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Bell flashed him the barest ghost of a smile. “An absolute piece of shit,” he agreed. “So trust me when I say I know what it’s like to want to dodge questions about your old man.” He sighed, tacking on, “It’s good to know you’ve brought it up with Hendricks and Silas already. That changes how we play this.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, glancing sideways at Mikey.

Bell pushed off the desk, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Now that I know the facts, it’s obvious you weren’t wrong to step in. Your execution was a complete fucking nightmare, and Silas is going to shit himself when he hears about it. But your instinct to protect your …” He paused briefly. “To protect Callahan was right, so I have your backs. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

We grabbed our coats and said goodbye to Sandra, managing to avoid running into Penny—if she was even still there—and exit out the side door into the far side of the parking lot.

“See you boys tomorrow,” Bell said when we reached his car.

“Bye Cap,” Mikey said, while I added, “drive safe.” In the time we’d been inside the warehouse, it had started snowing in earnest, and by the look of things, it was going to stick this time.

We hurried the rest of the way across the lot and climbed inside my Rover. The first thing Mikey did was crank up the heat.

“Holy shit,” he grimaced, slumping against his seat. “That could have been so bad.”

This wasn’t a case of could—it was bad.

I brought two fingers up to the side of my neck to locate my carotid artery. “What were you thinking?” I asked, turning to face him. My pulse was still somewhere around the hundred beats per minute range, but at least it was dropping.

“I wasn’t?” He screwed one eye shut.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“I’m being serious,” he said with a small shake of his head. “One minute, I’m standing there thinking how fucking hilarious you are, and then Penny gave him that look, and I just knew she’d set you up again. I saw red. One of those gremlins Lavoie loves so much took over my brain. I don’t even remember what I said. It’s just … blank.”

The rhythm under my fingertips slowed to its normal range, and I dropped my hand away, giving him a small smile. “You managed not to call my dad an asshole on camera, though just barely. I suppose that’s good.”

“I didn’t?”

I shook my head.

“Huh,” Mikey huffed. “I thought I did.”

“Nope,” I chuckled.

His expression sobered. “You okay?”

“Honestly, I was more annoyed than anything. I didn’t start to panic until you said, ‘As for Robert Callahan’s opinion,’ because I was pretty sure the next words out of your mouth were going to be, ‘No one fucking cares.’”

“So you’re not mad⁠—”

His question was cut off by the sound of two quick taps on the glass behind my head. I spun to see Bell standing outside my door, his jacket collar turned up against the cold.

Mikey hit the button to lower the window, and it slid down with a quiet whir.

“Hey,” Bell said, resting his forearm against the window frame as he leaned down to look in at us. “I forgot to ask earlier if you have any plans for Christmas dinner. I assumed you’d probably be heading down to Boston, but uh … maybe not so much.” He winced and scratched his jaw, where a faint shadow of gold stubble was starting to show.

I looked at Mikey, whose eyebrows were raised, then turned back to Bell. “No. We were planning on staying in, maybe watching some more of those stupid eighties movies Lavoie is always going on about.”

I didn’t add that I was also planning on finally giving Mikey the ring I bought him. I’d been holding off because I thought it would be too hard to watch him take it off every time we had to leave the house, but not seeing him wear it at all was killing me.

Bell nodded slowly. “You should come to my place for Christmas dinner at least.”

Mikey leaned forward. “This a team thing?”

“No,” Bell said, a faint smile tipping the right corner of his mouth to the side. “It’s just me and Ethan, T and Sebastian … and hopefully you two.”

“Why only T and us?” I asked.