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“Yes,” he said, taking a step forward. Damn, he looked good. Smelled good, too. Camos and a white T-shirt. Sharp. Simple. Handsome.

“It’s about what we found,” he said, his voice sounding suddenly excited.

My eyes went wide. I reached for a towel.

“It’s about Connor.”

Sixteen

DALLAS

My hair was still wet as I approached the kitchen table, wearing nothing but a soft terrycloth bathrobe. Little by little, I was acquiring things again. A good robe was just another one of my creature comforts.

“You umm, wanna get changed or something?” Austin said. He gave me a quick look, up and down. “We can wait if you’d like to—”

“Nah. I’m good.”

The three of them were at the table, sitting around a laptop. Maddox had some papers in front of him. Photographs too.

“Alright,” he said, “so you already know we’ve been trying to figure out who trashed your house.”

I nodded, scooting forward. It was dark outside, late already. Even so I could hear coffee brewing. I could smell it too.

Good boys.

“After the shit-show at your place,” he went on, “we checked the all obvious places for loose ends. Police reports. Ambulance and fire. Austin scoured the hospital records for any signs someone might’ve been brought in injured, maybe with a couple of bullet holes or something equally awesome.” He shook his head. “But no, we got blanked on all of that.”

“Too bad,” I agreed.

“Yeah. That was a longshot, but we had to check it. These guys were pros. They had vests and ballistic armor, probably the latest carbon-fiber flex.”

I had no idea what any of that meant, but I got the gist. I nodded for him to go on.

“So we went back and reviewed all the surveillance footage,” Austin said, taking over. “The stuff that happened inside the house we obviously missed, because they cut the power from the pole on the way in. But here, check this out.”

He punched a few keys on the keyboard, and a series of still photos popped out. I recognized them as an outside view of my house. A street view. At night.

“It was too dark to see much, but we did get a partial license plate.” He pointed at very large, very dark SUV. “Riiiight… here.”

I squinted hard. I could barely make out anything.

“I can’t—”

Austin punched another key, and everything brightened. I could see the dark edges of lettering now. Numbers.

“It’s a military plate,” said Maddox. “These were military vehicles.”

I felt a slow, unpleasant pull in the pit of my stomach. My face must’ve gone somber too.

“So… Connor was killed by his own people?”

“Well let’s not jump to that conclusion,” Austin said hastily. “All we know for sure is the trucks were military. Based out of Nellis.” He laid down a few photographs. Black SUV’s, exactly like the ones in the surveillance images.

I was still confused.

“Kane’s got connections that pulled vehicle logs for us,” said Maddox. “None of these trucks were checked out that night. Which means the logs were scrubbed, or the checkouts were never logged at all.”

“Which means someone’s covering shit up,” I said icily.