“I gave it a lot of thought, and I’m just not ready to make that kind of commitment.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet, but maybe some PI work.”
My friend nodded, turning his head so I couldn’t see his face. “Tell him you need more time.”
“What about you? Have you given them an answer?”
“No.”
Neither Doc Butler nor his wife, Merrigan, the managing partners of K19 Security Solutions, had pressured me about the junior partnership offer they’d extended shortly before the mission that took us to Columbia. Striker was the only person from the firm who’d asked if I’d made a decision. I assumed the same was true for Tackle.
“What about you? What are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking about working for my dad.”
Tackle’s father owned a construction company where we’d both worked during high school summer vacations.
“Is that what you did, told them you needed more time?”
He nodded.
“Nothing like surviving a plane crash to make a guy reassess his life.”
Tackle laughed. “Listen, I’m sorry I’ve been so distant.”
“We okay?”
“Always.”
He said the word, but I wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t call him out on it, though. I was going through enough shit of my own to get that he was too.
When we got to the airfield, Striker was waiting.
“I’ll be in the bar,” said Tackle after greeting the man who had been our boss at the CIA and, to a certain extent, still was.
“I want you to take some more time before you give K19 a hard pass.”
“Tackle gave me the same advice.”
“No one expects a decision right away, Halo. Not after what you’ve been through.”
“I appreciate that.”
“There is a job I want to talk to you about, though.”
I shifted on my feet, really wishing he wasn’t about to offer me something I wasn’t ready to take on.
“It’s a missing-person case.”
“Who’s missing?”
“Tara Emsworth.”
“Name sounds familiar.”
“She’s a good friend of Aine’s. One of her best, actually. She disappeared the same day as the plane crash.”