“Older than me,” Jack laughed.
“One fucking year,” she said. Ellen turned to Lucy and said, “I’m here with Pride Tactical. A vendor.”
“With Pride Tactical?” Jack shook his head. “You own the company.”
“Fifty–fifty, with my ex.”
“Ouch.”
Ellen laughed. “Marc and I are still friends. In fact, we’re better business partners than marriage partners.”
“I’m just glad to see a friendly face that doesn’t have a badge. No offense, sis,” he said to Lucy.
“Doesn’t RCK have a contract with Pride?” Lucy asked. “I see your logo on a lot of Sean’s gear.”
“Only the best for our company,” Jack said.
“I appreciate it,” Ellen said. “We mostly service law enforcement, but of course high-end security companies use our gear. I’m demoing the drone software tomorrow. I asked Sean to do it because we hired him to test it and work out the bugs, he probably knows it better than Marc and me, but he said no.”
Lucy glanced at Jack, but he didn’t comment about Sean. He said to Ellen, “I look forward to it. Morning?”
“Oh eight hundred, right here. We’re doing the drill outside, I have Sac sheriff’s all-in. We’ll be livestreaming it so everyone can get the full effect—I tested the AV equipment before they set up for this. It’s going to be totally awesome.” She glanced at her watch. “In fact, I should go. I’m recording a night drill so everyone can see our awesome night-vision camera and the amazing quality of the images. Good to meet you, Lucy. Later, Jack.” She left.
“Sean didn’t tell me he was asked to participate.”
“He does a lot of work for Pride, which is why we get such a great discount on their equipment,” Jack said. “And they pay him, so it’s a win–win for us.”
“Dean said something earlier—that Sean probably didn’t want to be here because of all the cops. After what he went through, I should have realized. I shouldn’t have made him come at all.”
Jack squeezed her elbow. “He’s working through it, Lucy. I’ll keep an eye on him, and he’s planning on being here in the morning for the demo.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t push him, Jack.”
“Sometimes we all need a kick in the ass, Luce. But I’ll appeal to his geek side. This drone software project was his baby, so to speak. He’s proud of it—should be proud. He needs to be here, if only to make sure everything is functioning the way it’s supposed to.”
“I feel like Dillon and me and you we’ve been, I don’t know, pressuring him. Talk, don’t talk, go back to normal, nothing will be normal again. It’s not only conflicting messaging, but I think it’s constantly reminding him of what he suffered.”
“Sean went through hell and he won’t talk about it. That’s fine, to a point. But I think you’re coddling him.”
She frowned, shook her head. “I’m not coddling him.”
“He knows you’re not going to push him, and neither is Dillon—which is why Dillon wanted me to talk to him. But I can’t—I tried. It’s not who I am. I can, however, get him to work. I can piss him off, make him angry, and maybe he’ll finally talk about what’s really bothering him. Or maybe he won’t. But RCK is a business, and I can use that to push him out of his head.”
Lucy didn’t know the right answer, but she didn’t have a better idea.
“I trust you.”
“Just be there when he falls.”
When, Jack said. Lucy thought Sean had hit bottom last month when she found him locked in a cage, beaten, bloodied. How much did he have to suffer before he was healed? It hurt not to be able to help him, to fix the problem.
Lucy looked over Jack’s shoulder when a familiar face entered. “Excuse me,” she said to her brother.
“Abandoning me?”
Lucy gestured to where Megan was watching them. “I think Megan wants you to rescue her.”
Jack looked over and grinned. “Should I?”
“Of course.”
Lucy left him and approached Nora, Duke’s wife and also an FBI agent in the Sacramento office. She looked like she didn’t want to be there, either. Lucy didn’t know her well, but when they had spent time together, Lucy appreciated Nora’s down-to-earth common sense.
Nora looked relieved when she saw Lucy. “I didn’t want to come, but Dean said I needed to show my face tonight. One hour is all I promised.” She looked over to where Dean and Megan had drawn a much larger crowd than when Lucy had left them. They were both extroverts and used to socializing; Lucy preferred the one-on-one conversations.
“Wine?” she asked Nora.
“God, yes.” They walked over to the cash bar and waited in the line. “I assume Megan told you about the party on Saturday.”
“She did.”
“I don’t generally like parties, but this one will be fun, and I haven’t seen their house since we helped them move in months ago. I know they’ve been doing a lot of work.”
“It looks great,” Lucy said. “The kitchen still needs updating, but Jack said they were going on vacation this summer and letting the contractors rip everything out.”
Nora laughed lightly. “Jack? Vacation? I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word.”
“That’s why Megan is good for him.”
They reached the front of the line. Nora ordered white, Lucy stuck with her preferred red, and they moved away from the crowd.
“How’s Molly?” Lucy asked. “I hope you’re bringing her on Saturday.”
“Of course, she’s the joy of my life,” Nora said. “I love my job, but I hate leaving her every day—though Duke is a terrific dad. He’s now working from home almost every day, and when he has to go downtown to RCK he takes her, or we have a terrific babysitter we can call. I can’t believe she’s already two years old.”
“JP—my nephew—will be two next month, and Carina had a little girl last week. Grace. Sean and I are going back to Texas by way of San Diego on Sunday so we can see her.”
“I don’t think a second baby is in the cards for me—but that’s okay. I didn’t even expect to have Molly, considering I was forty when I got pregnant.”
“I’ll bet Duke and Sean are having fun with her.”
Nora tilted her head. “Sean?”
“Sean said he was going over to your place. Maybe you missed him.”
“Duke is at Fort Bragg working on a security fix for one of their systems. He won’t be back until Friday. It was last-minute—they called this morning. I had our sitter come over for a couple of hours so I could show my face here. If I’d have known Sean wasn’t coming tonight, I totally would have tagged him to babysit.”
Lucy was speechless. Why would Sean lie to her? Or maybe he didn’t know . . .
He would have called Duke before he went over. He would have known Duke was out of town.
She didn’t say anything, and fortunately at that moment a colleague of Nora’s walked over and started talking to them.