As if punctuating the sentiment, a car rolled past, headlights flashing the house and them on the porch. Out here in the cold. Exposed. Reality settled back on Carter’s shoulders, as heavy and dark as the night around them.
He drew back, and Lincoln released his hold on him, smoothing down the wrinkles in the shirt. Carter couldn’t help but laugh at the domestic gesture, and Lincoln glared at him. Amusement, however, belied the attempt at irritation, and affection flooded Carter’s chest, lifting some of the weight off his shoulders. He brushed a hand over Lincoln’s cheek as he gripped his weapon with the other. “Let’s go inside.”
They executed the sweep in silence as Carter had directed, with the one addition of a pit stop upstairs to change his shirt. The bug sweeper likewise remained silent everywhere he passed it over. Twenty minutes later, he laid the device and his Glock on the kitchen table. “We’re clear.”
Lincoln added his phone and weapon to the collection, then collapsed into a chair. “I texted Oliver and Beverley. Just waiting on a call back.”
Carter strolled to the sink and soaked a hand towel. On his way back to the table, he stopped next to the cabinet where he’d stashed the party goods last night. “Whiskey, tequila, vodka, or gin?”
“All of them?”
Nice thought, but not if they wanted to remain coherent for the call with command. He grabbed the blue-and-white tequila bottle and two shot glasses and brought them over to the table with the towel, which he handed to Lincoln. “Thank you for helping back at the station.”
“Helping?” Lincoln scoffed as he cleaned his hands in short, jerky motions. “I fucking froze, I disobeyed, I dropped your phone with the evidence on it, and I let the attacker get away. I helped, all right.” He traded the towel for the shot Carter poured and threw it back in one go.
Carter tossed the towel toward the mudroom, and Lincoln’s lack of reaction to the careless mess told Carter more than the frustration in Lincoln’s words and motions. He was too tired and too angry with himself to scold or lift a judgmental brow. That wouldn’t help them on this case or on the call with Kirk and Beverley. Carter claimed the chair next to Lincoln and angled toward his partner. “We might not have gotten out of there at all if you hadn’t intervened.”
Lincoln didn’t look convinced. Eyes closed, he sighed and rested his head back on the top of the chair. “I’m sorry if I made that more difficult.”
“You didn’t.” He poured Lincoln another shot, the tap of ceramic on glass bringing Lincoln’s gaze upright again. Carter set aside the bottle and slid the shot glass back in front of him. “You had my back, like a partner.”
“Thank you.” Lincoln’s smile was small but true. Something Carter said had sunk in. Or the tequila had. Either way, Carter was glad to see the other man start to relax. “Been a while since I had one.”
“Same here.” Carter picked up his own glass and held it out for a toast. They tapped glass rims, then threw back their shots. Carter relished the burn as it seared across his tongue and down his throat, warming him from the inside out. A good buffer for the conversation they needed to have.
“I have my suspicions about what happened tonight,” he said, “but I want to hear from the expert. Was that Dr. Fear?”
Lincoln shook his head. “Not their style. They wouldn’t get that close to getting caught, and it doesn’t fit the MO. They would take us first, then torture us. Moreover, I don’t think they sent that letter just to get us here and kill us. I think they want us to help them stop the copycat.” Lincoln leaned forward, forearms on the table. “All of that, however, is assuming we were the targets tonight, which I’m not sure we were.”
“The records,” Carter said, which was where his suspicions had landed. “Someone wanted to torch them, not us. But the fire and that being your fear . . .”
“If we were the target, someone knows more about us than they’re letting on.” Lincoln dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, weariness manifesting again. “More likely that was just a happy coincidence for them and a horribly frightening one for me.” He lowered his hands and a smudge remained beneath one eye, soot that he hadn’t completely cleaned off his hands. It highlighted the lingering fear in Lincoln’s eyes. Fear he openly acknowledged and fear he’d faced, for Carter. “I’m not leaving you,” he’d shouted.
Carter wasn’t leaving either, even if that prospect scared the shit out of him. He reached out, turned Lincoln’s face toward him, and dragged a thumb over the residue, wiping away the fright and replacing it with the same look he’d witnessed on the porch. The look that lured him closer and drew a breathy “Carter” out of Lincoln, the word ghosting over Carter’s lips.
Followed by a much sharper “Fuck” as Lincoln’s phone rang, the shrill sound cutting through their breaths. Carter’s first instinct was to firm his grasp on Lincoln’s face and tell him to ignore it. His second was to say nothing and seal their lips in the kiss they’d been dancing around since last night, since eight years ago. His third was to drop his hand and answer the damn phone. The third won. He snatched the phone from the end of the table and answered the call from Director Beverley. “Agent Warren.”
“Agent Warren, I’ve got Senator Kirk on the line too. Is Agent Monroe with you?”
Carter glanced up at Lincoln, whose bright pink cheeks made him deeply regret not going with option one or two. But then Lincoln straightened his spine and cleared his throat. “I’m here, sir.”
“What’ve you got for us?” Kirk asked.
Lincoln propped an elbow on the table and raked a hand through his hair. “It’s been an interesting night here.”
From there they handed off the conversation back and forth, filling Beverley and Kirk in on everything that had transpired since their last check-in, including the events at the police station. Beverley asked the same question Carter had earlier—whether they thought this was Dr. Fear or not—and they walked them through the reasons they thought not. Kirk seemed convinced, Beverley not so much, but he deferred to the experts.
“Anything on your end?” Carter asked.
“We’re still narrowing down the suspect pool based on your prior information,” Beverley answered.
“We needed that vehicle information to narrow it faster,” a distressed Kirk added.
“Ollie,” Lincoln said, “we’ll figure it out. We’re close. The records fire tonight proves it.”
“We’ve got less than twelve hours, L, and now those police records are gone.”
“We won’t know the full extent of the damage until the fire is out. The chief will call us. Even if the police records are gone, we still have the archives at the library.”
