Operation Power Play by Justine Davis Page B

now rose up on his hind legs and batted at something with a front paw. She realized it was a handicapped entry trigger when the door started to slowly swing open. She found herself grinning.
    “Quinn’s idea,” Rafe said.
    “How long did it take to teach him to use it?” she asked.
    “About seven seconds,” Rafe said. “He showed him once. That’s all it took.”
    “Wow.” Cutter had vanished inside before the door finished opening.
    Next on the list of things she hadn’t expected was the warm, homey effect of the downstairs room of the utilitarian-looking building. There was a gas fireplace with a comfortable-looking leather couch and a couple of chairs arranged in front of it. A large colorful area rug marked off the seating area. She noticed a couple of books and a coffee mug on the low table. A knitted throw was tangled around a pillow at one end of the sofa, as if someone had been sleeping there. Restlessly.
    Cutter never even slowed but headed up the stairs at the back of the room.
    “I guess we’re using the meeting room,” Rafe said drily. He glanced at Brett. “I assume this is a business visit?”
    “Yes,” he answered as they went up the stairs. “I’m in about as far as I can go unofficially.”
    Rafe nodded. “That’s why we’re here.”
    Sloan hadn’t thought about that, that Brett might get into trouble poking around on her behalf. It must be strange to not even be able to ask simple questions if people knew who you were, because even questions about a silly bit of paperwork could be construed as having the weight of the badge behind them.
    They sat at a table next to a set of large windows that looked out over the clearing behind the building. On the other side of the clearing the ubiquitous evergreen trees were thick, broken only by a couple of red-barked madrones and a huge maple.
    “Go,” Rafe said without preamble.
    “It may not all be connected,” Brett warned. “You want it by issue or chronological?”
    “Chronological. The way you came across it all. How’d it start?”
    “Sloan’s aunt applied to divide their twelve acres so they could sell their current home to finance building a new one more suited to her husband’s medical situation on the separate parcel.”
    He went on as Sloan listened. She let him tell it—he knew this man and she didn’t. Rafe stayed silent, listening intently, until Brett finished. Then he leaned back in his chair, tapping his right index finger on the table. Trigger finger, Sloan thought suddenly, remembering Brett had said the man had been a top-ranked Marine Corps sniper.
    “Let me make sure I got all this,” Rafe said. “First they say the application was denied because of a freeze due to a pending zoning study. But nobody seems to know anything about this study. Then they say there’s no record of the application at all. But your guy finds it buried in some obscure place. Then he gets fired and disappears without a word to anyone, not even his only family, his daughter. Then the replacement application is denied for a totally different reason, a supposed wetland that was in fact caused by a leak in a water pipe that may have been intentional, below a housing development that wanted to buy that same land in the first place. And sitting on top of the whole thing is the fact that your missing friend’s boss is in tight with a guy who’s in the pocket of the governor. Is that about right?”
    It all sounded much worse laid out that way, Sloan thought. When he talked about his friend, her shoulders had begun to knot. And now her stomach was churning with an echo of the feeling she’d had when she’d heard the official version of what had happened to Jason. A version she knew was a complete lie.
    “Most I’ve ever heard you say at one time,” Brett said to the other man.
    Rafe grimaced; clearly he either wasn’t used to talking that much at once or didn’t like it. “On the other side, we don’t know if your absent friend’s