The PowWow

I pulled the Highlander into a parking space outside one of the many identical buildings in a sprawling apartment complex. The one we wanted sat tucked into the far-left corner, backed up against a cluster of old-growth trees—probably the only things left from before the place was built twenty years ago.

Three floors. Twelve units per floor. Copy-paste architecture.

Jacob and I went in through the leftmost entryway, climbed to the third floor, then took the hallway all the way to the last apartment on the left.

I knocked and we waited.

A moment later, the door opened to a man nearly as tall as Jacob—but about twenty pounds lighter than me. God had apparently decided to resurrect an inflatable tube man and give it a bowl cut. Blue-black hair, perfectly still, like it had been measured into place.

“Hey, Curtis,” I said.

He blinked. Twice.

Jacob let out something just shy of a chuckle. “Good afternoon, Curtis. May we have some of your time?”

I glanced at him, so… many… words, he was going for a new record.

Figures he could out-polite me as easily as he out-silences me.

Curtis nodded to Jacob, then looked back at me. “Rude. But come in.”

We stepped inside.

The place was exactly what I expected—and somehow worse. Everything squared to edges. Furniture aligned like it had been placed with a laser level. Clean enough that Jacob might’ve considered it a spiritual experience. The faint scent of Lysol hung in the air like a warning.

“What do you need, Jacob?”

Ouch.

Jacob’s smile twitched again, and he looked at me. Right. My turn.

“Forgive my earlier abruptness,” I said, aiming for sincerity and landing somewhere near tolerable. “We’ve got a partial license plate and need help tracking the vehicle.”

One eyebrow lifted. Spock would’ve been proud. “Why me?”

I smiled. He always asked that.

“Because, Curtis, you’re the absolute best.”

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, like he was absorbing the compliment through osmosis. “It is good to be appreciated for one’s talents.”

Jacob said, “It is better to be appreciative to God for the talents He gave you.”

Curtis deflated a notch. “You are correct, sir.”

I bit back a scowl. Funny how I’m the rude one.

Curtis rolled over to his gaming chair, parked in front of a computer setup that looked capable of launching satellites. I half expected a NORAD logo to pop up on the screen.

“What do you have?”

I handed him the Post-it. Three characters. The word sedan scribbled underneath.

He studied it. “A sedan plate with three non-sequential characters. Not vanity.” A pause. “This is not going to go well.”

Jacob’s voice dropped, gravel over steel. “Why not?”

Curtis started typing. “If you had the first three or last three characters, this would be easy. Middle fragments? It’s not that they’re non-sequential—it’s that they’re useless without position. ”

He shook his head. “Possible, but you’re relying on luck.”

Jacob bowed his head slightly. “Father, grant us Your grace.”

Curtis glanced at him for a moment, then turned back to the screen.

He leaned back. “Now we wait for the AI to do what it can.”

“Can it find the car?” I asked.

Curtis shrugged. “It’ll find something. Question is how many.”

The computer chimed—a clean, resonant tone, like a tuning fork.

Curtis frowned.

“What?” I asked. I’m basically a subscription service for bad questions.

He gestured at the screen. “Seventy hits.”

He typed again. “Filtering for sedans… sixty-three.”

He looked back at us. “Hope you’ve got manpower.”

I cleared my throat. “Can you track them?”

He turned his chair toward me. “I can.” A beat. “But if you want this to go faster, go back to wherever you got the plate and find me the make and model.”

“Sedan’s not enough?”

Curtis pointed at the door. “Have a good day, gentlemen.”

He turned back to his screen, fully committing to ignoring us.

Jacob moved to the door and gave my shirt a light tug.

We stepped out. He closed the door quietly behind us.

“Now what?” I asked.

Two useless questions in a little under five minutes. I’m on a roll.

Jacob grinned—an actual grin this time, not the polite version.

“Now,” he said, “we go back to the detective… and see if you can charm her into letting us watch the video again.”

We drove through traffic, moving slowly back toward the precinct. Jacob was quiet—imagine that. I tried to focus on driving, but my mind kept wandering to Rachel.

Jacob looked over, a knowing expression all over his face. “She really captured you, didn’t she?”

I couldn’t help it—I grinned. “Much like Naomi did for you. I can’t explain it.”

Jacob smiled—an actual smile. “Yes… similarity. I’ll make you a deal.”

He was definitely going for a record in words used during a single day.

“What’s that?” I asked, extending my already impressive list of sharp, incisive questions.

Jacob looked down—almost… embarrassed?

“We kid each other constantly.”

Meaning, I poked him way too much.

He continued, “I believe we should each place these women in the out-of-bounds category for kidding. We should have done so earlier at Jeremiah’s.”

He was right.

He was also well past his daily allotment of words. We’re brothers—there’s a certain right of passage there—but still.

“Deal.”

He nodded, then went right back to staring out at traffic, resuming his best impression of a statue.

We arrived at the precinct and went inside without saying anything. I moved, as before, to bypass the desk sergeant—but Jacob, of course, stopped.

Luckily—Jacob would call it grace—the sergeant wasn’t busy.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Jacob nodded. “Detective Rachel Stryker, please.”

The man glanced down at something on his desk, then back up. “Appointment?”

I stepped forward, but Jacob held me back with a slightly raised paw. “It’s an addendum appointment to counsel held earlier, sir. She met with my brother, and we have further questions.”

When you go for a record, sometimes you just blow through all sorts of barriers.

The desk sergeant flipped a page, then lifted a sticky note to show us. “Either of you named Levi?”

I raised a hand—saying nothing—proving to Jacob I knew how.

The sergeant nodded at the note with my name. “You’re expected. Head on up.”

“Oh,” he added, pointing at me, “next time check in first, or Detective Stryker will have you tossed. Don’t be rude.”

Jacob grinned and thanked the sergeant while I mentally drafted several ways to derail the man’s career. Still, Rachel expected me.

We found Rachel in the same room as before. She was moving frame by frame through the footage, relentlessly searching for anything useful.

I was impressed by that kind of persistence.

“Hiya, Rachel,” I said, ignoring Jacob’s horrified stare at my forwardness.

She didn’t look away from the monitor. “Levi.”

I glanced at Jacob and resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him.

“Too many hits on the license number,” I continued. “We need more.”

Rachel sighed and leaned back, rubbing the bridge of her nose again. I was starting to think that might be her tell.

“There’s nothing more to see,” she said. “Everything is exactly what we saw before.”

I gestured toward Jacob. “I brought my brother. Another set of eyes.”

She nodded, gave a tired wave, and motioned to the screen. “Knock yourselves out.”

Jacob stepped forward and held the chair as she stood. She paused briefly, then glanced at me.

At least this time I wasn’t rude. Just late.

My brother rumbled, “If you’re tense, Levi gives an excellent shoulder massage.”

More words. A compliment, too.

Rachel looked at him, then at me, then slowly sank into another chair. She fixed her gaze on me, tilted her head slightly, and swiveled the chair away. One hand lifted and pointed at her shoulders.

Bless you, Jacob.

He wasn’t wrong. I might not be as big as him, but my hands are large—and I actually took classes. I stepped behind Rachel and went to work on the tension in her shoulders.

Jacob sat at the monitor, the chair protesting audibly under his weight. He ignored it and began scrubbing through the footage again, studying the same frames we’d already seen.

Rachel let out a quiet groan. “That feels amazing, thank you. I can’t make out any more characters in the plate. Even IT couldn’t clean it enough. The system’s sophisticated, but the image capture is poor.”

Jacob nodded at the screen. “Grainy.”

There’s the brother I know.

“Any luck determining make or model?” I asked.

She leaned back into my hands. “No. There’s something on the front—a circular device—but the grain on that half of the image is terrible. I think something’s on the lens.”

“Well, it’s not a ride-share,” I said.

Rachel sighed lightly. “How do you figure?”

I shrugged—though no one saw it. “Someone getting into a ride-share with a body over their shoulder is going to get questions.”

Rachel chuckled, then reached up and patted my hand. “Point taken. And thank you.”

She turned slightly, smiling up at me—and for a moment, everything else stopped.

Wow.

Jacob stabbed a thick finger at the screen. “There’s something.”

Rachel stood immediately and moved to him. “What?”

“Bare feet,” he said. “Nice slacks, though.”

Jacob zoomed the cleaner side of the image. The man’s feet were clearly bare—and the slacks were, annoyingly, very well tailored.

He shifted the frame, isolating the reflection near the door. Zoomed again. There it was, a three-pointed medallion.

Rachel leaned in. “Mercedes.”

She turned back to me, relief and professionalism warring across her face. “You can bring in an extra set of eyes anytime you want to, Levi.”

“Back to Curtis,” Jacob said.

I tore my eyes away from Rachel and looked at him. “You’d think he’d get a cell phone.”

Jacob shrugged—like a boulder settling.

“We can run it down here, too,” Rachel said.

Jacob’s lip twitched upward. “Please do. Two sets of eyes.”

She pointed at him with a smile—bright, real—and then turned and left.

The room felt colder to me the moment she left.

Back in the Highlander, Jacob settled into his seat and turned toward me.

“You should ask her out.”

My heart skipped.

He was probably right. “What happened to the out-of-bounds area?” I asked.

Jacob chuckled. “Lord bless you, Levi. I was trying to help.”

I tried not to grin.

Failed.

“Well then,” I said, turning toward him, “you should ask Naomi out.”

His eyebrow rose. “I already did.”

“When?” I asked—relying once again on my infallible gift for asking obvious questions.

“When I prayed for direction,” he said, “the Lord supplied more than I asked.”

Of course He did.

“I am blessed.” He finished.

I rolled my eyes, still smiling. “That you are, dear brother.”