Page 42 of Golden Eagle

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When they’d finally picked their jaws back up off the floor, Trina and Lanny finished dinner in silence, and Lanny asked for a doggy bag to take home the steaks Will and Much had left behind.

“Really?” Trina asked. “Adoggybag?”

“The doggies didn’t eat their meat, so I’m taking it home. In a bag. And I’ll eat it later.”

“Everything is wrong with that sentence.”

They walked back to her place, which was quickly becoming their place, what with first Jamie, and now Alexei using Lanny’s apartment as a home base.

Inside, in her cramped, cottage-inspired little space, Lanny had started to fill up the already-tight corners. A gym bag under the kitchen table; razor on the bathroom counter; smelly sneakers and clunky boots spilling out of the rack at the front door. At moments she felt halfway to suffocated; at others, she found herself smiling as she plucked one of his sweatshirts off the back of the couch and tugged it over her head, its sleeves hanging down past her hands. Love was a give and take, and she didn’t mind the compromise.

“You’re being awful quiet,” Lanny observed, once they were inside, and she was making room in the fridge for his – takeout. She refused, on principle, to even thinkdoggy bag.

She stowed the steaks away and stood, reaching to pull the elastic out of her hair and shake it out over her shoulders; ah, the bliss of a taken-down ponytail. “I’m thinking.” She frowned to herself, and leaned back against the face of the fridge. She looked at him; really looked. “What did you think of those guys?”

He stood over the coffee table; he’d pulled another gym bag from beneath it – the underneath of every table held duffels of sweat-wicking clothes – and sorted through its contents, sniffing at a shirt, shrugging, and putting it back in. “The little one was a shithead. But it’s the pretty one I don’t trust.”

“I thought he was nice,” she said, just to see how he’d respond.

He paused, and lifted his head, already scowling. “What was it? The hair?”

She lifted a single brow, a move she’d seen Nikita execute with startling familiarity; a genetic trait, she guessed. “You’re the one who called him pretty.”

He stared at her a moment, then seemed to realize she was giving him her interrogation face, and resumed sorting through his bag, scoffing loudly.

“I can only look at them as a human. As a detective,” she reasoned. “So to my mind, the little one – Much – resents being fifteen forever, and is a shithead about it, yeah. But I didn’t feel like they were lying to us. Did you?”

He paused again, corner of his mouth hitching up in a thoughtful way. When he glanced up again, it was without heat this time. If anything, if she hadn’t known better, she might have said he looked intimidated.

“He wasn’t lying,” he said, gaze fixing somewhere in the middle distance. “I don’t even really know how I know that, but I do.” He frowned. “But he’s not telling us everything, either. I don’t trust him. And I definitely don’t think Nik and Sasha should trust him.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s what I thought, too.”

Lanny shook his head, looking frustrated. Then heaved a deep breath and picked up the bag. “I dunno. I’m gonna go change.”

“For what?”

“I’m working out with the guys tonight, remember?”

“Oh.” She’d forgotten, in the drama of dinner with two ofRobin Hood’sfriends. “Right.” She went to sit down on the couch as he headed for the bedroom. “Why the sudden surge in fitness for Jamie?” she asked, calling over her shoulder through the door he’d left open. She leaned forward to reach for a magazine on the coffee table. “He’s got super strength now. What does he need to lift weights for?”

He snorted. “He needed the super strength just to be able to lift weights in the first place.”

“Don’t be an ass, Roland,” she said automatically.

Beside her hand, his phone lit up on the table. An incoming text. She didn’t touch it, didn’t read the screen on purpose – but it was right there. And she saw.

The text was from a number listed as private. It read:password 2nite is aftershave.

The screen went black.

Trina held very still – held her breath – and stared at the blank-faced iPhone. Trying to decide if she felt any particular way about what she’d just read.

On the one hand: not her phone, not her business. Lanny was an adult; they were in an adult relationship, and she trusted him. Didn’t need to keep tabs on him. She wasn’t his mother…who he needed to call, but that was another issue entirely.

On the other hand: password forwhat?

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