Free Blood Lines by Mel Odom

wasn’t gained just overnight.
    Will paused at the coffeepot and poured a cup.
    The NCIS offices weren’t completely deserted, but only a skeleton crew of agents was in place. Crime never truly came to a halt. Most of the cubicles were silent, but Maggie knew it would be business as usual in the morning.
    â€œYou could have let that go for tonight.”
    Maggie knew she could have, but she hadn’t wanted to stay in her apartment or go out. Over the last few years, the NCIS offices had gotten comfortable for her. It was Father’s Day, and she didn’t want to sit at home and feel guilty about not calling her father. Not that Harrison Talbot Foley III would have truly cared other than to tweak whatever guilt she might have felt.
    â€œI didn’t feel like going out, and I didn’t feel like staying in,” Maggie said. “I needed to work on something that was mindless. Organizing files does that for me.”
    Will blew on his coffee and sipped. Then he grimaced and put the coffee down. “I take it you haven’t been drinking the coffee.”
    Maggie held up an extra-large Starbucks cup that was still almost half-full. “Nope.”
    Will busied himself brewing a new pot. “Well, at least it’s peaceful tonight.”
    â€œIt was quiet tonight. At least, it was until someone gave us a lead on Bobby Lee Gant.”
    Quiet contemplation passed over Will’s face for just a second; then he nodded. They all remembered who Bobby Lee Gant was.
    â€œAnything solid?” Will asked.
    â€œWe hope so.”
    â€œâ€˜We’?”
    â€œShel and Remy are en route.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œCharlotte.”
    â€œHow did you find out Bobby Lee was supposed to be there?”
    Maggie told him about the woman who’d been flipped by the Charlotte PD investigators.
    â€œWhom does Bobby Lee know up there?” Will asked when she’d finished.
    Maggie brought up Bobby Lee Gant’s file. “His father. Victor.”
    The man’s grim visage filled the screen. Maggie had worked in law enforcement long enough to know that pure evil existed in the world. Looking at Victor Gant, she couldn’t help but get the feeling the man was intimate with all aspects of that dark force.
    Will nodded and ran a hand through his short-cropped black hair. “The biker guy.”
    â€œRight.” As she studied Will, Maggie knew he was tired and struggling. Even without her degrees in psychology and years of profiling suspects and victims, she would have known that.
    â€œYou could have called me,” Will said. He was a little over six feet tall and rugged looking. He was bigger than Remy Gautreau but nowhere near as developed as Shel McHenry. His green eyes looked bloodshot. He was tan from the sun and the sea, and he wore the Navy like it was a part of him. During the last few months he’d been out sailing with his kids on the weekends every chance they’d gotten.
    â€œYou were with Steven and Wren, and it’s Father’s Day,” Maggie said. “I wasn’t going to interrupt you. It’s just a quick look-see. If it doesn’t feel right, Shel and Remy will shadow Bobby Lee and wait till we can get someone there. They know the drill.”
    Will watched the coffee drip into the glass pot. “Bobby Lee’s elevator doesn’t go quite to the top.”
    Maggie smiled. “That sounds like something Shel would say.”
    â€œThat’s because it is something Shel said. And he said it because Bobby Lee is dangerous.”
    â€œShel and Remy can handle themselves. There’s no sense in sending three men on a two-man job. Shel could probably collar Bobby Lee himself.” Besides, Maggie thought, you needed the time with your kids. But she knew better than to tell Will that. He already felt torn in different directions enough by the job and his family. Getting that balance right had always been a struggle for