“What happened then?”
Leo looked between the two of them. “You guys showed up.”
“But Warren is the one that came to us. Not the feds.”
“Warren needed to flush out his own cop with a new team. When he took that approach, my boss knew Warren wasn’t on the take.”
“You didn’t know who we were?” Claire asked.
“Not directly. At first I thought you were just a pain in my ass. The kind of pain that ends up on the wrong side of the law if led the wrong way. I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted to help the kids. I pumped them for information when I could. Made sure they could tell me about their weekends without judgment. I planted that bug at your house when I started to wonder if you were really a high school senior.”
“You planted the bug in a bush. Not much you’re going to learn there.”
“I would have gone farther if you’d done one single thing to be someone you weren’t pretending to be. But you’re good, Porter. Really damn good.”
“It’s Kelly. Claire Kelly.”
“Of course.” Leo looked at Cooper. “You were too much of a coincidence to me. I’m guessing Tony was watching you, waiting for a slip or some kind of a link.”
Cooper nudged Claire’s arm. “Kyle mentioned you early in the week, when Tony was there. Told him you were going to tutor Elsie. He went on to mention the party where you first encountered Milo.”
“Someone had to tip him off about today’s arrests,” Cooper said.
“When did you find out?” Claire asked Leo.
“Last night. Only when I didn’t see Tony’s name on the arrest report, I knew he’d go off. That’s why I was at the shop and on the field today. I figured he’d go after you,” Leo told Cooper. “If he went after anyone.”
“He knew what was going down. Must have tipped off Milo. Another bad cop at the station?” Cooper asked.
“Or Tony has extra ears of his own. Our internal investigation will figure it out. We always do.”
Claire leaned her head on Cooper’s shoulder, exhaustion finally catching up with her.
“I’m sure we’ll be talking again soon,” Leo said as he pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning on.
Claire smiled. “Damn right. You owe me a drink.”
Leo smiled, looked at the bandage on her cheek and likely the bruises surrounding the cut. “I’m sorry this happened,” he said.
“I’m glad it wasn’t worse.”
Cooper’s arms slid around her shoulders as he pulled her in tight.
Cooper shook Leo’s hand. When it was Claire’s turn, she gave the man a hug instead.
After he left, Cooper dropped his forehead against hers gently.
“I thought I was going to lose you today.” His voice was unsteady with emotion.
She knew the adrenaline had finally dumped and now reality was setting in.
“Gonna take more than one bad guy to take me out.”
Cooper pulled back, placed his hands to each side of her face. His thumb traced lightly over the bandage. “I love you,” he whispered.
Claire let a smile spread over her face. “That became pretty obvious a while back.”
He smiled, nodded a couple of times. “I guess it did.”
She waited for his eyes to find hers. “I love you, too.”
“I was starting to think maybe that was the case. But it’s nice to hear.”
“Let’s go home and sleep for a week.”
EPILOGUE
“C’mon, Chelsea. Swing those arms! Don’t let her get away!”
Claire stood on the sidelines on the inside of the field, stopwatch in her hand. She spoke to Cooper at the finish line through her fancy headset. “That looked like a personal record.”
“It sure was,” Cooper replied.
She waved at him downfield and put a check next to Chelsea’s name.
“Coach Kelly?”
Claire turned to see the relay team girls standing there. “For crying out loud, it’s Claire. You can still call me Claire.”
Cooper and Claire had made a unanimous decision to finish out the year coaching the team. There was a strange mixture of confusion, feeling cheated, and anger when they’d explained who they were and what they did for a living. In the end, they were welcomed with open arms.
Elsie had spent the night in the hospital and a week away from school. Claire knew it was going to take a lot longer than a week for Elsie to heal. When everything was explained, Ally and Elsie both were shocked at how close they had been to becoming a statistic.
As it turned out, Kyle had let Tony borrow his car the day he’d kidnapped Elsie and Claire. Never once did Kyle understand what the outcome would be.
When Neil had put Warren on the task of apprehending Levine, word made it to Tony through one of his buddies on the force. Leo’s investigation was still ongoing, but it didn’t appear that this friend knew anything about what Tony was up to.
Neil’s monitoring of the Bremerton campus clearly showed Tony walking into Coach Levine’s classroom and exiting in a hurry shortly after. Computer files implicated Levine in taking a cut for three years. He filtered the students through his tutors. For three years Milo’s supposed nephews and nieces linked tutors with students and so far, three of those students, including Marie Nickerson, had come up missing. It was hard to say how Levine got involved, and with Milo talking through lawyers, and Levine and Tony dead, they might never know all the details. The whole thing took some time to swallow, and honestly, Claire didn’t think that would happen for quite a while.
Clearly Levine could have implicated Tony.
In the end, the outcome was the best Claire and the team could have hoped for.
Marie was in a protection program tucked so deep she’d probably never see her family again. But from what Claire had learned, that wasn’t a hardship.
Neil said nothing about Olivia, or indicated if the woman was still watching over Marie. Claire secretly hoped she was.
And now Claire was staring down three of her runners who insisted on calling her by her last name.
“Okay, Coach Claire. What do you think of this dress for prom?”
Claire looked at Leah, then the dress. “What does the back look like?”
Leah swiped the screen on her phone to the right. Claire blew out a breath. “Can you see your butt in that?” It dipped that low.
“Not really.”
“Who’s your date again?”
Leah told her and Claire smiled. “Okay, that dress is fine.”
“My date makes a difference?”
“Yeah, your date is too shy. He won’t know what to do when you walk in wearing that.”
They all laughed, and Cooper walked up behind Claire and rested his chin on her shoulder. “What are you guys looking at?”
“Prom dresses.”
“Girls!” he said, chuckling.
“Oh, yeah . . . show him.”
Leah turned her phone around and showed him the picture.
“No. Absolutely not,” Cooper said, deadpan.
“What about Coach Kelly, can she wear that dress to prom?”
Claire looked up at him, waited for his answer.
“Yes. Absolutely.”