by Mary Stone
“Okay, first.” Rolling her green eyes, she raised a finger. “That’s rude, Agent Mulder. I don’t come into your bar and make fun of your favorite beer, do I?”
“Your favorite?” he echoed with a laugh. “It tastes like battery acid, darlin’.”
“You drink battery acid often? You know, for the sake of accurate comparison.” As she fixed him with an expectant look, the corner of her mouth turned up in a smile.
“I don’t, but with this around, I don’t know why I’d ever need to.” For the second time, he followed his complaint with another drink.
“Whatever, dude,” she chortled. “You might want to slow down on it, though. It’s nine-percent alcohol.”
“Damn, woman,” he said with a laugh. “Is that why it’s your favorite?”
“It might be.” With a shrug, she leaned against the counter at her back. “So, what brings you out to The Lift on a Thursday, Agent Mulder?”
“I have a name, you know.” He flashed her a matter-of-fact look as he sipped at the bitter IPA.
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“That I have a name? I mean, doesn’t everyone?” He grinned and held out a hand. “Noah Dalton, not Mulder.”
“You’re just lucky I’ve never really seen much of The X-Files, or I’d be asking you all kinds of weird shit about aliens and UFOs. I’m Autumn Trent. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Agent Dalton, not Mulder.”
Her amused smile faded as her palm brushed against his. The look only lasted for a split-second, but he didn’t miss the pang of melancholy.
“Are you…you sure you’re all right?” The volume of her voice was lowered, and she kept her emerald eyes on his as she returned her arm to her side. She spoke with the same concern, the same sincerity with which she had first addressed him.
If he had not been so sure her worry was real, he might have brushed off the question.
Before he could answer, she laughed and waved a dismissive hand. “I’m sorry, I’m being weird, aren’t I? It’s just, I’m a doctorate student studying clinical psychology. So, sometimes when I see someone who looks a little bummed out, I guess I trip all over myself trying to be helpful.”
Though the abrupt change threw him off-balance, he returned her smile. “There’re worse ways to be awkward, I’d imagine. Being awkwardly nice isn’t so bad.”
“Spoken like a person who’s never been awkward a day in their life. Awkward niceness comes across as being a creep most of the time.”
“Well, you don’t look like a creep,” he offered with a shrug.
She grinned. “Spoken like a creep.”
He laughed at her seamless sarcasm, and for the next forty-five minutes, he nursed the bitter IPA, chasing it with a glass of water. The weekday crowd had all but dispersed, and aside from the occasional patron who stopped by to pay their tab or order a refill, he and Autumn were the only two occupants of the bar.
As far as conversational partners went, he figured he couldn’t have done much better than Autumn Trent. She was quick with a joke and a smile, and she employed as much sarcasm in her dialogue as anyone he knew.
He was sure Winter would love her.
While he and Autumn exchanged stories about their respective hometowns, he could almost push the anxiety over Winter out of his head altogether.
He learned that Autumn—what the hell was with women and their seasonal names?—had been born and raised in Minnetonka, Minnesota and that she had moved to Virginia for graduate school. As a transplant from the Lone Star State, he could sympathize, though the change in climate had come as much less of a shock to him.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s mostly good.” A small smile played on her pretty face. “The beach is pretty close, and unlike the beaches in Minnesota, it’s, well, it’s a real beach. Not just one that’s responsible for ten feet of lake effect snow every winter. But I don’t know. I miss the cold sometimes.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that before.”
“It sounded a little weird when it came out of my mouth,” she agreed, and disappeared into an office at the other end of the shelves of liquor bottles, then shrugged into a light gray canvas jacket as she made her way out from behind the bar.
“Anyway, my aunt is here ‘til close if you need anything else. She’s not actually my aunt, but she’s my adopted mom’s best friend, so I call her my aunt. It’s been a long week, and since I don’t have class or anything tomorrow, I’m going to go home and sleep for sixteen hours straight.”
“I have no idea how anyone can do that.” With a quiet chuckle, he hopped down from the stool. “I sleep for more than nine hours, and I feel like a slug. You’re like a cat. Cats sleep for sixteen hours a day.”
“Cats have it made,” Autumn replied. “If reincarnation is real, I hope I come back as a pampered house cat. A dog would be okay too. My dog has a pretty cushy life. He just has to listen to me bitch about geeky stuff like statistical power and a slow internet connection.”
Noah laughed. “A slow internet connection can turn even a lady as nice as my grandma into the Incredible Hulk. And that woman is one of the nicest people I think I’ve ever met, ever, and that’s not just because she’s my grandma. She fosters kittens, and I don’t think you get a lot nicer than someone who fosters kittens.”
At the thought of Eileen Dalton and her penchant for rescuing and caring for stray animals, Noah wished he was back home. The only other time he had been so far away from his family was during two deployments to the Middle East. Until he moved to Virginia, he had always been able to count on a visit to his grandma to help him through the darker points in his life.
Aside from words of wisdom, she provided encouragement, no matter the life path he walked. He could quit his job at the FBI to become a full-time rodeo clown, and Grandma Eileen would still encourage him if she knew it made him happy.
“You all right?”
Autumn’s voice snapped him away from the reverie and back to the sparsely populated bar. Forcing the twinge of sadness off his face, he glanced at her and nodded.
“Sorry, that’s the third time I’ve asked you that.” Shouldering a black handbag, she offered a strained smile. “I should go before I start asking you to look at gray blobs and tell me what you see.”
“Do you need a ride home?”
He blurted out the question before he could think it through. Despite the hour of lighthearted banter, he was still a stranger to this pretty redhead. FBI agent or not, a man’s offer to drive a single woman home was only likely to be interpreted one way.
But was he so sure he didn’t mean it that way? The unmistakable sting of guilt clawed at his stomach as he mulled over the idea. Autumn Trent was funny and kind, and even in a worn band t-shirt, dark jeans, and motorcycle boots, her good looks were undeniable.
He and Winter were not in a relationship, he reminded himself. Not even close. They’d had one drunk kiss and one awkward sober kiss, and that was it.
And then, without a word, she had disappeared. Dropped off the face of the planet without so much as a text message to explain her absence.
Didn’t he have a right to be upset?
Hell, since he and Winter had become friends, this wouldn’t even be the first time he had dated or slept with another woman. Though his two-week fling with a server named Jessie felt like it had occurred in another lifetime. He was only a little over six months removed from the fleeting relationship.
He’d told Winter that Jessie had dumped him for the bartender at the restaurant where she worked, but the confession wasn’t entirely true. Jessie had broken up with him, but not just because she wanted to date her bartender friend. According to her, Noah’s interest was quite clearly in another woman. He’d seen no reason to deny the observation, so he had merely agreed to an amicable breakup.
“A ride?” Autumn echoed. The grin had vanished from her lips, and he wondered how long they had stood in silence. “I’m fine. I drove myself.”
> “You just told me that you like your new apartment because you can walk to work when it’s nice outside. The high today was seventy-five.”
He didn’t know why he chose to defend his choice, but like the question itself, the words left his mouth before he could think to stop them.
“I’m from Minnesota,” she started, her tone one step below haughty. “Maybe seventy-five is too warm.”
“I seriously doubt that.” He couldn’t seem to keep himself from talking. “Seventy-five is about perfect for anyone.”
“Dude, you’re being a creep.” The statement was as flat as a worn-out couch cushion.
“I am, aren’t I?” He sighed as he raised a hand to rub his eyes.
“Little bit, yeah.” She opened her stance and faced him head-on. “Tell you what. I’ll just shoot straight with you. I’m not interested in that, like, at all. This whole dynamic, the whole picking up someone at the bar, it’s not my thing. No offense if it’s yours, to each their own.”
Noah felt like an ass. “Shit. Sorry, I—”
She held up a finger. “It’s not you, I promise. This August, I’ll be defending my dissertation, and I’ve barely even started writing it. I’ve been too damn busy trying to get in all the practicum hours humanly possible, but now that those are almost over with, I’ve got to write a two-hundred-page research paper in the span of something like five months.”
Noah straightened. “Damn, that’s a lot of work.”
She nodded, seeming to relax a little. “It sounds doable, but when you factor in trying to help my aunt out here at the bar and squeezing in the rest of those practicum hours, it gets a little fucking stressful.”
He wanted to reach out and give her shoulder a friendly squeeze, but he kept his hands to his damn self. “I’m sure it is.”
Her face fell, and she pushed a hand through her hair. “Damn it, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ramble on about my life story, but there you go. I’m also about seven months removed from a really nasty breakup, so I’ll call that icing on the cake.”
He scratched his chin. “Damn, I’m the dumbass here, so why does it feel like you’re apologizing to me?”
“Honestly?” She fiddled with the silver zipper of her jacket as her green eyes darted back up to meet his. “I’ve had guys say some pretty nasty shit to me after I turned them down. Anymore, I just try to cover all my bases and get ahead of it, so none of them decide to follow me home. Which has happened before.”
“Wow.” He cleared his throat. “Now, I definitely want to give you a ride home, but more as a form of hazard pay, you know? Police escort back to your place so no creeps follow you.”
With a laugh that sounded more like a snort, she shook her head. “I go to Krav Maga lessons twice a week. I’ll be all right.”
“Okay, well, I’ll be honest now.” Though he made an effort to give her a matter-of-fact smile, he was sure the look came across as more wistful than sarcastic. “I don’t know why I said that. That was stupid, and I’m sorry. I’m not fit to deal with any of that shit right now, either. It’s just, it feels like I’m a million miles away from home, and my best friend, she’s going through some shit that I don’t even know about. I don’t know about it because she dropped off the face of the planet, and now I’ve got no idea what the hell is going on. All I know is that I can’t fix it, and I think I’m losing my mind a little.”
Her expression softened, and he could almost hear the tension leave her body.
“A compromise, then,” she said as she stuck out her hand. “Because I could seriously use a friend that isn’t another Ph.D. student working on their own dissertation. Plus, you’re Shelby and Bree’s friend, so you’ve already got that going for you.”
Noah placed a hand over his heart. “Your trust brings me honor.”
Autumn rolled her eyes, but the smile got a little bit bigger. “I’ll accept that ride home, but I’m going to ask for one favor. There’s this Mexican place a few blocks away that’s open twenty-four hours a day, Alonso’s, and they’ve got a drive-thru. If you could swing through there so I can buy myself some food, I’ll even throw in a burrito.”
As Noah accepted her handshake, he nodded and grinned. “I could go for a chimichanga.”
“Chimichanga eating contest, then,” she proclaimed, raising her arm for a high-five.
“Winner pays the bill?”
She snorted. “Oh, hell no. I’m a graduate student, dude. I don’t have bottomless chimichanga money.”
4
The scent of wet asphalt followed Winter as she pushed open a set of tinted glass double doors to make her way into the building. A recent storm had left the summer air heavy and damp, and even now, a new mass of leaden clouds pushed in to obscure the morning sunlight. She was almost half an hour early, but apparently, she wasn’t the only agent in Violent Crimes who’d thought to get a head start on their day.
Fortunately, the only greeting Sun Ming offered was a half-smile and a slight nod. As Winter returned the gesture, she found for the first time that she was glad for Sun’s standoffish persona.
With Sun, she didn’t have to worry about a barrage of questions regarding her whereabouts over the last few months, or an interrogation into the reason she’d taken more than two weeks to come to the office after she received Noah’s phone call.
Sun wanted to have the conversation as much as Winter did, and this morning, that suited Winter just fine.
After she retrieved a bottle of water and a steaming mug of coffee that could double as paint thinner, Winter slunk out of the break area and to her cubicle. Her movements were hurried, and she figured she looked more like a jewel thief than an agent on her first day back at work.
Instead of laser alarm systems and security cameras, Winter sought to avoid friends.
She knew she couldn’t avoid them forever, but she told herself she at least needed a little time to settle in, to let the caffeine work its way through her system. With a tentative sip from the mug of battery acid, she logged in to the computer to sift through the emails she had missed during her absence.
Though she clicked and scrolled like a person who was paying attention to the screen, her thoughts wandered. To the best of her knowledge, the only person in the entire building who knew the reason for her sudden departure was her boss, Max Osbourne.
Max had been thoroughly unimpressed by her involvement in the Douglas Kilroy investigation, but the mass shooting a few hours outside McCook had created more than enough work to divert his attention. Aside from a pointed, “What the hell were you thinking,” he had brushed past the topic altogether. Even if the SAC had been angry with her, she knew he wouldn’t betray the trust of any of the agents under his command.
The day after Noah’s phone call, she and her grandmother had taken Grampa Jack to the hospital after he experienced a spike in lower back pain. Though neither Winter nor Beth would admit it, they were prepared for the worst.
For hours, they sat in the waiting room beneath a blanket of silence.
When the doctor had pushed her way through the double doors beside the reception desk, Winter and Gramma Beth had leapt to their feet. The woman’s smile had warmed at the anxious movement, and the kind expression was one Winter was sure she would never forget.
After a series of tests, the doctor determined that Grampa Jack was in the midst of a flare-up brought on by an autoimmune disorder. Though lupus was more common in women than men, the doctor had established that it was the cause of Jack’s chronic pain. The condition didn’t have a cure, but treatment with corticosteroids and anti-inflammatory medication could manage flare-ups.
Due in part to Jack’s age, the doctor recommended he stay in the hospital for a couple days to ensure his kidneys hadn’t suffered permanent damage. A week and a half later, when Winter was satisfied that there was no secondary disease beneath the lupus, she’d finally felt comfortable enough to head to Richmond.
The explanation she had given Gramma Beth about the reques
t for her return to the office was vague. She didn’t want to elevate Beth’s hope just to return a week later to advise they had hit a dead end. Hell, she didn’t even want to raise her own hopes.
As she took another sip from her half-emptied mug, Winter grimaced. Her sleep the night before had been fretful, and she reminded herself that she needed the caffeine boost.
“Agent Black,” a gravelly voice called.
Wordlessly, she turned in her chair to face the SAC of Violent Crimes. Max Osbourne’s gray buzz cut and his scrutinizing gaze were just the same as when she left.
“Sir,” she greeted, her voice quiet but filled with purpose.
His features didn’t change. “Conference room in ten minutes.”
Winter nodded. As her boss disappeared around the corner, she returned her vacant stare to the computer monitor. She could hear her pulse as it rushed in her ears, and she didn’t think the mug of gasoline was responsible for the churning weight in her stomach.
With a resigned sigh, she planted both palms on the desk and pushed herself out of the chair. She thought she could handle an awkward reunion with her coworkers and friends or a meeting about her brother’s whereabouts, but she wasn’t so sure she was ready to deal with both in one sitting.
By the time she stepped through the doorway to the small room, she was ready to turn around, throw up, or both.
White light glinted off Noah’s eyes as he looked up from the laptop. Shadows moved along his scruffy face as he clenched his jaw and snapped his attention back to the screen.
“Long time no see,” he muttered. “Glad you could make it.”
At the flat sarcasm, she felt the first pinpricks of adrenaline on the back of her neck.
She deserved the sardonic greeting, but the tone still took her aback. Rather than offer a rebuttal, Winter was silent as she dropped down to sit beside Bree Stafford. Though Bree’s smile was warm, the comforting look did little to ease the sting of Noah’s offhand remark.
A flicker of movement in the doorway drew both Bree and Winter’s attention, but as soon as she looked up at the tall figure, she wished she hadn’t.