Page 250 of Things We Hide from the Light

“Hey, happy wedding day.”

“Gonna be the best day of my life.”

As if on cue, the reason for that appeared.

“Knox!” Naomi and Waylay broke through a ring of state cops and started running.

“Don’t be fuckin’ late,” Knox said to me with a parting thump on the back. And then he was loping across the gravel to them. I watched my brother sweep the two most important women in his life into his arms and swing them around.

“Apparently you don’t know the meaning of the phrase ‘lie low,’” Special Agent Idler said dryly as she approached. Frosted leaves crunched under her feet as she left Nolan behind.

He was strapped to a gurney, a red-soaked bandage taped to his chest, his phone glued to his ear. He caught me staring and pointed to the phone.

“Wife,” he mouthed, looking delusionally happy.

My lips quirked and I tossed him a salute. He grinned and held up a friendly middle finger.

“He gonna be all right?” I asked.

“He’ll be fine. Missed all the vitals. But you know what that son of a bitch just did? He quit.”

“You don’t say?”

“Don’t know why he’s telling me since I’m not his boss. But seems he got poached by the private sector,” she said, shooting a pointed look to where Lucian was standing, arms crossed, in a huddle with a handful of agents.

“You don’t seem too broken up about having to fire my ass,” I observed.

“Maybe it’s because sometimes the greater good comes at too high a price tag,” she said, watching my brother kiss his bride-to-be as she clung to him. “Of course, maybe it’s also because Duncan Hugo knew less about his father’s operations than a midlevel employee,” she continued. “Or maybe it’s because your friend Lucian agreed to put his extensive resources at our disposal to help us take down Anthony Hugo once and for all. So you can see how I might be a little too busy to worry about whether some small-town chief of police keeps his job.”

“Back away from my chief, Special Agent,” Mayor Swanson said. It would have been more threatening had she not been wearing jack-o’-lantern pajama pants and clutching a Snoopy tumbler of hot coffee.

“We’re just having a conversation, Mayor,” Idler said.

“You make sure you keep it friendly. I’d hate for the seventy-two thousand people who liked this article about our hometown hero to find out the FBI hung him out to dry.” She held up a stack of printouts and waved them around.

I snatched them out of her hand, then regretted it immediately when I saw the first few comments.

He can protect and serve my ass any day.

Thinking about committing a misdemeanor in northern Virginia. BRB.

“Christ,” I muttered.

“If you think the FBI has the time and money to handle the PR fallout, by all means, go for it. But I’ll make it my personal mission to go on every morning show between DC and New York—”

“Mayor Swanson, Chief Morgan’s job isn’t in any danger. At least, not from my end.”

Nolan’s ambulance pulled away and I was rewarded with the kind of sight a man wouldn’t soon forget.

Angelina Solavita.

She was leaning against the side of that goddamn navy-blue Porsche, her long legs stretched out in front of her, hands shoved in her pockets. Her face was bruised, her clothing was muddy, and she was standing there in borrowed firefighter turnout boots.

She looked like a beautiful badass. My beautiful badass.

She spotted me and those full lips curved knowingly.

I stepped between Mayor Swanson and Special Agent Idler without seeing them.