by Gemma Snow
“I’m not laughing,” Quinn said, hovering over her on the couch like the sexiest predator she’d ever seen. After a moment, though, he settled against her, fatigue outlining his handsome features. It was absurd they were even still awake right now. Still, her flight had landed just as she told her mother, nearly three in the morning. Quinn had been there waiting for her, after a week of them playing phone tag and sneaking in and out of the apartment while the other was dead asleep. They’d barely made it through the front door without ripping each other’s clothes off and now it was morning—not that morning counted for a whole hell of a lot in their line of work—and all three of them had a plane to catch in just a few hours.
“Quinn…” This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation and it wouldn’t be the last.
“I know, I know, it’s not ’cause I’m a black guy from the city.” His humor was hollow and tired, but tinged with amusement.
“You’re from Cleveland,” she pointed out. “And it’s not.” Just as it wasn’t the first time they’d trodden this well-worn territory. “It’s only because you’re not Portuguese. She wouldn’t like me dating Lucas, either. Hell, she wouldn’t even be okay with Patrick.”
Lucas Vallejo would have given her mother kittens, but Ev’s very white, very Western European boss Patrick Wickham wouldn’t have passed the test, either. Ev was the only one of her mamã’s children to not bring home a Portuguese man, excepting her brother, who brought home different women with alarming regularity, and dear old Mamã was persistent in her task to single-handedly populate the Ironbound with the next generation.
She rolled her eyes. Her mother’s antiquated ideals were still a solid presence in Ev’s life, despite her being an Ivy League graduate with a top job in the FBI and approaching the birthday that would put her decidedly on the other side of her mid-thirties. “Mamã, she’s old-school. Still hasn’t forgiven me for moving to DC.”
Quinn knew the spiel. In the months since they’d first moved their friendship into something more, they’d circled this conversation a dozen times, but it never made it any easier. Quinn’s race, Lucas’ race, Ev’s sex—it had brought them closer together during those months at Quantico, surrounded by the pretty-boy country Captain Americas and the New England Ivy graduates who could have passed for their ancestors from two hundred years earlier. Being of any race other than white, or any gender other than male, put one at a disadvantage—a disadvantage that had led to one of the strongest bonds of friendship Ev had ever known.
“I know, baby,” he said. He planted a kiss on her forehead and stood from the couch, moving toward the kitchenette with a slowness that betrayed his exhaustion. The city had been on high alert for terrorist activity after a series of phone calls, and Quinn, Special Agent for a Counterterrorism Fly Team under Lydia Brandenwell, who reported direct to the Secretary of Defense, had been busy in a way most civilians would never understand.
But she knew, simply by watching the slight limp in his left leg, an injury from an IED blast eight years earlier that tired more easily when he was fatigued, and the way his shoulders folded just a little. The only signs that Quinn Langston was running on empty.
“When did we buy this milk?” He pulled a suspect-looking half-carton from the fridge and held it up for her inspection. Ev grimaced and stood.
“I think the answer is too long ago. There’s evaporated in the cabinet.” Which was why she was still living in this apartment, had been even before she and Quinn had given in to their long-standing desires a few months ago. Between the three of them, Lucas, Quinn and Ev used the apartment about as often as one person did. Case in point, on closer inspection the milk was definitely chunky.
“We’ll get something at the airport,” Quinn said, tossing the whole thing into the trash without dumping it down the sink. Good, way too early in the morning for chunky milk.
“We should probably head out soon. TSA and all.” Ha. She hadn’t been on a commercial airline in years. Then again, she hadn’t been on vacation in years. Still, when it was her boss and former trainer at Quantico, not to speak of one of her best friends, getting married, she flew her ass to Montana whether she was dead on her feet or not.
“Using you as a pillow,” she said. “I don’t remember when I actually slept last.” Which is probably for the better, since when I do sleep, I keep dreaming of…
He nudged her out of the reverie and she leaned up to kiss his cheek, just as he went in for the kill, grabbing her around the waist and lifting her up with deadly aimed tickling fingers. Yeah, she was exhausted, sleep-deprived and headed for a flight into the middle of nowhere, trying to take down bad guys who kept coming back bigger and badder than before. But things were okay—they were better than okay. With Quinn Langston by her side, Ev had everything she needed to live a damn happy life.
Almost.
Chapter Two
Lucas brushed the loose, messy curls from his face and forced a smile. Ha, that wouldn’t even fly with Carly—or was she Kayla?—and she’s only seen your face in the dark. Which meant his two best friends in the world, the ones who had seen him through the worst of the worst in his life, would take one glance and force him into the therapy chair.
Coffee. He needed coffee. But he’d pulled himself free from possibly-called-Chloe’s arms and stumbled into the bathroom to take a leak, only to catch sight of way more than he needed to see on his living room couch. For all intents and purposes, they should have left him at least one-third of the sofa that didn’t have ass prints on it.
But he’d caught them having sex in public places before, and it wasn’t like his own nocturnal activities were quiet as a convent. No, he could handle the sex. It was the scenes like the one going on in the kitchen right now that turned his grimace into a full-fledged frown.
Domestic bliss. Who would have ever thought the Bureau’s Playboy of the Year would be jealous of domestic fricken bliss?
But you are.
And for that reason alone, he was considering going back into the bedroom where the beautiful blonde woman he’d picked up at the chief of police’s birthday party was fast asleep, back to some sort of cowardly escape from the truth he’d been circulating around for the last six freaking months. Yeah, back to pretending none of this sucked and that he didn’t have an easy way out sitting in his email inbox, waiting for a reply.
“Lucas, are you up?” Ev called him from the kitchen. Shit, no hiding now. Coward. Goddamn coward. He faced real, honest, dangerous situations every fucking day, faced down the worst of the city’s underground crime syndicates and operations, looked over crime scenes with more regularity than a late-night police procedural on CBS, and he was fucking afraid to go into the kitchen in his own apartment. Get it together, Vallejo.
“I’m up, I’m up.” He splashed water on his face, gave up on the smile and did a half-stumble down the hall from the bathroom into the kitchenette. They’d shared this apartment for almost three years, and though they hadn’t managed to rearrange the furniture it had come with and were barely capable of keeping the refrigerator stocked, they’d gotten a handful of their early photographs together printed and framed—nothing fancy, but important memories nonetheless, memories that assaulted Lucas now.
The day they’d all finished training. Dio, we were just freaking kids. The day Ev had joined the BAU. The day Lucas had gotten his first bullet wound, smiling like an asshole in the hospital. The day Quinn had solved his first case—bioterrorism—and when they’d gotten rip-roaring drunk in celebration, he’d refused to let any of them eat anything because he was convinced it was poisoned.
For years, they had lived in these snapshots, friends. Best friends.
I don’t know if I can anymore.
Ev thrust a large cup of coffee into his hands. “We’re out of milk,” she said without preamble. “Thought we could grab more fuel on the way to the airport.”
“Airport?”
“Jesus, Lucas, don’t tell me you forgot?” Behi
nd her, Quinn snorted and Lucas only raised half a lip in a lame attempt at a growl.
“Forgot what? Evvie, I just worked eighty hours in four days. Use small words.”
“Boss. Wedding. Montana.” She paused, widening her eyes with each word and distracting Lucas too much for them to sink in. Or maybe it was just the set of her still-swollen lips, the way her long dark hair, usually tied up tight, looked messy and unkempt and sexy as hell, the way her skin glowed golden. Until. Until…
“Oh shit, that’s today?”
“Yeah, hoss, that’s today,” Quinn said, turning away from the cabinet with the treasure he’d clearly been searching for, an unopened box of protein bars. Jesus, weren’t they a pretty fucking picture? Capable of saving the world but, between the three of them, not capable of staying fed.
You’d probably starve to death on your own. And yet, he still hadn’t turned down the fucking email from the Los Angeles Bureau… Because you can’t stand to see this every fucking day. Coward.
Seemed to be the theme of the morning.
“How fast can you get packed?” Ev asked him, clearly unaware of the deep battle raging inside him. “I called a car for eight-thirty.” She glanced at her watch then back at him. “How fast can you be packed and showered? Jesus, you smell like a dive bar.”
This time he did manage a growl, which made her smile. God, she had a fucking smile. Ev played the part well, stiff, tight, buttoned to the chin. It was how she did her job day in and day out. But he knew the woman beneath the hard outer shell, knew her humor and kindness and the passion that drove her to do one real son-of-a-bitch job. Not that he and Quinn didn’t have son-of-a-bitch jobs. They did, but getting inside the mind of serial killers and serial rapists? Give him good old-fashioned gang violence any day.
Before he could respond to her, though, there was a shuffle down the hallway and Carla or Cleo or whomever steadied herself against the wall to yank a heel on, before striding toward them.
She bristled a little when she passed the three of them, squared her shoulders and smiled at Lucas with her best bravada. It was good. He’d seen enough to know.
“Thanks for a fun night, Logan,” she said, then pulled her bag over her shoulder and strode to the door, like she wasn’t wearing a cocktail gown and those four-inch fuck-me heels at seven in the morning.
“It’s actually…”
But the door slammed shut and he just sighed into the bathtub of coffee in his hands.
“How?”
“When?”
When he looked up, Quinn and Ev were both staring at him with raised eyebrows. They didn’t look anything alike, not in skin tone or facial features, but their faces were so similar and humorous that if he had managed to get any of the scalding coffee into his mouth, he would have done a spit-take worthy of any late-night sitcom.
“I went to the party with the team last night,” he said, purposefully turning away from both knowing expressions. Not like they hadn’t been privy to his long and varied string of lovers over the years, but now that he could pinpoint the reason why he’d been bringing home passionate, intelligent, forgettable women on the nights he actually left the office, Lucas didn’t feel all too inclined to talk about it.
“Jesus, when did you get home?” Quinn asked.
“Early enough for a quick romp,” Lucas replied. “At least we made it to the bed.” He shot Ev one of those salacious winks that anyone who knew him less would have mistaken for the real thing. Instead, she simply put her hands on his shoulders to turn him around and gave a light shove.
“Pack, shower, now,” she ordered. “Don’t come out until you’re done.”
Lucas scowled, but did as he was told, marching his sorry ass back down the hallway and toward the bathroom, wondering how in the hell he could have forgotten they were headed to Montana for Sam’s wedding. Gee, maybe it’s the working yourself to the bone so you’re too tired to face the truth stunt you’re pulling? Nah, can’t be.
One problem at a time. For now, the most pressing was that he didn’t have a clue when he had last done his laundry.
* * * *
From above, Montana looked like…trees. The few times he’d flown home to see his mom and sisters in Cleveland, Quinn had watched the puzzle pieces of farmland turn to suburbs, then urban sprawl and finally city proper and he’d wondered how anyone in their right mind could stand to live so far from civilization. Sure, it took him half a fucking day to get anywhere in the city when the president’s motorcade was out, but still. DC, like Cleveland, was full of the hustle and bustle of life he would never grow tired of.
Especially since he knew how quiet the world could be at night.
He glanced out of the window again and absently stroked Ev’s hair. She rarely wore her hair down, usually securing it in one of those schoolmarm buns that made her soft features look sharp and severe. He got it, of course he did. They all had their shields, external and internal, to get them through the jobs they did every day.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy playing with her loose dark curls while she slept on his shoulder. Her head was bent at one hell of an angle, but she’d been gone for over a week on a case involving a string of serial murders in upstate New York, and he figured she hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since she had left. She wasn’t going to get it now. They were nearly in Helena, from where they’d rent a car and drive the couple of hours to Wolf Creek, a town no one had ever heard of, to spend a few nights enjoying the undoubtedly rowdy nuptials of two of their former trainers-turned-friends.
Good. Let someone else deal with the terrorists and the serial killers and the gang wars for a few days. The three of them hadn’t really been away from work since the first days they’d started, and if that didn’t make him feel tired down to his bones, nothing would.
Still, Quinn knew tired. And now, at least, he didn’t sleep enough because he worked too hard, not because he spent his nights staring up at the ceiling, eyes dry and unblinking, memories plaguing him every time he closed them.
Yeah, he knew exactly how quiet the world could be at night, when the winds settled sand dunes and the rapid fire of machine guns disappeared to another village, another town, another impending tragic vignette. Sometimes, he didn’t know if the wars he fought from his office at the FBI headquarters were easier or harder than all those nights he’d spent in the trenches, wondering if maybe the world was so quiet because his damned soul was resting for all eternity.
Ev’s soft breathing dragged him from the thought in an instant, as it had done so many times in the past. With her holding him through the night, the nightmares of memories had lessened, stilling, giving him respite. She had brought him back from a place he’d sometimes worried he’d never return from.
And for that reason, and so many more, he loved her fiercely. It was the kind of intense emotion that scared the daylights out of him, made him wonder when and where he’d gone so off the path he’d expected of himself. He’d never planned to marry. Most special agents, in any division, were married to the job. Ev, more than he or Lucas, was out of town a lot, but with his hours and hers, they saw each other only a few times a week, if they were lucky. Still, dating someone who knew the FBI life was a sight easier than trying to date someone who didn’t get it. He knew that from first-hand experience and the string of short-term lovers who didn’t understand why they couldn’t grab him for a cup of coffee during the day or plan a date a whole week in advance.
Ev got that. She got a hell of a lot more too.
And yet, though it was her job to do the psychoanalysis, he hadn’t been able to shake the sensation that something was bothering her. It wasn’t the job. He knew full well what that kind of wear and tear looked like on her face. But where he’d always been able to read her, for the first time since knowing her, Quinn felt as though something was missing. Or rather, he was missing something.
And, Jesus, if that didn’t carve a hole in his chest made of fear more potent than anything caused
by a goddamn terrorist threat.
He’d do anything for this wild woman, draped across his lap now. Anything. But though he spent his days at the helm of a special team of trained operatives, and though his life ran in strict, regular, perfect organization, the lack of control he felt now absolutely stemmed from the fact that he didn’t know what that anything was.
The captain announced their descent and Quinn shifted, running his hands through Ev’s hair to wake her without too much fuss. She came awake slow at first, then in an instant. Old habits died hard.
“Just headed to Montana,” he said, his voice low and calm. Lord only knew how many times he’d woken like that, wondering how in the hell he’d gotten somewhere and how long he’d been asleep for. Side effect of the job.
She nuzzled in closer and it made his heart just a little tighter in his chest. This cutesy thing, this lovey-dovey PDA on an airplane thing—he’d never thought he’d be caught dead doing anything like it. Sure, he’d grown up with love. His parents had loved each other up until the day his dad’s illness had taken over, when Quinn had been fourteen. And his mama still loved his dad to this very day. And both his sisters, pains in the ass though they had been growing up, were so, so important to him. But what he felt for Ev was a whole new ball game.
“Can you drive?” she murmured, finally sitting up and rubbing her eyes. They were a little red and puffy from the dry air and he fished a small bottle of drops from his pocket and handed it to her.
“Thank God. My contacts feel like sandpaper,” she said, giving him a smile that made him hot and bothered in both the chest and the groin.
“Nerd.” He shot her a wink. “And yeah, I can drive. I was able to sleep before you got in last night.” Not that he ever slept as well without her.
“You guys are boring.” Lucas popped his head up over the seat behind them and they both turned to face him. Lucas looked young. Really young. He was a few years below both Quinn and Ev, but not that many. Still, mussed hair, long enough to reach his shoulders now, two-day-old stubble and a wicked light in his dark-brown eyes made Lucas Vallejo look about twenty-five, on the high end. No matter, even if he did look and sometimes act like the arrogant playboy he’d been when they first met, Lucas was by far one of the best agents in the Gangs and Violent Crimes task force he ran, if not in the whole damn city. He, like Ev—even, Quinn had to suppose, like himself—used his outer shell, his pretty-boy looks and easy-going demeanor to get as far as he had all these years. Hell, they’d all had to sculpt their masks.