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S tone’s gaze flickered to Monk and Viper, both of whom shot him a look telling him they were as lost as he. Clearly, Philly and Agent Parks had a past, but Stone had known Philly a long time, and not once had he mentioned a Callie Parks. Which in and of itself told him a lot.

Philly laughed, but his demeanor didn’t fool Stone. Or Viper or Monk, for that matter, both of whom watched him warily.

“I offered to do that once,” Philly said in response to Parks’s comment. “We were kids, really. I don’t remember what you said, but since we didn’t end up doing the horizontal dance in the back of my pickup, I’m guessing it was a ‘no.’”

Without a doubt, Philly remembered every word she’d said, but no one was going to call him on it. A man was entitled to his secrets or, in this case, his pain. Philly might be blowing the situation off now, but whatever Agent Parks said nearly two decades ago had hurt him. So much so that he never talked about it. At least not to Stone.

“What are you doing here?” Parks demanded. She might have intended to sound tough, but judging by the look Juliana shot him, Stone hadn’t been the only one who’d recognized the thin thread of panic in Parks’s voice.

“I live here. I see you’ve met my brothers. And Juls,” he added, ignoring Griswold, who grunted.

“Your brothers,” Parks said, her eyes traveling to Monk, then Viper, then him before landing back on Philly. “You only have one brother,” she pointed out.

“Had,” Philly said, pulling out a chair and flopping himself down. “Matthew died when he was twenty.”

Agent Parks blinked. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Philly never liked talking about his younger brother—his blood brother—and it came as no surprise when he changed the subject. “So, to recap,” he said, his gaze taking in the room. “Callie and I grew up in the same town. Her on the right side of the tracks. Me and Matthew on the wrong side of the wrong side,” he said, directing the second comment to Juliana since he, Monk, and Viper already knew almost everything there was to know about Philly’s childhood. It hadn’t been any better than theirs. “Our spit of land with its double-wide backed up to the three-hundred-acre farm her grandparents owned. Now that’s all been cleared up, what’s the update?”

Juliana blinked, but that was her only hesitation before she launched into a summary of the group’s recent conversation as if the last four minutes had never occurred. Stone didn’t miss how Philly’s gaze stayed fixed on Juliana while Agent Parks seemed focused on either making or reviewing her notes.

When Juliana finished, Philly dragged the closed laptop sitting by Monk in front of him and flipped it open. “Leo’s still doing a deep dive into all officers, but I started looking into the two in San Jose.” He brought up the image of one as he spoke.

“Officer Gerald Handly,” he said. “Started his career in the city, worked under Polinsky for fourteen years, then moved down to San Jose. He bought his SF apartment for $250,000 when he started on the force and sold it for close to $600,000 when he moved.”

“Nice profit,” Monk mumbled.

Philly inclined his head, still not looking at Agent Parks. “Yes, but he then turned around and bought a house for $1.5 million,” Philly said. “That doesn’t actually go far in the Silicon Valley, but it did get him and his wife an updated eighteen-hundred-square-foot older home in a good neighborhood with a lot that’s bigger than a postage stamp.”

“Not something a cop would be able to afford,” Stone said.

“Lending practices are insane, but even if he put the full $600,000 that he made from the sale of his apartment—assuming he didn’t owe anything on his original mortgage—I find it hard to believe a bank would lend him the remaining $900,000. Not on a cop’s salary,” Juliana said.

“Any chance he inherited something?” Agent Parks spoke for the first time.

Philly answered but kept his attention on his computer. “His parents live in a trailer park down in Bakersfield—a nice one, but not one that screams money. There was, at some point, a small family farm on his paternal grandparents’ side. The bank foreclosed on it when Gerald was in high school.”

“What about he’s wife’s salary?” Viper asked.

Philly hesitated. “She doesn’t work outside the home. No kids,” he added after a beat.

Stone exchanged a look with his brothers, Philly’s expression making it clear that he suspected that the situation wasn’t copacetic. The percentage of families of police officers who experienced domestic violence was multiple times higher than the general population. They weren’t the only profession with noticeably higher rates, but they were the highest.

“I see,” Stone said. Juliana cocked her head. No doubt she knew all the same studies he did and understood as well.

“So he’s living above his means,” Juliana said, gently shifting the topic away from Handly’s wife.

Philly nodded. “And interestingly, about four months after the most recent project in his precinct finished, he bought himself a brand-new pickup truck. I don’t know what he paid, but I can tell you it wasn’t less than fifty grand.”

“Right, so that’s sus,” Juliana muttered. “We’ve established that, at the very least, he’s sketchy as hell. What about the other one?”

Philly flashed her a grin and a wink. Agent Parks’s jaw twitched.

“She sounds like a woman who’s a good time. If you can overlook the fact that she’s probably a corrupt cop,” Philly answered.

“Not much of a recommendation. You need to raise your bar, Philly,” Juliana pointed out.

“You only live once,” he shot back before projecting another photo.

Even Griswold grunted at the image.

“Wow,” Juliana said.

“I know, right?” Philly replied. “Officer Eva Garcia.”

Stone studied the woman. She was stunning in that high-maintenance way. Even in her professional photo, her makeup was done to the nines—fake lashes and enhanced lips, her olive skin tone highlighted in all the right places. Her expression was neither serious nor playful. She had the look that he’d seen on a number of beautiful people—men and women alike. An expression that let everyone know that they knew you wanted to fuck them. Stone very much didn’t —and not just because of Juliana. That kind of person had never been one he’d been drawn to. And he doubted any of his brothers would go for it, either. Not even Philly, who wasn’t as much of a manwhore as he and Juliana joked. He might have been a decade ago, but those days were far behind him—behind all of them.

“What’s her story?” Juliana asked, staring at the picture. “And are those lips real?”

“No!” everyone at the table, including Griswold, answered at the same time.

Juliana laughed. “Okay, then. Back to my first question. What’s her story?”

“Lives like a cop should,” Philly said. “Small apartment but in a decent area. Doesn’t spend outside her means in her day-to-day life.”

“She a gambler?” Griswold asked.

Philly shook his head. “She’s a traveler.” Everyone looked at him. “When she travels, she goes all out. I’m talking flying business class everywhere, private tours, skiing in Aspen and the Alps, safaris in Africa—three of them so far—diving in the Caymans while staying at the Ritz. She probably spends more on travel in a year than most people pay for their mortgage. We’re talking a couple hundred grand a year.”

Stone’s mind went blank at the thought. “She only has, what? Three weeks of vacation a year? How does she spend that much money?”

“She has six,” Philly said. “And when you do things like book four-thousand-dollar-a-night villas in Greece and pay for your six closest friends to join you, it adds up.”

Monk let out a low whistle.

“Internal Affairs should be flagging that,” Agent Parks said.

“If they knew, they probably would. Eva has no social media presence, but her sister does. She—and I’m sure it was accidental—posted a comment thanking her sister for the amazing bridal shower at a private spa in Costa Rica. From there, I followed the trail of friends. None of their posts have any pictures of her or name her. More than a few refer to a mysterious ‘E.’”

Juliana snorted. “Nice reference there, Philly,” she said. He smiled and leaned over with his fist out.

“What?” Stone asked when Juliana bumped it.

“Scooby-Doo reference,” Juliana replied. “The new series, not the original.”

“Still don’t get it,” he said.

“Mr. E is the evil villain the group is constantly after. They solve mysteries and they are after a villain named Mr. E,” Philly answered. “Mysterious E wasn’t quite as good, but my girl got it,” Philly said, with a wink at Juliana.

Stone cleared his throat. He was in no way threatened by Philly, but some lines needed to be drawn.

Philly rolled his eyes. “ Your girl got it, Stone.”

He wondered if Juliana would object to being called “his,” but to his surprise, she shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Woman, you two. I am a woman, not a girl,” she said, not objecting at all to what he thought she might.

He grinned. “For which I am eternally grateful.”

“Can we get back to Officer Garcia?” Agent Parks asked.

“Not much more to get back to,” Philly said. “We’ve established that she, too, lives outside the means of her income.”

“Inheritance? Trust fund?” Agent Parks pressed.

“Her parents are still alive, and both emigrated from Mexico as day laborers. I haven’t confirmed there’s no trust, but I doubt it,” Philly answered, still without looking at the woman.

“Even without backgrounds on the other officers, these two definitely raise flags,” Juliana said. “But who pays them? Polinsky or the drug dealers?”

“Or Gregor,” Parks said.

“One more question to chase down,” Viper said, and everyone in the room nodded.

Philly closed the laptop harder than necessary, startling Sherman, who jumped up. “Sorry, Shermy,” he said, leaning under the table. Sherman’s tail wagged, and he inched under the tabletop and buried his head against Philly’s knees as he rubbed the dog’s ears.

“So what now?” Juliana asked.

“If I’m not mistaken, Dottie is on her way to tell us lunch is ready,” Philly said.

Sure enough, three seconds later, they heard footsteps, and five seconds after that, a knock sounded at the door.

“Come in,” Stone called out.

Dottie opened the door, her gaze sweeping the room. It snagged on Griswold, and a frown tugged at the corners. Before coming into their lives, Dottie had lived with an abusive man for decades. She was now at ease with all the Falcons, but it hadn’t occurred to Stone that she still might be uncomfortable around men she didn’t know—especially one the size of Griswold.

Her lips tightened, then she shot Juliana a smile. “Who all is staying for lunch? Mantis is grilling burgers and brats, and we have watermelon and pasta salad.”