Page 109 of Lethal Game

"Are you going somewhere with this conversation?"

Flynn grinned. "Of course. I want you to stay with the team. I'm making my pitch. It won't be the money or the title you could get somewhere else, but there is freedom and autonomy in decision-making and an unusually high level of trust."

"Your team is fantastic. I've enjoyed getting to know them, and they are very, very good."

"But you're leaning another way?" Flynn asked, giving him a speculative look.

"I've been working nonstop the last six, almost seven, years, Flynn. And since my father died three years ago, my workaholic tendencies went out of control. I didn't have a reason to be home. I didn't have a family who wanted my time, and I was obsessed with finding Novikov and making him pay. Of course, Ihad to work on a lot of other cases, too, because Novikov stayed safely out of reach for a long time, but he was always on my mind. And when I wasn't thinking about him, it was every other criminal who needed to be stopped. I was just head down all the time. I certainly never took a minute to look at the sunset."

"You can't run at that pace forever. The longer you're in the business of law enforcement, the more you realize there's always going to be another case, another person to stop, another crime to solve. But you also have to have a life."

"Do you have a life?"

"I do," Flynn said. "Maybe not the last few weeks, but I make time for my wife, and now that we have a baby on the way, I'm going to make more time."

"I didn't know. Congratulations. When is the baby due?"

"Three months. Which will give Avery time to figure out who's going to run her restaurant while she's on maternity leave. She also has a job she loves and spends a lot of time at. But we're both ready for the next chapter. Which is why I also want to make sure I have enough team members to make things run smoothly, not just for me, but for everyone. I have a lot of agents now who are married and have kids. I don't want to lose them, but realistically, I know I need to keep bringing in people who also have more of a single-minded focus. It's a balance, but I can find it."

"That would be an achievement," he said, taking another sip of his beer.

"So, what are you thinking, Jason?"

He looked out at the sea again and then back at Flynn. "I had drinks with Mick Hadley and Patrick Hastings right after everything ended. When I looked at them, I saw my future, and I didn't like what I saw. Mick is a hardened man."

"He is. He's been married and divorced twice, and I don't think his kids talk to him. He's an agent who has to be in the field all the time. It's where he feels alive. I don't know Hastings, so I can't comment on him, but I don't think you and Mick areanything alike." Flynn paused. "You had the chance to kill Stephanie Genaro. You didn't take it."

"That would have been revenge, not justice."

Flynn nodded approvingly. "You kept your word to me."

"I did. And I don't know that Mick had anything to do with what happened to Novikov, so maybe we're not that different."

"None of us knows who killed Novikov, and I'm not accusing Mick Hadley, just saying the two of you are very different people."

"I'm not Patrick, either. Or my dad. Or my grandfather. I've had a lot of men to follow in my career, but I need to make my own path." He blew out a breath. "Here's the thing, I don't want to be the single-minded, focused agent you're looking for. I want more in my life than the job."

"I wasn't putting you in that category. Not after seeing you with Alisa."

"She is important to me," he admitted. "I don't know if I can juggle being the agent I want to be with the broader life I now want to have."

"You can, Jason. And you can do that working for me. I told you I was looking for a balance of team members, and I meant it. Everyone has value, and everyone gets to choose what they want to do, not what I want them to do. That's how we operate. How I get the best out of my people." He paused. "Do you really want to quit being an FBI agent? Or do you want to have it all—on your terms?"

He smiled. "You are quite the salesman."

"I hope I am. All you have to do is say yes…"

Things were finally returning to normal, Alisa thought, as she looked around the two-bedroom condo her mother had just moved into. They'd spent a few days looking for the right place for her parents to live in and had finally decided to rent thistownhouse for a year and make longer-term decisions later. They didn't know when her dad would eventually be able to get back to his life, so for now, it was just her mom.

After signing the lease, they'd shopped for furniture and kitchenware and had spent the last several days unpacking and getting organized. There was still a ton to buy and to unpack, but her mom had a bed and a dresser, a couch and a TV. There was food in her cupboards and her refrigerator, so all the basics were there for her to start the next chapter of her life. They'd also gotten back the suitcases and boxes of family photos and personal papers that her dad had taken to the motel, so there were some memories that would soon be going up on display.

Since she and her mother had been together nonstop the past two weeks, she'd seen little of Jason. He was busy wrapping up all the details of the case, too, so aside from daily text messages and one evening when they'd shared a pizza with her mother, she'd seen little of him.

And she missed him. She missed him more than she'd thought she would. She'd tried to tell herself their intense relationship had to come to an end along with everything else, but she didn't want it to be the end. She just didn't know how he felt about it.

"This blanket goes perfectly with the couch," her mother said, drawing her gaze to the sofa where her mother had placed a rose-colored fluffy blanket on the gray couch. "It's girly, though. Your father might not love it."

"If you love it, he'll love it," she said dryly. "He adores you. And he feels so guilty about what happened to you that you could probably decorate this entire place in pink and buy him nothing but pink clothes, and he'd be fine with it.

---