“I’m not going to get tired of you if that’s what you think. The way I feel… I can’t get enough of you. It’s not just sex. It’syou. You love me, too. I know you do. You’d have moved on a long time ago if that weren’t true.”
She turned toward him and stared up at him like a deer caught in the headlights, blue eyes wide. But it wasn’t anger he saw there. It was fear.
In a heartbeat, the emotion drained from her face. “You should probably go.”
The words felt like a blow to his solar plexus.
Shit.
Was she breaking up with him?
Of course, not.
You couldn’t break up with someone if you’d never really been together.
What the hell had just happened?
You sure fucked this up, Silver.
He tried to swallow his emotions the way she’d done, played it cool. “Okay. I’m going to be late anyway. Have a good day. See you later.”
She showed no sign that she wanted to kiss him goodbye, so he walked past her and down the hallway toward her front door.
“Be safe!”
The sound of her voice followed him outside into the summer heat.
Darcangelo openedthe rear passenger door of Marc’s SUV and shoved his backpack and rifle case onto the seat. “You’re late.”
Marc wasn’t about to explain why he was late. His sex life was none of Darcangelo’s business. “I had to give you time to make your hair pretty.”
It was an old joke between the two of them. Marc kept his hair short, while Julian, who spent a lot of time on the street undercover, wore his in a ponytail.
Darcangelo chuckled, shut the door, then climbed into the passenger seat. “Hey, at least I have hair.”
“My hairline isnotreceding.” Marc glanced in the rearview mirror just to make sure and was relieved to see his hairline where it had always been.
They left Denver, heading west on Highway 36 toward Boulder, talking about their two favorite subjects—their families and firearms. Marc’s police radio served as background noise, the mountains looming larger with each mile.
“I hear McBride set up a lunch at that brewpub, Knockers.”
Zach McBride, the Chief Deputy US Marshal for the Colorado Territory, was a good friend of theirs. They’d met McBride through their wives, who had worked together at theDenver Independentas part of the newspaper’s Investigative Team—or I-Team. The second-highest ranking lawman in the state and a former Navy SEAL with a Medal of Honor to his name, McBride clearly knew what mattered most to other LEOs at these events—food.
Darcangelo nodded. “Good. I fucking hate MREs.”
“Tell me about it.” Marc had served in the US Army as a sniper, serving eighteen months in Afghanistan, where he’d eaten enough MREs to last this lifetime and the next.
“Did you have any trouble with your conversion kit?” Darcangelo asked.
They would be firing Sim rounds today — non-lethal Simunition filled with paint. The conversion kits ensured that no one could accidentally load a live round and kill someone. Not that real ammunition looked anything like Sim rounds, but safety came first.
“Piece of cake.” Marc started to say something about the sweet Colt Cobra he’d shot at the range yesterday when something on his police radio caught his ear.
He turned up the volume.
“… a red flag warning for the mountains until midnight tonight with a dry cold front expected to bring gusts up to fifty-five miles an hour later in the afternoon. There is an open fire ban in effect statewide.”
Marc turned it down again. “Let’s hope that cold front isn’t as dry as they think.”