Page 23 of After All The Wreckage

I was almost to the lobby when he responded. “You need to stay out of this. I’m serious. You’re too close, and you’re going to get burned. Your dad and I don’t want to see you hurt.”

I shot him a scathing look.

“What would you do if it was your mom, Baloney? Or your wife? Or one of your daughters? I’m certainly not going to sit on the bench while you send Tweedledee over there chasing his tail. I have double his experience even if I don’t have a dick swinging between my legs.”

“Jesus, Rory. Don’t make this into something it isn’t.”

“It’s exactly what I think it is. You and Dad made a decision based on what you believed I should or shouldn’t be doing because of my age and gender. You kept the truth of what happened from me, her next of kin, for almost a year! You stole information from my office and are now blackballing me out of the case. We both know you wouldn’t have done that to Tweedledee if it was his mom who’d landed in the river.”

I didn’t wait for his response, slamming my way out of the department, fury swelling along with hurt pride. What did I expect? I would encounter this same attitude if I entered the FBI. I’d be underestimated, patted on the head, and treated like I needed to be sheltered. I had to lose this chip on my shoulder or it would likely keep me out of the bureau altogether.

But who was I kidding? That dream had likely set sail last December with a hacked car computer and icy waters. Instead, I was going to end up at a desk in some stuffy office, keeping spam and identity thieves out of corporate servers.

I was going to be everything I’d scorned.

The antithesis of Veronica Mars.

A washed-up has-been at twenty-two.

CHAPTER NINE

Gage

MAN AGAINST THE WORLD

Performed by Survivor

My entire being radiatedwith frustration as I watched Muloney excuse himself and walk out of the conference room. The other officers shifted uncomfortably as I sat at the table, filling out paperwork.

Goddamn paperwork, while my brother was missing.

River and I had scoured D.C. the best we could. We’d flashed Monte’s picture around to anyone remotely near the location his phone had last pinged. The only shred of comfort I’d had was that the alley near the Capitol wasn’t the worst part of D.C., and yet it still wasn’t anywhere I would have wanted him to wind up alone for an entire weekend.

Guilt and regret mixed in heavily with my fury and disappointment.

This was my fault.

And Demi’s. If she hadn’t passed down these abilities to him in the first place and then left us alone while he tried to navigate them, maybe things would have been different. Instead, she’d done what she’d told me years ago was for the best—she’d left us to grow our roots into the hard clay of life by ourselves.

“Any other friends you can check with? Other places he likes to hang out?” the younger of the two officers asked as he came back into the room with a stack of copies he’d made of my brother’s picture. The officer looked like he was barely out of high school. How the hell was he going to find my brother?

My fingernails bit into the palms of my hands.

“None that I haven’t told you,” I said. “Isn’t there an AMBER Alert you can issue or something? Anything?”

A hush fell in the room, allowing Muloney’s voice and a woman’s to echo through the open conference room door. My body instantly recognized the woman’s, going on alert just as it had last night. What was Rory doing here? Had she heard about Monte?

I got out of my chair in time to see her put a detective nearly three times her age and size in his place with a simple finger to his chest. Her voice drifted over to me. Something about investigating a case.

Her words shot through me like a shock.

Rory found things for a living. Found people and information. Damn, I should have gone to her right away. I started to make my way to the conference room door just as she stormed from the building with anger blazing behind her. Feelings I could absolutely relate to even though I didn’t know why she had them.

Muloney headed my direction, rubbing his hand over the top of his bald head, his aura flickering remorse and annoyance.

“What was that about?” I asked, brows drawing together.

He glanced toward the door and back. “Nothing but trouble. Girl thinks her little PI license makes her a cop or some modern-day Nancy Drew. Let’s get back to your brother. Are you sure he hasn’t just taken off? Kids do that sometimes.”