The Boy from the Woods(69)

“Mommy will be right back,” Rola said.

Neither the screeching nor the music paused for that announcement. Rola got out of the minivan and started toward Wilde. Her blue blazer had a stain on the lapel. She wore Puma sneakers and Mom jeans. A diaper bag of some sort was slung over her shoulder.

She stomped toward him, head high. Rola was barely five feet tall so she had to look up to meet his eye. Wilde braced himself.

“Are you kidding me, Wilde?”

“What?”

“‘What?’” Rola said, doing a pretty good, pretty sarcastic impression of him. “Don’t even with that, okay?”

“Sorry.”

“I deserve better from you, do I not?”

“You do, yes.”

“So how long has it been?” Rola asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Yes, you do. Two years. Two frigging years, Wilde. Last time I saw you was when Emma was born.”

Emma was Rola’s fifth child—three boys, two girls, all under the age of twelve. Years ago, Rola had been his foster sister at the Brewers’ house. Over the years, the Brewer family had almost forty foster kids go through their lives, and all had been made better by the experience. Some stayed only a few months. Some, like Wilde and Rola, stayed years.

“And this stain you keep staring at”—she pointed to her lapel—“the one I know you are dying to clean off me? That’s Emma’s spit-up, thank you very much. What do you have to say to that?”

“Gross?”

She shook her head. Rola’s background, like his, was something of a mystery. Her mother was a Sunni Arab who fled the kingdom of Jordan, arriving in the United States pregnant and unmarried. She’d cut off all ties to family and friends from her native country. She never spoke of them. She never told anyone, not even Rola, who her father was.

“What the hell, Wilde? Two years.”

“Sorry,” Wilde said again. He looked toward the minivan. “How is everyone?”

Rola arched an eyebrow. “For real?”

“What?”

“‘How is everyone?’” Rola repeated, doing the impression again. “That’s the best you can do? You don’t visit. You don’t call.”

“I called,” he said.

“When?”

“Today. Just now.”

Rola’s mouth dropped open. “Are you for real right now?”

He said nothing.

“You called because you needed help.”

“Still a call,” he said.

Rola shook her head and said with deep regret in her voice: “Ah, Wilde. You’ll never change, will you?”

He had warned Rola when she’d insisted he be her full-time partner that there was no way he could last. She knew and even understood, but Rola had always been the craziest sort of rah-rah optimist, even when she had no right to be. In the Brewer house, Rola had been outgoing and boisterous and engaged and social and never stopped talking. She’d loved the frenzy of activity, the shuffling of foster kids in and out, in part, Wilde thought, because she hated being alone.

Rola craved a crowd the way Wilde craved solitude.

More than overcoming the obstacles, Rola had excelled—valedictorian of her high school class, vice president of the class, captain of her soccer team on every level. As a college standout athlete, she’d been heavily recruited by the FBI. She joined, rose up the ranks quickly, and then when Wilde came home from the army, she somehow convinced him to open a private investigation firm with her. She had decided to call it CRAW—Chloe, Rola, And Wilde.

Chloe, now deceased, had been the Brewers’ dog.

“CRAW,” Rola had said at the time. “The name is cute, right?”

“Adorable.”

Wilde had tried to hang on and fit in and go to the office, but in the end, he couldn’t stick it out. It wasn’t his way. He tried to give her back his shares, but Rola wouldn’t take them. She still wanted his name on the door, so every once in a while, he did some extracurricular work for her.

He knew that he should be better about communicating—return calls, be more present, reach out every once in a while, say yes to a social engagement. And he did care about Rola and Scott and their kids. He cared a lot. But he couldn’t do more. It just wasn’t in him.

“I brought everything,” Rola said, transitioning quickly into serious work mode.

She shrugged the bag off her shoulder and handed it to him.

He frowned. “Is this a diaper bag?”

“Don’t worry. It’s brand-new. No germs. If someone opens it, they’ll just find clean baby clothes and clean diapers. You can tell them you’re a caring uncle, though that will obviously be a big character stretch. Do you need me to show you where the hidden pockets are?”

“I think I’ll figure it out.”

“I packed four GPS trackers, three throwaway phones. You need a blade?”

“No.”

“There’s still one in the snap-flap closure. Where I keep the wipes.”

“Terrific.” Wilde looked at the other car. It was a black Buick. “I need three people to cover the Maynards at all times.”

“Three of our best are in the Buick,” Rola said. She nodded. The car doors opened, and her security team stepped out.