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“Kiss ass,” River muttered and slumped back in his seat.

“Alright,” X said, “if we’re doing this, we’ll want a clean record of all our conversations. You know what that means…” He pulled out his phone and wiggled it in the air. “Group chat.”

“No,” Anson groaned.

Boone just pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a headache. “Last time you started one, Bear threatened to shove the phone up your ass.”

“Stomp the phone into his ass,” Bear corrected on a deep growl. “And the threat still stands.”

X was unfazed as he typed. “Extenuating circumstances, mis carnales .”

A second later, everyone’s phone pinged.

X had named the chat, “Justice League, But Less Lame,” and sent a gif of Superman punching through a wall, followed by the message:

Operation Save Thorne’s Ass is a go.

Jax almost smiled. Almost.

“Can we focus?” Boone’s marker squeaked against the whiteboard as he added another bullet point. “Anyone know if the girl had a boyfriend?”

“I can dig into Bailee’s online history,” Ghost said.

X looked up from his phone, his warm brown skin taking on an ashen hue. “Shit. You can do that?”

Ghost paused with his fingers hovering over the keyboard, his pale eyes cutting sideways to meet X’s stare. “It’s not hard if you know what you’re looking for.”

“Jesus,” X muttered, and looked over at River. “If I bite it, delete my browser history, and I’ll return the favor. Deal?”

Ghost’s mouth quirked with something that might have been amusement. “Nothing’s ever deleted.”

X shuddered. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

“Too late for that,” Ghost said, already turning back to his screen. “You pissed me off Tuesday when you used all the hot water. Again.”

River snickered, and X raised his hands in surrender.

“I have a very thorough hygiene regimen. This,” he gestured to his face, “doesn’t happen by accident.”

“Then you ate the last piece of my good bacon,” Ghost muttered and tapped a few keys.

“It was communal bacon,” X protested.

Their phones all dinged at that moment, and Jax saw the message from Ghost. It was a screenshot of X’s search history, with every instance of “how to style hair like Jason Momoa” highlighted in red.

There were other searches that had obviously been photoshopped in, like “how to be less annoying to roommates” and “why am I the ugliest one in the house?”

River guffawed.

Anson just shook his head and replaced his phone in his pocket without a word, but there was a slight curve to his lips.

Bear and Boone hadn’t even bothered to look.

Jonah shrugged. “Hey, gotta give it to you, X, Momoa does have great hair. But you could never pull it off.”

“Fuck off, Ken Doll,” X muttered and lunged for Ghost’s laptop, but Ghost merely shifted it out of reach, his expression unchanged.

“About that bacon?”

“Fine, fine,” X grumbled. “I’ll buy you a whole case of the shit tomorrow.”

“The good stuff. Thick cut, mesquite smoked.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The tension Jax had been carrying for days, months—hell, years—drained out of his shoulders at the banter. His SEAL teammates used to do the same thing, making the unbearable bearable by turning it into something you could laugh about later.

Boone cleared his throat. “If you two are done with your domestic dispute, can we get back to the dead girl?”

The sky outside the windows went from orange to purple to pitch black as they went over all the details they knew about the murder.

Ghost easily hacked into Bailee’s social media and tasked X and River with combing through it for anything of interest. Boone questioned Jax about the crime scene photos the sheriff had shown him, and he told them everything he could remember while Anson took notes.

At one point, Jonah heated a tray of cornbread and passed it around. Nobody bothered with plates.

When Ghost finally spoke again, it was to announce he’d pulled Bailee’s text history. “She was talking to someone in town. A burner number, and she only had the heart emoji for his name, but when I ran the number, it pinged off a tower near the Rusty Spur.”

“Then that’s where we start,” Boone said.

Jonah nodded. “And I’ll stop in at the Griddle tomorrow morning. She worked there for years before Foster hired her. Someone there has gotta know something about her.”

“Careful of the sheriff,” Boone warned. “That’s his breakfast spot.”

Jonah tipped his chin toward Bear. “Bear’ll come along and watch my back, won’t you, big guy?”

Bear grumbled, but nodded.

X finished off his cornbread, dusted his hands, and sent Jax a grin. “Told you we got your back, ese.”

Jax looked around the room, and for the first time since leaving the SEALs, he felt like he might actually belong somewhere.

As if he were part of a team again.

Part of a family.

His throat tightened, and he had to clear it before speaking. “What now?”

Ghost closed his laptop with a click. “Now we get some sleep. We hunt in the morning.”

The meeting broke up. Ghost, X, River, and Jonah said their goodnights and headed to their bunks. Bear went outside to take King to the kennel for the night. Anson hit the shower. And Boone stayed behind, studying the whiteboard, hands hooked in the pockets of his jeans, gaze unreadable.

Jax stood, his mind going back to Echo. He needed to shower off the stink of the jail, but then he should check on her. Maybe even sleep out there in the kennel with her if she had withdrawn too far back into her shell in his absence…

But as he headed to the door, Boone stopped him with a single word. “Thorne.”

He turned.

Boone studied him for a long moment. “If you feel like running, don’t.”

Jax nodded. “I wasn’t planning to.”

Boone’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “Good.”