Page 73 of The Reaper
“Because I want the same thing you do,” he said quietly. “For her to be safe. Period.”
Something shifted then—small, but I felt it. Dean held his gaze for a long beat, and it wasn’t the icy appraisal from earlier. It was something more measured. Calculating.
Trish’s hand rested lightly on Dean’s arm. “He’s not wrong,” she said. “The way I see it, we’re all on the same side here.”
Dean’s mouth pulled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Maybe.”
I let out a breath.
The server arrived to clear the dessert plates, sensing none of the tension or maybe wisely ignoring it. Dean leaned back in his chair, the set of his shoulders looser than before.
“You’ve got eyes on those cameras now?” he asked Caleb.
“Always,” Caleb said.
Dean nodded once. “Good. Then maybe I’ll sleep tonight.”
It wasn’t a surrender, but it wasn’t a fight either.
Dean didn’t pick up his glass again. He studied Caleb like he was a schematic he could take apart with a thumbnail.
“I’ll ask again. What do you really do,” he said, voice even, “when it isn’t cameras and motion alerts? Plain English.”
Caleb didn’t blink. “Military.”
Dean’s brows lifted a fraction. Respect slipped in, but it didn’t soften him. “Active?”
“Yes and no.”
Dean cocked his head to one side, puzzled, but continued. “What branch?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Dean exhaled through his nose, slow. “Okay.” The word landed like a truce marker on the tablecloth. He didn’t smile. He didn’t need to. That tiny recalibration in his posture said enough:I know what that costs. “Then you understand why I’m skeptical.”
“I do,” Caleb said. “And I want the same thing you do—her safe, her world undisturbed.”
Dean tapped the table once, then again, a metronome of worry. “What’s the plan? Tonight. Tomorrow. Next week. Because if there’s a plan, I can live with it. If there isn’t?—”
“There was a plan,” Caleb said, cutting himself off with a tight shake of the head. “But since we just found another note while we were all sitting here, the plan needs to change.” His jaw bunched.
Trish went still. “Another one? Just now?”
I nodded. “Hostess stand. Same stock. Same penmanship. Like he wanted to be polite about ruining my night.”
Dean’s eyes cut to the front like he could rewind time by staring hard enough. “How are they getting in if you’ve got eyes everywhere?”
“That’s what I don’t understand,” Caleb said, low. “No motion alerts. No recorded entry on any angle. Either we’ve got a blind spot I haven’t identified yet, or someone with access is planting them when nobody’s looking.”
“Staff,” Dean said immediately.
The word stung. “My team wouldn’t?—”
“Your team is human,” he said, not unkind. “Humans make mistakes. Humans have friends. People ask for favors. People owe favors. Or,” he added, “someone’s walking in with a key.”
I hated that my stomach flipped. “We track keys. Only managers and me.”
Caleb’s gaze moved through the room—door, windows, the corridor to my office. “What about deliveries? Linen service, produce. Do they pull the door open with a shoulder while they sign and someone slips past? Side gate? Trash run with a wedge in the jamb?”
