“Huh?” Evan looked at me, his face going pale as the blood drained from it. Holding his hands up in the air, he stepped back. “Jesus Fucking Christ! You think I like him, like him?”
Throwing my head back, I laughed so hard that I couldn’t stop, even when I had a pain in my side. “Fuck, that was funny.” Wiping the tears from my face, I looked back to Evan. “So? Tell me why?”
“Why, what?” he huffed, his hand going to his hip.
“Why you want to come with me to see Charlie?” I didn’t look away from him, he knew I could sit here all day and wait for him to answer me.
“Ugh!” He threw his hands up in the air and stomped to the door. “There’s a girl who works there that I like! Happy now?”
“Ooooooh! Evan’s got a crush?” I chuckled.
“Ugh!” he shouted, throwing his hands up in the air and stomped out of the office.
I couldn’t help but laugh again. It wasn’t often that he had a crush on anyone and when he did, I loved to play him up about it.
Shaking my head, I pushed out the chair, ready to go and see Charlie.
I’d spent most of the day at the precinct with Charlie, trying to go through some new leads that he’d had. We’d hit a major brick wall and neither of us were getting anywhere. I’d told him that when I got back to the warehouse, me and the team were going to go back to the drawing board and look at some different angles.
On the way back to the warehouse, it dawned on me that I was coming home to my family, something that I thought I’d be doing with Serena but that opportunity was snatched out of my hands before I’d even fully thought it through.
Shaking those thoughts from my head, I pushed the button for the compound gates, drove through and parked in my usual spot. Noticing Kay’s truck missing, I didn’t think anything of it and went into the warehouse.
“How did it go?” Kitty asked as soon as I walked in.
“He’s got some new leads that he’s checking out, but we need to think outside the box.” I sat down and looked around me.
I’d built a good life here. When I bought this piece of land, I never thought I would have achieved what I have.
After getting out the special forces, I didn’t know what I would do. Buying this piece of land was a spur of the moment thing, having just walked out on Serena. As soon as I saw the for sale sign, something in my gut told me I had to buy it. It symbolized having that freedom from Serena so I bought it. Right there, on the spot.
The only thing that I was sure about was building my house, I knew exactly what I wanted; a house that I could grow old in and raise a family, so that’s just what I did. I spent months building the house from scratch and when Luke left the forces, he helped me finish it off.
Having nowhere to go, I offered him a plot of land towards the back of the property so we spent the next six months building his house.
The only thing left that I didn’t know what to do with was the small cottage by Luke’s house. I was originally going to knock it down but when Kitty fell in love with it, it made sense to let her stay there.
That’s how our team started, with Evan coming along a couple of months later. The rest is history and we’d been solving cases for the last couple of years. Which was probably why this one was so frustrating. We had a fast turnaround time but this one had stumped us.
The
worst part was that it was one of the most important cases that we’d ever been asked to help with.
“Where’s Kay?” Evan asked, slumping down in his seat at the table.
“Should be here any second,” I replied, looking down at my watch, then over to Monty. I’d know as soon as she was close because he’d go crazy for her. Normally, she’d only just be coming onto the compound and he’d be barking to be let out, then he’d run at her and nearly knock her over every single time.
This was the most I had been apart from her since she had moved into the compound. I didn’t want to bother her today though because she was spending time with Miss Maggie, something that she wasn’t able to do often.
Just as I was about to tell them what leads Charlie had, my cell rang.
Pulling it out, I frowned down at the screen. “Hello?”
“Hi, is that erm…Mr Mackenzie?” My heart sped up, my gut telling me that something wasn’t right.
“Yeah.” I pushed my chair back and stood up, my body knowing automatically that I needed to leave.
“Erm… Eli still hasn’t been collected from preschool yet and we can’t seem to get in contact Miss Anderson.” I gripped my keys hard, causing them to dig into the palm of my hand and walked to the door. “Your down as the next contact, would you be able to pick him up?”