Read Don't Let Go for Free Online Page A

were gaps, too, I learned. With a building changing from one survey to the next without any official construction permit being filed. The thin fading carbon copies chronicled the growth of a metropolis, only hinting at the people who lived within it.
    And I found that looking for a building near the docks shaped like an M was fucking hard. We found a seemingly endless amount of possibilities, and we set each one aside so we could check into its current usage and ownership. And the worst part was knowing we could miss it in this haphazard pile. The proverbial M-shaped needle in the biggest haystack in Texas. For all the fancy gadgetry we oohed and ahhed over in the academy, actual detective work was a backward business. We peered into the past, hoping it would help. But history held onto its secrets like a forest at night, shrouded in moonlight and steeped in folklore. There was magic in these dusty volumes, but all we could see were shadows.
    We walked over to a diner for lunch, where I ordered a salad and two eggs sunny side up. Hennessey ordered a burger loaded with cheese and bacon, fries, and a milkshake. I raised my eyebrows as the waitress left us.
    Hennessey grinned, almost boyish. “Sorry, I don’t share. You’ll have to get your own if you get tired of rabbit food.”
    I snorted. “My arteries will thank me later.”
    “You’re not into living dangerously?”
    “I’m an FBI agent working one of the highest profile cases south of the Mason Dixon. My danger quota is full.”
    He nodded, turning pensive. “You’re probably right. Though sometimes…it gets to be too much, to live a normal life with a dangerous job. We build up all this steam, and we don’t have the release of money and drugs the way the criminals do.”
    “Maybe you don’t,” I deadpanned, and he laughed. His smile changed his whole face, made him younger and so handsome that my heart squeezed. Synapses lit up in my brain, firing into places long asleep. Like waking up and finding the world more vivid than your dreams.
    His smile faded. He looked me in the eye. “Truth is, I never planned to live very long. In this job, there’s always a bullet out there with my name on it.”
    I looked down, tracing a groove in the laminate with my fingernail. Not a grown up response, but it was all I could manage in that moment. I had the sense of a ghost again, of Carlos Laguardia and a hundred other criminals, all gathered around us with sinister incorporeal faces.
    Since I was in this job too, there was a bullet with my name on it. But that didn’t bother me. That was why I was here, if I were being honest. Some criminals sought their deaths using suicide by cop. Me? I’d been working at suicide by criminal my whole broken life.
    But if Hennessey were killed…that would hurt. He was a larger-than-life hero in my mind, his death unthinkable to me.
    I never planned to live very long. His words chilled me.
    Trying to break the somber mood, I quipped, “I hate to break it to you, but you’re no spring chicken. You’ve already lived a long time.”
    It worked. He quirked a grin, and my insides lurched forward, speeding up again. It was like riding a high, teasing out those smiles of his, and if I wasn’t careful, I could become addicted.
    His eyes twinkled. “So maybe you can start looking out for me, partner. Watch what I eat.”
    “Maybe,” I said, missing the word rookie coming out of his mouth, realizing his voice had been laced with strange affection each time. Partner sounded respectful and cold falling from his lips.
    “We’ll spend the rest of the day in the record room,” he said, switching subjects. “That should be enough to get us started. We can dig into the backgrounds tomorrow.”
    “Okay.” A question hovered on my tongue. “Doesn’t it seem kind of…random? Hoping he’s telling us the truth and assuming we’ll find the right building and be able to tell that it is. There’s so many ways for it to go wrong.”
    His