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face on, you know? But there was something.” He sighed. “I wish you’d been there.”
    Wow. That he’d said it to me twice now told me he meant it in spades. And that made my insides get mushy. My inner idiot acting up, I guess. “Maybe it’s that he wants it off the books at all? ’Cause, damn, Mason, that has my antennae all aquiver.”
    “No, I can see him wanting it handled discreetly. They kept her accident and blindness quiet.”
    “How did they manage that? I thought it was a drunk driver. Wasn’t there an arrest? A trial?”
    “Must’ve been. The judge said he got the max. Still, the judge is in the public eye. It makes sense to keep this out of the press if Stephanie is just throwing a tantrum.”
    “I don’t know. If my twenty-year-old kid went missing—hell, if my dog went missing—I’d have the National Guard on it before morning. He waited two freaking nights. And how can you say you get that? What if it was Jeremy? How long would you wait to report him missing?”
    “I don’t know. Ten minutes?”
    “There. See?”
    He nodded. “Yes. I see.” Then he stopped looking at the sidewalk and turned to me. “Maybe you’ll get the chance to talk to him yourself, see if you...pick up anything.”
    I lifted one eyebrow the way he so often did. I had practiced doing it in the mirror and thought I was pretty good at it. I loved mirrors. Looking into them, trying different expressions out on myself. It’s not vanity. I hadn’t had a clue what I looked like for twenty years, you know? “I’m picking up something now. From you. What do you know that I don’t?”
    He sighed. “You’re too good at this game.”
    “No such thing. So what haven’t you told me?”
    “Chief Sub’s fiftieth wedding anniversary party is Friday night at his place. The judge will be there. We’re invited.”
    “And by invited, you mean...?”
    “He told me to be there.”
    We’d been standing still so long that Myrtle decided to lie down. Head on her paws, she closed her eyes and was snoring with her next breath.
    “And by we, you mean...?”
    “He said I should bring you along.”
    I couldn’t have been more surprised if lobsters had crawled out of his ears. “So now he’s auditioning me? Doesn’t he realize that we’re not...serious?”
    He got a little red in the face as he turned away. “I couldn’t exactly blurt out that we were just each other’s most reliable booty call, could I?”
    My radar went completely haywire. I didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or serious, if he was a little hurt that I’d said we weren’t serious or making a joke so I’d know he agreed.
    Jesus, why didn’t my supercharged intuition come with an instruction manual and a twenty-four-hour tech-support hotline?
    I said, “I don’t like that ‘most reliable’ line, pal. You’re my only booty call.”
    He looked almost relieved. “Me, too. So then, we’re...exclusive.”
    “I guess we are.” It was, I realized, the single largest declaration either of us had made in regard to our relationship, and it was more than enough for one day. For both of us.
    “You don’t have to come to the party if you don’t want to,” he said.
    “No, I want to.” Shit, it was getting gooey again.
    He looked at me. “Yeah?”
    “Yeah,” I said, and quickly shifted focus back to business. “I want to see this Judge Howie and try to get a feel for what’s going on. Presuming we haven’t found Stephanie by then.”
    “Good. Good.” He looked relieved to be back on topic, too. “Just...don’t call him Judge Howie.”
    I smiled at him. “I want you to get the chief’s job, remember? You’re the one dreading the offer.”
    “I’m not dreading it. I’m undecided.”
    Nodding, I said, “How about we wrap things up here? Myrtle’s getting hungry, and so am I.”
    “Myrtle’s entering a coma. But okay. Back on track. You’re the expert on being blind. Tell me this, just in case this turns out not to be her phone.