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I turned to my side, reaching to grab for it, feeling an almost embarrassing thrill inside at seeing Quin’s name illuminated on my screen. I was so excited, in fact, that I nearly missed the call before I remembered to swipe my finger across the screen.
“Hello?”
“Merry Christmas, babe,” he greeted me, voice not like I remembered it. Maybe strained, a bit sad. It seemed odd to give such a common, human word to someone who seemed too enigmatic, who transcended such things as common holiday blues.
“Merry Christmas,” I told him as I pulled the covers back up over me, feeling a little less alone in the world.
“Do you have any snow on the ground?”
“Ugh, no,” I grumbled. I hadn’t seen a white Christmas in years. “I bet you do.”
“I could go a decade without ever seeing snow again and be a happy man. You watching The Christmas Story?”
I smiled as my head swiveled on the pillow to where I had fallen asleep to it on its usual twenty-four-hour marathon. And there it still was, a comforting tradition.
“Of course.”
“Has he shot his eye out yet?”
“No, he’s listening to the radio. How are you spending your Christmas?”
There was a pause. He, I figured, struggling with how much information was safe to share. “In a shack in the woods with most of my team, eating canned meat and beans, and wishing I was anywhere else.”
The depth of truth in his words made a pang move through me. No matter how alone I might have been at the moment, at least I was home, I had the comforts of it, my tree, a fridge full of goodies to make into a proper Christmas dinner. He might have been surrounded by his people, but he had none of the comforts of the season.
“That sucks,” I told him, meaning it.
“Yeah,” he agreed, and I could hear an odd crunching sound.
“What is that?”
“The ever-loving snow,” he growled. “The only privacy in a one-room shack is outside.”
He didn’t want them knowing he was talking to me. It should have made my stomach twist, but I realized that I had also been keeping him a secret as well. I hadn’t told Fenway or Gunner or even Jules about the texts or calls. What we had was wholly between the two of us.
And, I guess, that should have unsettled me. I didn’t want to be anyone’s dirty little secret, some cliche chick who only knows a man at two in the morning.
But, somehow, it didn’t feel wrong and seedy, something I needed to hide. Instead, it felt like something special, something between the two of us, excluding the rest of the world with their loud, unwelcome opinions. It was one of the few times in my life that something was wholly mine, without the court of public opinion.
I liked that.
“Do you think the job will be much longer?” I asked, knowing I couldn’t have specifics, but figuring a timeline wouldn’t exactly be asking too much.
“Fuck if I know,” he grumbled, making it clear the cabin in the woods was getting to him. I guess being locked up with his team in one room must have been irritating at best. It was a surefire way to put your relationships with people to the test – put them in one room in the woods under feet of snow with nothing but unpalatable food to eat, and little to keep you company.
It shook someone as unflappable as Quinton Baird.
“I’m hoping not more than another week. Things are… progressing,” he said carefully. “And then it will be coming back. And Gunner will need to be off.”
Gunner was known as The Ghost. When I pressed him about it once, he said it was because he was good at disappearing. I would venture a guess that his specialty that Quin found appealing enough to employ – surly attitude and all – was he was able to make other people disappear as well.
Someone on this case needed to get lost.
I wondered who it could be since it wasn’t Fenway.
Then, for some reason, an idea occurred to me.
The wife.
The one Fenway was having an affair with.
If these people were bad enough that Fenway needed to go into hiding for over a month, then one could imagine that the wife was not faring much better.
That was why they were still in Russia; they were trying to help her.
God.
Could these people be any better?
I felt like a shitty, selfish person in comparison.
“Well, more than halfway done then, right? Gotta look at the bright side.”
“Can you imagine being locked up in one room with Smith, Lincoln, Finn, Kai, and Miller for weeks?”
“It could be worse. Gunner could be there too. And from what I hear, Ranger makes Gunner seem like Mr. Congeniality.”
“This is true. Always a silver lining. Though, if I have to listen to Miller say one more time how much she misses real showers–”
