Page 5 of Entwined With You

They broke apart, holding each other’s gaze. Then he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “To be continued,” he said, making her laugh out loud.

As he opened the passenger door, she started the van. He got out into the unseasonable Los Angeles heat and started walking the block toward the museum as she waited in the parallel parking spot, ready to take off when the time was right.

He told himself that he believed her; that nothing was wrong. But the knot in his stomach suggested that he was lying to himself. Maybe she was just growing up. Maturing. Realizing they weren’t invincible, and that was triggering nerves.

But he didn’t believe it. They’d both stared down their own mortality years ago. She’d always faced risks, and she’d always flipped risk the bird.

As far as Sabrina was concerned, the entire world was one big playground that existed only to amuse her. It was that attitude—carefree, defiant, and utterly competent—that had drawn him to her six years ago. He’d just turned fourteen. She’d been a few months away, just three months younger than him. Somehow, though, she’d seemed older, and centuries wiser. An old soul. That’s how Theo, the shelter’s brawny director who looked more like a thug than a social worker, had described her the first time she walked into the Manhattan shelter, and Brent had to agree.

He’d sucked up his courage, then walked across the shelter’s recreation area to introduce himself. Exactly nine minutes later, he was head-over-heels in love. Now they were both twenty, had been through hell and back together, and he still felt exactly the same thing.

And the best part? She did, too.

From that first day—hell, from that first minute—they could tell each other anything. And they did. They’d sat on the mats in the north corner of the rec room and talked for hours. It sounded corny as hell, but he knew he’d found the rest of himself. Like he’d been half-empty before she’d walked through those doors.

They never kept secrets. Never held back.

At least, they never had before.

Today, something was wrong. Trying to convince himself otherwise was just so much nonsense.

She was nervous, and he didn’t have a clue why.

He reached the museum and circled around to his designated spot, close enough to receive the transmission from the team inside the building, and still within the range where he could signal Brina to bring the van to the meeting point.

Just a few more minutes, and they’d be hauling ass out of here, only days away from selling the merchandise and then taking their share of the money and retiring.

With a sigh of eager anticipation, he glanced across the intersection toward the van, frustrated that the sun’s glare meant he couldn’t see her behind the wheel.

He shifted, trying to find a better angle, then took a single step to his right.

And that was it.

He froze in horror as the world exploded, his ears ringing, his heart pounding, his entire body ravaged by shock and grief as he heard her voice in his head, firm and sweet. Run, dammit. Run!

Chapter Two

“Oh, I don’t think that sequence was unrealistic at all,” Brax said to Trevor Barone as they sat around a poolside table on Damien Stark’s massive back porch.

“Uh-huh,” Trevor said. “Were we in the same theater?” The two of them and Ollie McKee, Trevor’s boyfriend, had come straight to the party from seeing a newly released action movie.

Brax kept his expression deadpan. “No, really. Absolutely realistic.” He shot a sideways glance toward Ollie, one of the guests of honor at this celebratory party. “Ollie and I scaled the outside of skyscrapers at least weekly back in the day.” He kept his voice as even as if he were reporting the weather. “Typical day at the FBI, right, Ol? I mean, if weapons were being trafficked, we’d do whatever it took to get them out of the wrong hands.”

“Oh, totally,” Ollie said as he turned toward Trevor, his mouth twitching as he fought not to smile. Brax and Ollie had become fast friends at the Academy before going their separate ways. Ollie was still in the FBI, but Brax had left to join Stark Security, where Trevor also worked as an agent.

Brax kept his face serious as he met Trevor’s brown eyes, so dark they were almost black. “Usually we’d scale a building or two the same day we Halo jumped onto the roof of various foreign corporations from Dubai to Berlin to Moscow. I’ll say this much—working for the FBI really kept me in good shape.”

“Wow,” Trevor said, his voice cracking from the effort to hold back laughter. “And here I thought the FBI only had domestic jurisdiction.”

Brax shot Ollie a conspiratorial grin. “Well, there’s jurisdiction, and then there’s jurisdiction. And we only let a few trusted colleagues in on our secrets. Of course, if you tell anyone, we will have to kill you.”

Ollie shrugged, then put his arm around Trevor’s shoulder. “Sorry, babe. Rules are rules.”

“What on earth are you guys talking about?” Jamie Hunter asked coming up from behind Brax, the loose waves of her dark-brown hair framing the kind of face that made a camera lens giddy. She glanced around at all of them. “Tell me it’s not a new case.”

“New movie,” Brax said. “Bullshit ending.”

Trevor laughed, leaning in closer to Ollie. “Well, they can’t all be as happy as ours.”