“WHAT’S YOUR DEAL?” BRENNAN ASKED AS HUNTER DROPPED himself on the couch next to her in their mother’s living room, disheveling the stack of documents she’d set next to her. He had let himself into the apartment moments earlier.
“Huh?”
“I told you that I was covering tonight. Don’t you have somewhere to be? Weren’t you going to something with Jenna?”
“We broke up.”
“Oh.” Her instinct was to ask him what he did wrong, but given her own history, the joke turned sour in her mouth before she uttered it. “I’m sorry.”
He glanced at her surprise. He must have been expecting the quip. Then he gave a brief tilt of his head—as if he wanted to shrug but was too tired to lift his shoulder—and said, “Nothing lasts forever.”
“Want to…um…talk about it?”
“Jesus, Bren, you don’t have to sound so awkward about it,” he said. “She got into grad school. She’s leaving town at the end of the summer. It’s fine.”
She didn’t think he looked fine.
“How’s Mom?” he asked.
Brennan glanced at the closed bedroom door. “Hard to tell. Sleeping. She’s sleeping a lot now.”
Hunter nodded. Their mother had been waking less and for shorter periods over the past couple of weeks. Something to ask the doctor about the next time Brennan took her in.
“Hear back from Nicki yet?” Brennan asked.
“No.”
“So you’re just going to sit here while I work?”
“Just wanted some company, okay? I can work, too.”
To answer him, Brennan turned back to the binder in her lap and continued with her highlighting. Hunter pulled his laptop from his backpack and began flipping through the files he’d scanned. She didn’t ask him what he was doing. Neither of them spoke. It reminded her of the days they’d spent in Harris’s office. More than that, with their mother in the next room, it felt like they were kids again. But better.
Before she could process why, there was a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” Brennan said. She wanted to stretch her legs. She’d been on the couch for a while before Hunter arrived.
She opened the door expecting to find the doorman with a package, or her mother’s aide stopping to pick up something she left earlier in the day, or maybe a neighbor with extra cookies. But it was a tall man with graying hair so light, it looked white. She thought he looked familiar but couldn’t place him.
“Brennan Lo,” he said. He knew her. He flashed a badge. “NYPD. I have some questions. Let’s step inside.”
Despite years of legal experience, she nearly stood aside. “No. We can speak here.”
He rolled his eyes and asked, “Did I hear someone call for help in there?” Then he stepped into the apartment, sweeping the door shut with his elbow as he did so. He moved so quickly and surprised Brennan so completely that she fell back a few steps so he wouldn’t knock her over.
Hunter was already crossing the room, but stopped as the man flashed a badge at him.
“You have to leave,” Brennan said. “I didn’t invite you in.”
The man laughed, a hollow bark devoid of amusement. “I’m here to discuss some stolen evidence with the two of you.”
“We can discuss it at the station, with our lawyer,” Brennan said.
“And then there will be paperwork and an investigation and arrests. I’ll tell you right now, I’m not interested in all of that.”
“Who are you?” Hunter asked.
“Detective Silas Bauman.”
Brennan couldn’t help it, she glanced at Hunter. When she looked back to Silas, Brennan recognized him. He’d sat at the table next to them at the diner in Larchmont before they visited Cathy. She’d thought him handsome. He’d been following them since the beginning.
“We’re not going to answer any questions,” Brennan said. “What you’re doing is illegal.”
“Uh huh,” he said, nonchalantly. She knew how he thought. He had the badge and the gun. He decided what the law was.
“You two are fucking stubborn,” Silas said. “But you’re not idiots. Neither am I. I mean, I hoped you’d get the message by now, but you’re not going to listen to anonymous threats. By their nature, you understand that something anonymous implies whoever is making them might be scared of getting caught, right? It’s okay, you can say so.”
Hunter nodded as Brennan said, “You need to leave now.”
“Not yet,” the man said. “You’re not going to do anything. You’re sitting on evidence you stole.”
“If that were true, and if you could prove it, we’d be having this conversation in some interrogation room,” Brennan said. “But if you did that, people would know what your father and McCarthy did.”
“My father was a great detective,” Silas said, pointing a finger at her. Then he brought his hand to rest on his hip, incidentally brushing his jacket to the side and revealing the holstered pistol under his arm. “He was a good man who wanted to take murderers like your dad off the street.”
“My father was innocent,” Brennan said.
“He fucking did it,” Silas said. “I know you want revenge against McCarthy and my father for trying to put him away. I am not going to let you ruin his name.”
“We’re not lying about your dad or anyone else,” Hunter said.
“Don’t say anything,” Brennan said to Hunter, at the same time. She turned back to Silas. “Who told you we wanted revenge?”
Silas snorted. “I already told you I was smart, missy. You’re not going to trick me. The two of you need to be smart, too. You know you can’t go public with your lies about my father and McCarthy, right? You would have to admit that you stole police files.”
“We didn’t steal any files,” Hunter said. Brennan threw him the shut the fuck up look she’d seen defense lawyers shoot at their clients.
Silas shook his head. “Copy. Steal. It’s the same thing. You think I can’t make those files disappear?”
“You’d let someone get away with a murder?” Brennan asked.
“Your dad already got away with the murder. My father had the right guy.” Silas shifted his gaze between the two siblings. “I came here so you would understand two things. So you will be smart. First, I can act with impunity. At any time. Like now. Second, I am not anonymous, and I am fucking serious. You do anything that threatens my father, his reputation, his legacy, and I will know. And I will come for you.”
Hunter raised a hand gently, as if he might reach out to pat Silas’s shoulder. “Listen, you can calm down. We’re at a dead end. We have no one left to talk to. It’s over, okay? If we were in this to screw over your dad or McCarthy, we’d have done it already, right? This had nothing to do with them.”
Silas’s cold stare didn’t waver. But he pulled a tissue from one pocket and used it to open the door. “Be smart. Otherwise, I’ll see you around.”
When the door shut, Brennan rushed to it and locked the deadbolt.
“That was bananas,” Hunter said when she turned around.
“You okay?”
Hunter shrugged. “That was unnerving. He has issues. But I’m also a little pissed off. You alright?”
“He’s as bad as his father. He needs to be off the force.”
“But are you alright?”
“I’m actually relieved. It was a possibility that whoever was making the threats was the killer, but it’s just that asshole. He’s dangerous, but at least now we know his angle.” She paused for a moment, compressing her anger into something focused. “I didn’t want to give up before. I really don’t want to now. Not while a guy like that is out there. We need a plan.”
Hunter sat in one of the chairs facing the couch. “I guess I can call Vega. I don’t know what he can do—and it’ll probably get back to Bauman—but maybe there’s something.”
Brennan nodded. Her brain was already deconstructing the problem. Every option she considered led nowhere, but she felt better pinned down by those thoughts than confronting the fact that they were no closer to answers about Jessica.