Page 59 of What's Left of Us

I grin. “You must have made millions selling the recipe to Ragu.”

She chuckles. “And you wouldn’t believe what Betty Crocker offered me for my world-famous brownies.”

Snorting, I go back to eating as Cooper slides into the room with a bright smile on his face when he sees me. “Mom, can I play Super Mario with Uncle Hawk since I finished my homework? Please?”

She holds out a plate. “After you eat, and only if Uncle Hawk wants to play video games with you.”

Cooper’s hopeful gaze turns to me.

“Sure, bud. Let’s eat dinner first.”

That night, I don’t think about anything outside mindless video games and the inner ramblings of a five-year-old. I shoot the shit with Marissa, we drink, and I fall asleep on their couch so I don’t have to go home to the thick silence that I hate so much.

I wake up in the middle of the night to a text from Georgia consisting of two words.

Georgia:Can’t sleep

I stare at the text, my fingers hovering over the keyboard to tell her to give me twenty minutes. But my head feels fuzzy from the booze, and there’s a reason I came here. So, I decide to turn my phone off, roll over, and fall back asleep.

She can call her new boyfriend if she needs somebody tonight.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lincoln / Present

Aknock onmy office door has me glancing over from the case file loaded on the computer screen to one of the newer troopers who just graduated from the academy a little over a year and a half ago. Kevin Dickers is fresh-faced and nervous, feigning confidence as he straightens to full height when I sit back in my seat and dip my chin at him in greeting.

“What’s up, Dickers?” My eyes go from him to the thick folder in his hands. “Got something for me?”

He looks over his shoulder before stepping in, gaining my full attention with an arch of my brows when he closes the door behind him. “I was hoping you had a couple minutes to talk.”

I’ve barely had more than five conversations with the kid, so this seems a little out of the ordinary. “Something on your mind?”

His fingers clench around the folder. “I don’t know if you know this, but Sergeant Broughton asked me to go through Conklin’s files and make sure there weren’t any open cases we missed in the system.”

Eyes darting to the manilla folder again, I recognize the illegible chicken scratch on the top. “I figured somebody was going to. Didn’t know who they assigned to it.”

Frankly, I didn’t want to, or I’d be pestering the person nonstop about what they might or might not have found. When I got back from my medical leave, I had more important things to focus on. Like the meetings with the senior investigator and lieutenant about what had happened that day. It was Conklin’sbody cam footage that got me out of facing Internal Affairs and being questioned. I was only on the last few minutes, my body blocking the camera feed as I grabbed his body and dragged him to safety.

They decided the big focus was on remembering Conklin and healing, not sending me to face IA while I still tried recovering.

Kevin scratches his throat. “Look, I haven’t brought this to Broughton yet. When I read through it, I figured you’d want to look at it first.”

“What is it exactly?”

He extends the folder out. “Conklin wrote your badge number in the margins next to some other stuff I couldn’t quite make out. The guy’s handwriting wasn’t great.”

Conklin’s handwritingwasatrocious. It was a good thing reports and tickets were all typed up and printed or else nobody would be able to figure out what he was saying.

When I open the file, I see a list of names. It extends halfway down the page, with a handful of names highlighted and a couple others underlined or circled. Arrows connect a few names to others, with addresses next to them.

My blood goes cold when I see one of the addresses listed.

123 Cover Creek Road.

Jaw grinding, I close the file.

“I wasn’t sure if you saw that already,” he says, dropping his voice in case anyone passes by the room. “It seemed like he was going to show you that eventually. Before…”

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