Chapter 7

“Damn, Max. Where the hell is your head right now?” Xander growled at him. “Something tells me you completely missed the point of this particular exercise.”

Max knelt in the sand-filled pit at the SWAT compound, breathing hard as sweat mixed with the dirt and paintball splats along his bare chest to create little trails of messy color down his body. While he certainly hadn’t been the first one to cross the finish line, he’d hadn’t been that far back in the crowd—definitely not enough to gain him this kind of ire from his squad leader.

This morning’s physical training exercise was called Rescue, and it was simple. The goal was for select members of the Pack to race through the compound’s obstacle course and retrieve their “rescue victim” from one of the training buildings at the far end of the course. Next, they were supposed to get their victims back through the obstacles and deliver them safe and sound at the finish line marked by the sandpit. The body dummies being used as the victims were heavy, but for the most part, it was a piece of cake.

Of course, since Cooper had come up with this exercise, there was one small detail that made it harder. Xander and the other squad leader, Mike Taylor, were positioned along the course with paintball guns. If you got hit with a paintball, it wasn’t a big deal, but if your victim took a round instead, that meant you had to go back to the start of the course and do it again. Oh, and there was also the thing that said each werewolf could do anything within the rules to ensure that no one finished in front of them. Of course, there weren’t any rules.

He’d seen several pack mates take a tumble off the course as their teammates tripped them or threw things at them. He’d even caught sight of Brooks nailing Becker in the back of his head with his body dummy and pitching the other werewolf off a twenty-foot-high tower.

Max had to admit he’d been somewhat distracted while running the course. He’d spent the night making love to his soul mate, after all. But he’d still been the fourth werewolf across the finish line, behind Brooks, Cooper, and Khaki. Becker would probably have won since he was too fast to catch in most games, which was why Brooks had beaned him with the dummy. They might have to get an official ruling on the legality of throwing your own victim. Cooper said there weren’t any rules, but it didn’t make sense to use the people you were trying to rescue as a weapon.

Regardless, Max had done well, considering the rest of their teammates were out on the course, and he was sure his victim had never gotten hit with a paintball.

“What are you talking about?” he asked Xander.

Xander pointed at the body dummy Max had used. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Max looked down, wondering if maybe he’d missed a paint splat on some part of the dummy he hadn’t noticed when he saw that the dummy’s head was missing. Huh. How had that happened?

“You didn’t notice your victim’s head getting caught in the lines on the rope bridge?” Xander demanded. “Or feel that slight bit of resistance as the head got ripped off?”

All Max could do was shrug. “I guess I’m a bit distracted.”

Xander shook his head. “I don’t have to ask what that distraction might be since we can smell your new soul mate all over you. Congratulations.”

Max tried to look properly chagrined but failed. “Do you want me to run through the course again?”

“With a headless dummy? Why bother?” Xander quipped. “Hit the benches with Khaki, Cooper, and Brooks.”

Max left his headless dummy where it was, hoping Gage didn’t make him pay for it, and followed his teammates over to the benches by the volleyball course to watch the rest of the PT session. Kari and Grace were sitting there, watching as the SWAT alphas ran around with their shirts off getting all sweaty and dirty. The two betas didn’t seem to mind the sweat—or the dirt.

“Where’s your son?” Khaki asked Grace as she sat beside the woman.

The younger of the two beta werewolves smiled. “On his way to school. He’s not thrilled about going, but I think it’s important for him to get some structure now that we’re settled. Of course, that means I now have nothing to do all morning but sit out here and watch muscular men run around and glisten.”

Khaki laughed. “You guys want to take part in the PT session? I’m sure Mike and Xander would happily show you how to shoot a paintball gun.”

The two women exchanged looks.

“You don’t think your alphas would mind getting shot at by two betas?” Kari asked, clearly tempted.

“Nah,” Cooper said. “But if you’re worried about it, you could always promise to wipe off any paint splats you manage to land.”

The two women looked at each other again.

“I’m in!” they both said at the same time, hopping off the benches.

“Maybe the guy with the British accent will let me help him clean up even if I don’t hit him,” Grace said as they headed for the SWAT squad leaders. “I’m sure I can get to all those hard-to-reach places for him.”

Kari laughed, even though Max didn’t think the younger beta was kidding.

While Cooper, Khaki, and Brooks watched the rest of the PT session, Max leaned back and zoned out, lost in thought about Lana and the Wallace kids.

He’d driven past the house on Park Lane this morning, even though he knew he was supposed to stay away. But that was hard to do. Fortunately, he hadn’t heard anything coming from inside that made him think there was a problem, but then again, it had only been five thirty in the morning. He’d take a victory where he could get it, he guessed.

He yawned. He was tired, but it was a good tired—the kind that comes from a long night of awesome sex. It had been better than amazing, and if he had any lingering doubts that Lana was The One for him, they were gone now. He was sure Lana felt the same way. After everything they’d talked about and the way she’d responded last night, Max couldn’t deny the obvious. Lana wasn’t simply hiding her nature. She really didn’t know she was a werewolf.

Max hadn’t had the chance to talk to Gage about it yet, but since only a traumatic event could flip the gene that turned a person into a werewolf, he was sure the car wreck Lana had been in was the event that had both changed her and stunted her development as a werewolf at the same time. He’d never heard of a werewolf going into a coma for as long as she had, and his mind whirled at the possibilities. Did she only partially turn because she’d been sixteen years old at the time, or had the drugs they’d given her after the accident somehow inhibited her initial transformation, allowing her to survive the wreck that had killed her friends but preventing her from healing herself as fast as other werewolves did?

“I’m heading in to shower before everyone else finishes,” Khaki announced, interrupting his daydreams as she stood and headed for the admin building.

“I think she did that so you could talk freely,” Cooper said, glancing at Max. “Khaki’s nice that way.”

He must have missed a vital part of the conversation. “Talk freely about what?”

Cooper and Brooks looked at him like he was a moron.

“Lana, of course,” Cooper said. “It’s obvious she has your head spinning. Even if you hadn’t ripped that dummy’s head off, Xander would probably have put you on the bench just to keep you from walking yourself off the top of one of the bigger obstacles out there on the course.”

Max opened his mouth to complain, but Brooks interrupted him. “And we know it’s not only Lana that has you tied up in knots. That stuff with the Wallace kids is messing you up, too. Look me in the face and tell me you haven’t driven by there at least once or twice in the past twenty-four hours.”

Max didn’t bother to deny either accusation. “Okay, so yeah, both those things are on my mind right now. It doesn’t mean I can’t do my job.”

“We never said differently.” Brooks frowned. “It’s just that you’re distracted. It’s understandable. Finding The One for you is reason enough to be more than a little preoccupied.”

Cooper snorted. “When I met Everly, it was like my head turned to mush. I can’t even count the number of bad decisions I made. So if being with Lana has you spinning right now, don’t feel bad. You’re in good company.”

“Lana and I are doing great,” Max admitted. “I mean, there’s hardly any stress at all. Sure, there’s the thing with her not knowing she’s a werewolf, but that’s not too bad. And then there’s my control issues.”

“What control issues?” Brooks asked. “You talking about something beyond occasionally flashing your fangs and claws?”

Max looked around, hoping the rest of the Pack was too intent on their game to hear any of this. “To tell the truth, my control has gotten worse since getting involved with Lana—and this domestic violence case. First, I just about choked Wallace to death. Then, I almost shifted in front of Lana last night when we were making love.”

“Choking Wallace I get,” Cooper said. “What do you mean, you almost shifted in front of Lana?”

Max shrugged. “Just that. I went full-on fangs and claws as we were getting busy. We had to do it doggy style just so she wouldn’t see—not that doggy style with Lana isn’t spectacular, but still.”

Cooper made a face. “Okay, that’s a bit of visual imagery I could definitely have done without.”

Brooks chuckled. “Where do you think this sudden lack of control is coming from? Is it simply the fact that Lana is The One for you or because she’s a werewolf, too, and that’s ramping up the pheromones? Then again, maybe it’s related to your own history with domestic violence. Could all this stuff with the Wallace kids have brought some deep-seated issues bubbling back to the surface?”

Max didn’t have a clue, and he wasn’t keen on digging too deeply into some of those areas to figure it out. “I don’t know. It could be all of the above—or none of them. All I can say for sure is that I almost frigging bit Lana last night. I can’t keep doing that.”

Brooks regarded him thoughtfully. “Have you ever considered talking to a professional about this, maybe the psychologist the DPD sent Cooper to—Hadley Delacroix?”

Max gaped. “Are you serious? What am I going to tell her, that I grow fangs and claws every time I start to make out with my girlfriend? Somehow I don’t see that working out.”

Brooks shrugged. “She seems to have helped Cooper a lot. He’s not nearly as psycho as he used to be.”

Max didn’t know about that. Cooper still seemed pretty psychotic to him most of the time.

“Brooks might be onto something,” Cooper said. “I still stop in to see her now and then when I need to talk. I could probably get her to see you, too, just to let you try it out. Hell, if we can get enough of the Pack to go with us, she might give us a bulk discount.”

Fortunately, Max didn’t have to reply because Gage came out of the admin building.

“We got a call, Sarge?” Max asked, hopping up from the bench.

“Sort of.” Gage grimaced. “Brooks, take Max and head out to that industrial loft in Deep Ellum we set up for our visiting werewolves. I think we might have a problem brewing out there.”

Brooks grunted and got to his feet. “This has the potential to be interesting.”

Interesting. That probably wasn’t the term Max would have used.

* * *

Lana rang the doorbell, hoping Brandy and Miriam were home. She sagged with relief when it opened. A pajama-clad Brandy stood in the doorway regarding her sleepily, a pair of pink fuzzy slippers on her feet.

“I feel like crap, but you look like crap,” Brandy said, motioning her in. “Bad night?”

“Actually, the best night ever,” Lana said, keeping her voice down in case Miriam was still sleeping.

Brandy must have caught on because she shook her head. “Miriam went in early. One of the other nurses got sick and she’s covering for her in the ER.”

Lana headed straight for Brandy’s coffeemaker, thrilled to find the pot full and steaming away merrily. She grabbed two mugs out of the cabinet and fixed them both a strong cup of liquid sunshine.

“I stayed at Max’s place last night,” she said casually as she added just enough milk to keep the coffee from melting the inside of the mug. She never used to drink much coffee. The caffeine didn’t do a damn thing for her, but the act of holding a steaming cup of coffee always relaxed her. Plus, she simply liked the flavor, so she’d gotten into the habit.

She turned to see Brandy sitting at the kitchen table, a big smile on her face. “Were you two getting to know each other in the friendly manner or the biblical one?”

Lana handed Brandy one of the mugs, then sat across from her friend. She was having a hard time keeping the smile off her face as she remembered everything she’d done with Max last night. “Oh, definitely the biblical one.”

“And?” Brandy asked, leaning forward eagerly. “How was it on a scale of one to oh-my-God-stop-melting-my-panties?”

“Well, I’m not sure where it places on your scale, but I’ll probably just stop wearing panties altogether when I’m in Max’s presence. They’ll just end up in tatters anyway.”

“That good, huh?”

“Better,” Lana said. “It was simply incredible, and I don’t just mean the sex. This is going to sound positively insane, but I’m falling for this guy so fast it’s scary. It’s thrilling, too. It’s the most alive I’ve ever felt.”

“Well, all righty then. Sounds like you hit the romantic lottery with this guy.” Brandy sipped her coffee. “In which case, why are you sitting in my kitchen looking somewhat less than thrilled?”

“Because my dad was waiting for me when I went back to my parents’ house early this morning. To say he was pissed is an understatement.”

Brandy blinked. “You’re kidding, right? Your gun-toting daddy does realize his daughter isn’t a teenager anymore, right?”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

As she sipped her coffee, Lana explained how her father had ambushed her the moment she’d walked in the door.

“He’s never yelled at me in my life,” Lana added. “And it’s all because he thinks Max is wrong for me.”

Brandy lifted a brow. “What did you say to that?”

Lana shrugged. “I told him that who I see is none of his business. As you can imagine, the argument went downhill from there.”

The situation probably wouldn’t have been quite so bad this morning if she hadn’t been so tense to begin with. But for some stupid reason, the moment she’d walked into her parents’ house, her teeth and fingertips had started tingling again. She couldn’t explain what was causing the sensations, but they’d gotten so bad the hair on the back of her neck had actually stood on end, which really put her in a weird mood. When her father confronted her, she naturally counterattacked. Not that her dad didn’t deserve it. He was being a butthead. Still, Lana was sorry things had gotten out of hand.

“When I said I wasn’t going to stop seeing Max simply because he said so, he told me to get out,” Lana said.

Brandy looked about as shocked as Lana had felt hearing those words. “What? You’re not serious, are you?”

Lana could only nod, remembering how stunned she’d been. She’d never seen her father so angry. You’d think she was dating a drug dealer, not one of her dad’s best SWAT officers.

“Your mom isn’t going along with any of this, is she?” Brandy asked.

Lana shrugged. “Mom was already at the restaurant, but when she finds out, I imagine she’s going to be pissed at Dad. But what’s done is done. I told him that if he’s going to try to play that silly game of my house my rules, then I’m out of there.”

“What are you going to do?” Brandy asked.

“I guess that depends on you,” Lana said. “If it’s okay with you and Miriam, I’d like to crash on your couch for a while. If not, my backup plan is to get a room at an extended-stay hotel.”

Brandy’s brow furrowed. “What about staying at Max’s place? You just admitted you’re already head over heels for the guy.”

Lana had thought about it—a lot.

“I’m sure Max would say yes,” she told Brandy. “But even though there’s something serious going on between us, I don’t want to take the risk of screwing things up by moving too fast. I mean, we’ve only known each other for a few days. The things I’m feeling for him are insane, but moving in would be even crazier.”

Brandy looked at her over the rim of her mug. “You just told me you spent last night at his place. Something tells me that even if you have a space on our couch, you’ll still be over there most of the time anyway.”

Lana smiled. “Yeah, probably. But sleeping over and moving in are two completely different things.”

Her friend sighed. “You really spend too much time reading Cosmo, you know that? But it doesn’t matter. If you need a place to crash, then of course you can stay here. Miriam and I are hardly ever here anyway. We both work too much. But if we come in some night and find you and Max going at it, don’t get mad if I start taking pics.”

Lana laughed. At least she had a plan for the short term. Now she had to figure out what to do next.

On the other side of the table, Brandy yawned behind her hand.

Lana grimaced. “Sorry for waking you up so early. Did they have you working late at the hospital again?”

Brandy shook her head. “Not really. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

Lana hadn’t slept much last night either, but she’d never needed as much sleep as her friends. Besides, missing sleep due to sex was completely different from lying in bed tossing and turning.

“What kept you up?” Lana asked. “Something you’re dealing with at work?”

“No, nothing that simple. I couldn’t sleep because every time I closed my eyes, I kept thinking about Chris.”

Lana searched her memory for the name. “The guy you met at that party at the SWAT compound? The one you said you weren’t interested in?”

Brandy rolled her eyes and sighed. “That’s the one. I was all prepared to forget about him, but then he called and left a message. I was dumb enough to listen to it and now I can’t get his voice out of my head.”

Lana waited for her friend to elaborate, but Brandy didn’t say anything else. Instead, her friend sat there staring morosely into her coffee mug.

“Wow,” Lana said. “That must have been one heck of a message. What did he say?”

Brandy ran her finger around and around the rim of her mug. “That he had a good time and hopes we can get together again sometime soon.”

Once again, Lana waited for the rest of the story, only to realize there wasn’t any more forthcoming. “And that’s why you couldn’t sleep?”

Her friend shook her head. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never gotten this crazy for a guy. I have no plans to call him back, but I’m so gaga over his voice I can’t even get myself to erase the message. I must have listened to it twenty times before bed, then tossed and turned the whole night thinking about him.” She gave Lana a stricken look. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

Lana laughed. “Maybe you just like him. You should call him back and go out with him. Who knows? It could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”

Brandy crossed her index fingers in the universal symbol of protection. “Get back, beast! I don’t do relationships, and you know it.”

Lana ignored her friend’s theatrics. “Maybe you should start.”

“Like that’s going to happen.” Brandy scoffed. “I’m going to take a nap. When I wake up, I’ll delete his message and forget I ever heard it.”

“Sure you will,” Lana said. “But before you take that nap, how about helping me drag some stuff in from my car?”

Brandy thought about it a moment. “Can I wear my slippers and pajamas?”

“Sure. No one will notice.”

* * *

“What the hell just happened in there?” Max asked Brooks as they walked down the steps of the industrial-warehouse-style loft Gage had set up for some of the recently arrived werewolves.

Brooks didn’t answer right away—mostly because he was too busy trying to piece together parts of his shredded tactical vest. Luckily, his skin hadn’t been shredded along with it.

“If I had to guess,” the big alpha said, shaking his head and giving up on his vest, “I’d say we just witnessed the start of some new werewolf adaptation, an evolution of how the different werewolf breeds behave in response to the hunter threat.”

Max thought about that and realized it made sense. An hour ago, he and Brooks had gotten there expecting to find the omegas causing trouble for the small pack of betas who lived there, and instead finding two omegas aligning with the betas as part of their pack and squaring off against two other omegas who felt they would do a better job leading the pack and protecting the kids who lived there from any hunters who might show up. Although it had turned into a big ass brawl, the omegas were still behaving a lot more rationally than Max was used to.

Even more bizarre, the betas living in the building were acting much more aggressively than Max had ever seen them. One of them had jumped into the fight between the omegas. That wasn’t the way beta werewolves normally reacted.

Betas acting like omegas, and omegas acting alphas? If Max hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he’d call BS on the idea.

“You think it’s a good idea to leave them all together up there?” he asked.

Brooks snorted as they reached their response vehicle parked on the street. “What choice do we have? They agreed to work together to protect their pack. We can’t ask much more than that. Besides, I think that beta up there, Allen, has the situation pretty well in hand. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s undergoing a beta-to-alpha transformation.”

Max climbed into the passenger seat. He had noticed Allen’s fangs and claws seemed longer than they were before. It looked like the guy had put on a couple pounds of muscle, too.

Brooks was just pulling away from the Deep Ellum apartment building when Max’s phone rang. His heart did this seriously unmanly backflip thing when he thought it might be Lana calling. He’d left her lying naked and beautiful in his bed this morning, and if he was lucky, that was where he’d find her tonight after work.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Lana. It was Detective Peterson from Austin homicide, and though Max’s stomach was doing that backflip thing again, it was for a completely different reason.

“Lowry,” he said when he put the phone to his ear.

“Max, it’s Detective Peterson, Austin PD. I’m not sure what this means, but I thought you should know. We found another murder victim with an MO similar to Denise Sullivan’s. Signs of torture and the guy had a large-caliber bullet through his forehead.”

“Who is he?” Max asked, a sickening feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. Two people shot through the forehead? It couldn’t be a coincidence, not when hunters preferred putting down werewolves exactly that way.

“We’re still trying to ID him, but getting prints is tough because the guy’s fingertips are a mess,” Peterson said. “This guy was a big bruiser type, with a nose that had been broken a couple times, lots of scars like the ones you’d get fighting, and a collection of prison ink. Bottom line, he’s the kind of man more likely to do the torturing than to get tortured. The ME is saying he was probably killed at least two days before Denise, maybe three. We’re trying to ID him from his prison ink, but that’s probably going to take a while.”

No kidding.

“Any way to connect this guy to Denise?” Max asked.

A big guy with prison tats didn’t sound like someone Denise would hang out with, but maybe Lana hadn’t known her roomie as well as she’d thought. Max knew better than most that everyone kept secrets.

“Actually, there is,” the detective said. “But probably not the way you’re thinking.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before you and Ms. Mason came down, we’d been digging through old police reports, parking citations, and traffic cam footage for the area around their apartment complex. It’s standard practice when we don’t have any other leads. Sometimes you get lucky, you know? So we ended up finding a complaint filed by one of Denise’s neighbors almost a week before the murders. He reported seeing a man lurking around Denise’s apartment building a couple times, watching the place. He thought the guy was casing the apartments for a robbery, but when dispatch sent a patrol out, they didn’t find anything. They talked to the other neighbors and increased patrols in the area, but no one saw the guy again, so the report was left open and pending.”

“You think this guy the neighbor saw is the one who killed Denise and your unnamed male victim?” Max asked, trying to figure out where this was all going. The hunter angle wasn’t lining up.

“No,” Peterson said. “This guy the neighbor saw is the unnamed vic. We showed a photo of him to the witness who had called in the report and he confirmed our John Doe is the one who’d been watching Denise’s apartment.”

Max tried to wrap his head around this nugget of information—and failed. Was this new victim a werewolf or a hunter taken out by his own people? None of this stuff was making any sense.

“Can you send me a picture of your John Doe and anything else you have on him? I’ll see if Lana recognizes him.”

Max wanted to get a look at the guy, too.

“I’m already working on it,” Peterson said. “The paperwork to release the file and photos to you is on my captain’s desk, but I don’t think he’s going to cause me any grief on this one. Let me know what Ms. Mason says.”

Max promised he would and was about to hang up when Peterson stopped him.

“One more thing. I’m not sure how to say this without freaking you out, so I’m just going to put it out there.”

That didn’t sound good. “Okay.”

“It goes without saying that I have no idea who killed Denise Sullivan and this John Doe or what their motives might be. All I can say for sure is that the person who did it is vicious, probably unhinged, and somehow connected to that apartment building your girlfriend used to live in. I probably don’t need to say it, but I’d keep a close eye on her, just in case.”

Max appreciated the warning, even if it wasn’t necessary. “I will.”

Peterson was about to hang up, but this time it was Max who stopped him. His gut was telling him it was time to trust the other cop. “This is going to sound really weird, but can you have your ME run a tox screen for animal tranquilizer in both Denise and the John Doe you found?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Do you know something about this case you should be telling me?”

“Just call it a crazy hunch,” Max said. “But if I’m right, your case might be tied to a string of murders that have been happening all across the country. I ran into a similar case in New Orleans a while back. The gunshot to the head is similar.”

“And you’re just mentioning it now?” Peterson demanded, sounding a little pissed.

“Because nothing else seems to fit,” Max told him. “The extensive torture prior to the head shot isn’t anything like the previous MO, so I’m just grasping at straws here.”

Max could tell the other cop wanted to ask a lot more questions, but he refrained, saying he’d get the ME on the screening. “I’ll keep it quiet for now, but if this comes back positive for animal tranquilizer, I’m going to be asking a lot more questions.”

“I understand,” Max said. “But if this comes back positive, you won’t be the only one with questions.”

Brooks had obviously overheard everything Peterson said because the moment Max hung up, he looked at him in concern. “Are you worried there are hunters after Lana?”

Max shoved his phone in his pocket. “I want to say no. Because how could the hunters know she’s a wolf if she doesn’t even know?”

“Then why bring up the animal tranquilizer thing at all?” Brooks asked.

“Because my gut is screaming that there’s something wrong here, and I have to know if Lana is in danger,” Max said.

He and Brooks spent the rest of the drive to the compound talking about Lana and how incredibly unusual she was. They’d just pulled into the parking lot when Max’s cell rang again.

“You’re a popular guy today,” Brooks remarked as Max reached for his phone.

Max hoped it was Lana this time, just so he could hear her voice, and was disappointed when he didn’t see her name on the screen. He was even more disappointed when he heard Detective Coletti’s distinctive voice on the other end of the line.

“I don’t know what Wallace told you, but I haven’t been anywhere near that house,” Max stated firmly before the other cop had a chance to say anything.

“Yeah right.” Coletti snorted. “Like I frigging believe that. But it doesn’t matter. That’s not why I called. I figure you’d want to know the Department of Family and Protective Services gave me a call. According to the DFPS, Mrs. Wallace finally decided she’s had enough. She took the kids and left her husband a few hours ago. They’re at the Safe Campus in Bluffview.”

Max couldn’t believe how amazing those few simple words made him feel. It wasn’t until that moment that he realized he’d been holding his breath, expecting Coletti to tell him that Wallace had killed his family.

“You think I could stop by and check on them, see if they need anything?” Max asked, not really sure why he was even asking Coletti.

“The department wanted you to stay away from Wallace and his residence,” Coletti said. “I don’t see any reason you can’t go see those kids now that they’re out of the house.”

Max didn’t say anything for long time, fighting some emotions he wasn’t sure what to do with. “Thanks, Coletti. I didn’t think it was going to work out, but I guess it did.”

“Sometimes it does,” the detective said. “Those are the ones we hope for.”

Max hung up to see Brooks regarding him with a smile on his face.

Max grinned. “I think Mrs. Wallace and her kids are going to be okay.”

“So I heard,” Brooks said. “Better not mention to Cooper how cool Coletti is being. It might ruin his opinion of the man.”