I scoffed. “Absolutely. Hey, Jack, I have a question.”
“What?”
“I was meaning to ask, what happened to your brother and his partner? I haven’t seen either of them here in months. I miss taking money off the nice ATF agents.”
He grunted. “Elliot’s partner moved to this little asscrack of a town in Kentucky with his boyfriend and—”
“What?” I blurted in surprise.
“What?” he parroted.
“That guy I met, Pete… he’s gay?” Holy crap, maybe the girls were right to give me shit about being oblivious. All I’d seen when I met agent Peter Lomax and his partner, Jack Dorsey’s little brother Elliot, was two very alpha guys. They both came off as swaggering douchebags in the nicest way possible. It had been obvious that Jack had a good relationship with his brother, and by extension, Pete. But I had no idea Pete was gay; he hadn’t pinged my gaydar even once.
“I thought all you gay guys knew each other,” he said seriously.
“You did not just say that,” Sharpe remarked dryly.
“What?”
“Finish your damn story,” Ching directed.
“Well, whatever. He’s gay, and so he moved to be with his partner, and so two months later when another opening came up in Louisville, my brother and his wife moved there too.”
“No shit.” Kohn sounded surprised too.
“Yeah, I mean, I thought for sure his wife Felicia would be upset about it, but her family ain’t here, they’re in Cincinnati. So it’s actually closer for her to see her side.”
“That sucks that your brother’s not here anymore.” I said sympathetically.
“Yeah, but he’ll visit in the summer, and me and Sandi are going for like a week around Labor Day,” Dorsey said, and he sounded okay with it. “And then he’s coming home for Thanksgiving. So it won’t be like it was, but it’s okay. I mean, I get it, right? I love my family but I spend more time with Ryan than I do with my wife.”
Sharpe nodded. “Yeah, I mean, if your partner moves, you’re supposed to do… what? Just get a new one? How would that work?”
I looked around the room. I couldn’t imagine Ryan without Dorsey, Ching without Becker, Kowalski without Kohn, or Sharpe without White. Or me without Ian. It was weird to even contemplate. And when one of us was away—or two as it was now, with Ian gone and White still off work—we all swapped around. Even though every single one of us would take a bullet for any of the others, your partner was the one who always had your back, who rode to the hospital in the ambulance if, heaven forbid, something happened, and he was the guy who always thought how much better whatever it was would be if you were there.
At least that was how it worked for me.
“What the fuck is this?” Ryan complained loudly from the kitchen.
Glancing over at him, I saw him holding up a thinly sliced piece of meat.
“It’s prosciutto,” Kohn called over.
“What is that?”
“It’s like fancy super-thin sliced salty ham,” Kohn continued.
“Why does it have a whole other name?”
Kohn huffed. “Why are you asking me? I’m Jewish; I don’t even eat that crap.”
“Just eat it,” Kowalski ordered Ryan.
Ryan growled, and I would have said something, but Dorsey joined him in the kitchen to try it.
“It’s good whatever the fuck it is,” Ryan said, shrugging.
“I want a sandwich,” I announced.
“Well, get the fuck up and make it,” Ching instructed.
I snorted out a laugh, folded my 2 and 7 off suit, and got up.
“Oh, oh!” Becker said, his phone in one hand. “It looks like boss man says that I ain’t makin’ the trip to Tennessee.”
“Then who’s going with me?” I asked, glancing back to the poker table.
Everyone checked their phones and no one else had a text.
“Oh man,” Ching groaned. “Tell me we don’t have a newb.”
Kohn cackled. “I bet we’ve got help since White and Doyle are both still out.”
“Yeah, but White should be back next week, and Doyle’ll be back… when?” Becker asked, glancing toward me.
“Monday.”
“Yeah, see?” he said, looking at the others. “There’s no room at the inn. We got everyone we need.”
“Don’t be an elitist pig,” Ryan warned. “If the team never grew beyond the first guys, it would still only be me, White, Sharpe, Dorsey, and Kowalski. You wouldn’t even be here. Change can be good.”
We all threw food at him.
“Assholes!”
It was good to laugh with all of them, but really. Babysitting for a twelve-hour drive was not my idea of fun. I’d rather go alone.
SINCE I was flying, I had been smart and stopped drinking right after midnight, chugged water, and took Tylenol before I went to bed. So when 6:30 a.m. rolled around and it was time to get up and go to the airport, I was in pretty good shape. At the gate, I was slurping coffee and sipping from a bottle of water at the same time.