“Besides the world’s shittiest cup of coffee?” Brantley joked. “Nothin’.”
“Absolutely nothin’,” Trey agreed, “and don’t you dare get him started.”
Brantley laughed, shaking his head to tell Charlie she honestly hadn’t missed a thing.
“Mornin’,” Reese greeted. “Your smile’s wider today. Somethin’ to share?”
Brantley swore he saw the color rise in Charlie’s cheeks.
Ever since Charlie had come to Coyote Ridge back when they were looking to hire her nearly a year ago, she’d been spending quite a bit of time here. Not only at work, either. From what he’d seen, things were getting serious between Charlie and Autumn Jameson, the woman who’d taken over managing Walker Demolition after Brantley poached Reese to be his partner.
“Nothin’ to share,” Charlie said with a chuckle. “Nothin’ at all.”
Like everyone else on the team, Charlie preferred to keep her personal life private. As much as she could, considering. Brantley knew firsthand that wasn’t an easy feat. For any of them.
Six months ago, when the Off the Books Task Force had officially been acquired by Sniper 1 Security, Brantley’d sat down with his new boss, Ryan Trexler, known by everyone as RT, and laid out a plan to keep his team up to date on training. He’d committed to bringing them to the Dallas offices three days a month for the foreseeable future in order to do that, and ever since, they’d been putting the team through the paces. In a couple of weeks, they’d embark on their sixth training session and he was hoping they weren’t overdoing it. Not only because Reese had been hovering on the verge of a panic attack the last time but also because Brantley’d seen some fraying around the edges of other team members.
Jessica James, a.k.a. JJ, was in a similar position to both Reese and Brantley, suffering from PTSD brought on by her incident back at the first of the year when her ex-boyfriend Dante Greenwood and his accomplice had rendered her unconscious, then set a gruesome scene in her house. JJ’d come through the ordeal with minimal physical damage, but the mental stress was taking its toll. Not to mention she and Baz were going through something—again.
Sebastian Buchanan, known to his friends and family as Baz, wasn’t enduring any mental stress brought on by physical trauma. Not unless a one-night stand with a woman who now claimed to be pregnant with his child counted. No one on the team had actually met Molly Ryan, but the woman Baz had slept with on New Year’s was thirty-five weeks pregnant with his child, due on October eighth. Initially, Baz had thought Molly was pulling a stunt, pretending to be pregnant when she wasn’t, but that turned out to not be the case. According to him, Molly was most definitely pregnant, and she still claimed Baz was the father, although she would not allow him to go to the doctor’s appointments with her.
Then there was Charlotte Miller—a.k.a. Charlie. Besides her budding relationship with Autumn, it appeared Charlie’s personal life wasn’t drama-free either. Brantley had learned three months ago that Charlie’s mother was suffering from dementia, a fact she’d kept to herself until he’d all but pried it out of her. Her mother’s episodes were growing more frequent, and now they involved random disappearing acts. The last one, three weeks ago, had required them to pull out all the stops. Thankfully, they’d located the elderly woman—who had been disoriented outside of a convenience store—but not until a Silver Alert had been issued.
It was safe to say, they each had a lot on their plates, and that didn’t include everything that was going on with the new and improved task force. Add in the new hires, who were adding their own personalities to the mix… Elana Buckley, JJ’s new assistant, was their most recent hire about to finish her second month with the team. She was catching on quickly and already asking for more tasks to take on. Elana had actually been brought on to take over as JJ’s assistant when JJ decided that Holly Switzer, Brantley’s initial pick as JJ’s sidekick, was far too talented and needed to be moved into an analyst position on her team.
Of course, there was Holly’s brother Luca—the bane of JJ’s existence, according to her. Luca, having heard JJ’s proclamation, took extra-special care to give her shit even as he settled into his new role as her teammate.
Oddly enough, the only person on the team who seemed even remotely stable was Brantley’s brother, Trey. In the past few months, Trey’s demeanor had shifted, and he’d gone from the brooding, unhappy man to one who whistled while he worked. Fucking whistled. Brantley had a feeling it had to do with a secret relationship Trey was indulging in, but his brother was keeping it close to the vest, and Brantley had more than enough to deal with to pry.
Fortunately this morning, it seemed some of the strain had lifted off their shoulders, and Brantley was tempted to throw a big thank-you up to the man upstairs. After all, someone was responsible for this shift in mood.
Of course, Baz was still missing, and once he got there, he figured JJ’s mood would quickly decline. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe she would continue to pretend she only wanted to be friends with Baz, pretend that it wasn’t shredding her heart that he was having a baby with another woman.
“Any word from Baz?” he asked, directing the question at JJ.
“Not yet,” she answered with a forced smile.
Yep, still pretending.
“I’m sure he’ll be here shortly,” Trey added. “He’s an overachiever like that.”
“Well, I don’t think we need him to get started. He sent me his notes on the candidates, and based on what I heard last night”—Brantley glanced at JJ—“I think we’re all on the same page as to who we’re hirin’.”
“I thought we had some more interviews to do today,” Trey said, leaning back in his chair and sipping from the new cup of coffee JJ delivered.
“If we need to, sure.” Brantley glanced at Reese, then to Charlie, Holly, Luca, Elana, and finally to JJ. “What do y’all think?”
“I’ve got Allison, Evan, and Slade comin’ in today for another day of it,” JJ said. “But I think we’re all in agreement, so there’s no need to drag it out any longer if we don’t have to.”
“Maybe we could do one final rundown,” Trey suggested. “Just to make sure we’re all on the same page?”
“I’m good with that,” Brantley said, looking around to see if anyone disagreed. When they didn’t, he continued, “All right then. Holly, why don’t you give us a high level of the analysts we’ve decided on.”
Holly spoke up without hesitance. “We were originally looking to hire only two analysts, but we ended up going with three. Rebecca Richter, Jay Hernandez, and Darius Frost. Each one will be assigned to an investigative team and be the direct point of contact for anything that team needs while in the field.”
Brantley had to admit, he was impressed by Holly. When Brantley had initially hired her as JJ’s assistant, he’d done so without JJ’s approval and if he was being honest, he hadn’t been sure it would work. After all, Holly had come around shortly after JJ’s attack, when they had utilized Luca’s skills to find who had supposedly kidnapped the governor’s son. But in the months since, Holly had proven her worth, starting out by handling the menial tasks, but they’d soon learned her skills were too great to be ignored. Now she was the third on JJ’s team.