Reyland yawned. Movie night had been his nine-year-old son Jason’s idea. The kids were all off from school the next day because of some teachers’ conference, so they’d all come down with popcorn and Mike and Ikes and blankets. They’d decided after several votes on the vintage Disney classic Freaky Friday, and then after the kids fell asleep, his wife had put on Gone with the Wind.

That had done it for him. He hadn’t lasted through the opening credits.

“Okay, you lazybones,” Reyland called out, clicking off the projector with the remote.

No one moved. His littlest, Sadie, was closest, and she squealed as he tickled her awake at her bare foot with his toenail.

“Mom, make him stop,” she said as everyone finally got up.

At first, he had thought that the theater room the previous owners had done up with red curtains and even a little ticket stand in the hall was the corniest crap he had ever laid eyes on. But even he couldn’t deny how much he actually loved it. The sound system especially. He’d never go to a real movie theater again.

As Jason, Tyler and Sadie zombie-stumbled off to bed, he helped his wife, Danielle, collect the popcorn bowls. He smiled, checking out his wife from behind as they came up the stairs. She’d just turned forty, but she worked out like crazy, and she still had a great rack and an ass you could bounce a quarter off.

She was still the hot LSU cheerleader he’d picked up at the Orlando Hard Rock Cafe after the Citrus Bowl back in the roaring nineties. Or at least mostly. He remembered Christmas in St. Barts two years before when they had left the kids in the hotel and gone sailing. How would he ever forget? Shirtless and tipsy, she had climbed to the bow and done a mermaid impression for him in just her Santa-red thong.

He frowned as he thought about work, Dunning, the missing navy girl.

Why? Reyland thought. Couldn’t life just always be champagne and sailboats and Santa-red thongs?

“Bring up some bottled water, okay?” his wife called by the back stairs as he clicked off the basement lights.

“Yes, dear,” he mumbled into the dark.

He was closing the Sub-Zero when he saw Emerson’s three missed calls on his phone on the charging pad on the other side of the kitchen island.

“Tell me the good news,” Reyland said as he stood at his back door, looking out into the dark yard.

“Everett’s in New York.”

Reyland’s face instantly brightened.

“New York? In custody?”

“No. You’re not going to believe this, boss. It’s not good. She’s met up with that internet jackass Wheldon.”

“Who?”

“You know. Eric Wheldon. He leaked the Oliveras thing about four months ago. He was the reason the Post finally picked it up.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Reyland said, knocking at the French door glass with his Notre Dame school ring. “Tell me we have eyes on them right this second.”