded us.

Tarron nodded and jumped up to unlock the walls. They were capable of being repositioned in order to partition the room into smaller offices. Behind it sat a clean wall just waiting for us to cover it.

For the next hour we worked together to build a viable case.

Once we were done, we all stepped back to take it in and commit it to memory.

Silas stepped forward and circled the picture of the bear clan leader. “Tarron, I need to know everything you find on this guy. Baine tells me he’s their clan leader. I need to know exactly why Trevor Daniels is watching him.”

“It’ll take some time. The bears are quite secluded and keep to themselves, but give me a week and I’ll get you the information you need.”

“Perfect, thanks. The rest of you, don’t worry about O’Connell. I’ll deal with him personally.”

“Are we really going to just snub him out in the meantime?” Ben asked.

“Try to avoid him as much as possible. He wasn’t thrilled with my decisions this weekend and won’t stop until he knows why. I’ll talk to him, bring him into the loop when I have to, but we need some more pieces of this puzzle filled first.

We closed the wall back up and adjourned the meeting.

“Painter,” Tarron called me over.

“What’s up?”

“Got something for you.”

He pulled out a piece of paper with some coordinates, and then handed it to me. I quickly plugged them into my phone and grinned. “Is this what I think it is?”

“It is. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.”

I grabbed his head in both hands and kissed his cheek. “You are the best!”

Baine started to comment and then thought better of it as he turned and walked away.

“What’s going on?” Silas asked.

I quickly filled him in. He smiled and nodded. “I’ve got them, brother.”

Emma

Chapter 24

I started my first day of work watching the triplets. I was flying solo, but we never missed a beat. I had established enough of a routine the week before that they knew the drill. For me that meant waking up and getting ready while Painter was on his run. I had breakfast waiting when he returned. We ate together and I left to meet Cal while he got ready to head to work. I had made sure to pack lunch for the both of us.

The babies were waiting for me excitedly and Shelby was running about like a madwoman trying to finish getting ready and out the door. We had already agreed I would take care of breakfast and lunch for the kids, but she had prepped some simple things for me for my first day, so I didn’t have to learn to use the stove yet.

For our first day, they had cereal for breakfast, and then we played and watched some educational children’s shows on the television until lunchtime. I made simple sandwiches with berries and lettuce for lunch. I knew from talking to Shelby that the lettuce wasn’t necessary, but they ate it and seemed to like it.

Painter called me on my new cell phone during his lunch break to check in. I was happy to report everything was going smoothly.

After lunch we went outside to play until nap time. I had never had any problems with singing them all to sleep at the same time. Everything was great. It wasn’t until about thirty minutes before Shelby arrived back home that the babies seemed to notice their mother had been gone all day and started to break down.

She was going to be working four straight days and had been worried that it would be too much at first.

The kids squealed and ran for their mother the second she stepped foot in the house. Everything was clean and welcoming despite the kids being crabby that last half hour of the day.

I said goodbye and left to wait for Cal outside. There didn’t seem to be a need for my exit countdown, the babies and I were equally happy she was home.

The next morning, I got up and fixed breakfast, ate