His reply came almost instantly. Look up. I tilted my head back and scrutinized the branches spreading above me. A flash of movement caught my eye, a blur of black and green about twenty feet up.
I moved closer to the trunk and craned my neck. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Trey was sitting in the crook of a thick, almost horizontal branch, legs stretched out, booted feet crossed at the ankle. He had his hands folded on his stomach, his back against the trunk.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Surveillance.”
“How’d you get up there?”
“I climbed.”
He played a flashlight beam around the base of the tree, where a tidy metal ladder ascended into the branches. It was sturdily mounted, designed to blend in with the bark. I grabbed a rung and hoisted myself into the dense canopy of leaves. When I reached the top, Trey extended a hand and steadied me onto the seat, a small rectangle painted the same dark green and gray pattern as his pants. It was built for two as long as the two didn’t mind close company.
I eased myself down. “SWAT equipment?”
“Deer-hunting. Price let me borrow it.”
I balanced my feet on the footrest. Trey handed me a bottle of water, readjusted himself. We were shoulder to shoulder, perched like strange birds while the traffic rushed beneath us.
“Marisa can’t get you from behind your desk no matter how hard she tries, and yet here you are, literally up a tree.” I unscrewed the water bottle and took a swig. “Speaking of. She’s seriously pissed at you.”
“I suspected as much based on the messages she left. Did you speak with her?”
“Briefly. Where were you this afternoon?”
“At the camera store.”
He pointed to a case bungee-corded next to him. I saw a camera there, shiny new, with a long-distance lens already screwed in place. The binoculars around his neck were also new.
“Did you get the matter of the turquoise cactus taken care of?” I said.
“I extended my offer. We’ll know tomorrow if it was accepted.”
Once my eyes adjusted, I could see right into Nick Talbot’s former backyard. Dark now, no outdoor lights except for the pool, just as it had been the night of the shooting. In the ice-white guest house, one room burned brightly, and though the shades were pulled, I could see a figure moving about inside.
“Who’s that?”
“Quint. He appears to be residing in the guest house.”
“Oh, really? Alone?”
“Presently, yes.”
He raised the binoculars, trained them on the house. He’d told me once that the thing he enjoyed most about being a sniper was the recon. Peering through the scope of a Bergara BCR20 rifle, gathering intel, relaying his discoveries to the rest of the team.
“So there’s marital unrest in the Talbot household,” I said. “Is that why you’re spying on him?”
“Not spying. Surveilling. And yes, it is. Finn’s currently surveilling Portia.” He handed me his phone without removing his eyes from the binoculars. “With interesting results.”
I swiped through a series of photos featuring Portia in the darkened corner of some restaurant, her features illuminated by candlelight. A man sat opposite her—broad shoulders, iron-gray hair, square-rimmed glasses. In one frame, their heads were bent close. In another, Portia glanced furtively over her shoulder.
“Ah. Portia’s having an affair.”
“That’s one theory. Finn has yet to verify it, nor has she identified the man in the photo.”
Everything was theory with Trey. It would take photos of Portia and her dining companion naked and rolling around in satin sheets to make adultery a fact. But the two did look illicitly cozy.
I returned the phone to Trey’s pocket. It felt good off the ground, the air filtered by shadows and leaves. The humidity could still choke a horse, but at least the breeze didn’t smell like baked sidewalk.
“Is this legal?” I said.
“What, covert surveillance? Of course.”
“Even up a tree in Chastain Park, which is city-owned, and as such, has a million restrictions about what people can and cannot do?”
“I have a permit.”
He pointed to a card clipped to his sleeve. The same special permit that allowed him to hide in trees at Doll’s Head Trail. I had to admit, he’d dotted his I’s and crossed his T’s. That part was classic Trey. But the rest of this…
I nodded down below. “Does Quint know you’re out here being covert?”
“He knows we’re investigating.”
“So that’s a no.”
He shot me a pointed look. “It’s called covert surveillance for a reason.”
The leaves caught the edge of the first evening breeze, rising on thermals. Night birds flitted in the foliage, darting, otherwise silent. No squirrels, thank goodness.
I stretched my legs alongside Trey’s. “You’re using cop words, but you’re behaving like a criminal.”
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are. All last weekend, you played bad guy while the trainees played good guy. And now here you are up a tree spying on people.”
“Surveilling.”
“Uh huh. How many trees did you ever climb as a cop?”
He kept the binoculars up. “I worked as an urban countersniper. Treetop hide sites were not appropriate for that work.”
“So zero?”
He ignored me. I knew that Trey could alter his personality, his very brain waves, by changing his clothes. In an Armani suit behind a desk, he was polite and businesslike. In workout clothes on the mat, he was disciplined and relentless. And up a tree, in special ops camo, he was a SWAT guy again. Sort of.
I drank some more of the lukewarm water. “So what exactly does Quint’s marital trouble have to do with Nick Talbot’s assassination attempt? Or Jessica Talbot’s murder?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you think they’re connected?”
“I think we cannot afford to ignore any avenues of investigation.”
“We being you and Finn?”
“We being you and I.” He lowered the binoculars and handed them to me. “Finn is directing the investigation, but we’re the team.” He picked up the camera. “Also, I suspect I’ve missed something. Something I should be seeing, would be seeing if I could configure the evidence correctly.”
“About Quint?”
“About the shooting. And Quint. And Nick. And the house. I—”
He aimed the camera down below,
