May Contain Wine (SWAT Generation 2.0 5)

I crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s y’all’s problems?”

Luke sighed and ran his hand down over his face.

“Why do y’all think it’s okay to poke your noses in adult business?” my father asked as he caught me in a headlock.

I grinned and twisted, reversing the headlock, but just as quickly, he was gone.

My father may be older, but he definitely wasn’t any less fit.

“Foster, good. Just the man I wanted to see.” Bennett stood. “Did you hear that he wants us to do a fucking SWAT calendar next year?”

I burst out laughing.

Despite the shitty morning that I had, I had no other choice but to laugh at this point.

The idea of them doing a calendar was great.

“I don’t fucking want to do it anymore than you do,” Luke muttered. “But the mayor thinks it’ll be a ‘great’ idea.”

I wanted to laugh my ass off.

But just as I was about to give them shit, someone interrupted us. Dear God, I heard ‘oh, Mr. May’ so many fuckin’ times a day and thought it would be fitting for them to hear it, too.

“Chief Roberts?” Donna, Luke’s receptionist, said from the doorway. “I thought you might want to take this one.”

Luke frowned. “Take what?”

She handed him a sheet.

“This call just came in from a mail carrier,” she said. “It’s a report of a decapitated dog on the porch of someone’s house. There’s, uh, more to it. But the mail carrier said it was too vulgar for her to repeat.”

I felt my laughter fade just as quickly as it’d come.

“Yeah, that’s what I came in here to talk to you about,” I grumbled. “We stayed at my place last night—Calloway and me.” I looked over at Bennett to see his eyes narrowed. “When I went to drop her off at her place today, I saw the dog. I took her back to my place and made her call in sick.”

Twenty minutes later, there were eight men standing before Calloway’s front porch, all staring at the message.

Dump the cop or you’ll wish you did.

Those words were written on Calloway’s front door with a finger that’d been swiped in the dog’s blood.

“This is the dog that we saw last night as we were heading home together,” I murmured. “She pointed him out. Dog was hauling ass, though. As if someone was calling him home or something.”

“If we’re in luck, her cameras were working,” Bennett murmured.

I frowned. “Cameras?”

“She has that Ring doorbell. Made me come and install it.” Bennett pointed.

I looked at the doorbell and felt my stomach sink.

I’d seen the camera, of course. It was kind of hard to miss.

But I’d written it out of my mind when I’d seen the dog.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might be able to see what was going on without me being there to protect her from what she saw.

“I’ll call her and get the password. Sign in on my phone,” Bennett murmured.

Bennett did just as he said, eyes on the dog as he placed the call.

While he was doing that, I downloaded the app and waited for the sign in information.

Seconds later, Bennett passed it over to me with an eye roll when he saw that I’d downloaded the app.

I signed in, then handed him my phone as I held my hand out for his.

We switched phones and I placed Bennett’s to my ear.

“Don’t look at it please,” I said softly.

There was a soft sigh.

“I won’t. I understood you didn’t want me to the moment you made us leave,” she said softly. “But you’ll tell me?”

Not all of it, but some.

“Yes,” I promised.

“Okay. Also, I get notifications every time that it’s set off. But my phone died at some point last night and I didn’t remember until this morning. I never got a notification,” she told me.

Thank God for that.

“Okay,” I said, eye twitching. “I have this meeting that I have to get to afterwards. They postponed it until eleven. It shouldn’t take long. But we have to go over what we didn’t last night.”

“Okay. Will you bring lunch? You have a very short supply of food here,” she whined.

I snickered—something I didn’t think I could do when I was standing in front of such carnage directed at my woman—and promised that I would.

Just before we hung up, I said two words. “Love you.”

Without giving her the chance to reply, I hung up and handed the phone back to Bennett who was busy going through my phone.

“Wore a mask,” Bennett said as he took the phone. “But he has an identifying tattoo on his hand right here.”

I looked at the tattoo and immediately realized where I’d seen it before.

“This kid,” I said, pointing at him. “We saw him last night. He was leaving at the same time that we did. He was at the kids’ hangout across the parking lot from the bar. It makes sense that he would’ve been around when the dog was, too.”