Free Dead Heat by Allison Brennan

shouldn’t be surprised: They were close in age, had many of the same interests, and Nate—like Sean’s brother Kane—had been a Marine. Nate, like Lucy, was still an FBI rookie. It took two years to lose the rookie label. Nate had one year in.
    “I invited Nate to come by, but he has a date.” Sean grinned.
    “Michelle or Kendall?” Ryan asked.
    “Trista.”
    “Trista? Who’s that?”
    “Don’t know. I offered to run a full background on her, for free, but Nate hung up on me.”
    “If you don’t mind,” Lucy said, “I’m going to run upstairs and take a fast shower.”
    Ryan said, “I used the gym at SAPD. You know they have a women’s shower, too.”
    “I didn’t have time,” Lucy said, though that was only partly true. She didn’t like showering in public areas, even if they were semi-private showers. She hated the feeling of being watched, even when she wasn’t. She leaned over and kissed Sean. He understood. That’s another reason why she loved him so much.
    Sean watched Lucy leave. He’d seen the exhaustion in her eyes, but she wouldn’t slow down. It wasn’t in her DNA. At the same time, this move had been good for her. For both of them. Lucy loved her job, and Sean loved when Lucy was happy.
    He gave Ryan a discreet once-over. He’d met Lucy’s boss, as well as Nate Dunning who’d been in the office the day Sean had taken Lucy for lunch on her birthday last month. Since then, Nate had been over several times. Not only common interests, but Nate was comfortable to be around, as if Sean had known him for years instead of six weeks. The only other person Sean felt that way about was Lucy’s brother, Patrick.
    Lucy had talked a lot about Ryan, mostly because they’d been working together on Operation Heatwave. She liked him, and Lucy was a good judge of character. But Sean still wanted to know who was watching her back when he wasn’t.
    “I’m going to grab a beer,” Sean said. “Ready for another?”
    “I will be.” Ryan followed Sean back to the kitchen. He gestured toward children’s drawings on a bulletin board in the breakfast nook. “Lucy said you didn’t have kids. Nieces? Nephews?”
    “No,” Sean said. “We have two on the way—my brother’s wife is expecting any day, and Lucy’s sister is expecting in June. Those are from a kid we helped out of a jam last fall.”
    “Lucy’s good with kids. We had two minors, girls, during the sweep today. Mother made it difficult, we had to arrest her.”
    “Micah and Tommy’s mom got involved with the wrong guy. She ended up dead. They’re living with their grandparents in Florida now.” Micah wrote to Lucy every two or three weeks and included drawings from his six-year-old brother, Tommy. The boys seemed to be adjusting well. “Lucy said the sweep was a success, but that your team got reassigned? I got some details from Nate, but he didn’t know much.”
    “Missing kid. He was locked in the basement for a couple of weeks and one of the minors let him out. The DEA was leading our team, so all our warrants were related to drugs. Lucy and Donnelly, the team leader, flipped one brother against the other. We’ve already gotten some good intel on the drug pipeline and shut down a storage facility. Guns, drugs. It’s going to be big.”
    “What kind of drug pipeline?”
    Ryan hesitated. Suspicious, maybe, or just cautious.
    Sean said, “The kids, Micah and Tommy? Their mother’s boyfriend was cooking meth in the middle of the woods. National forest. His brother was a ranger, in on it. Good-sized lab in a trailer, DEA figured it was a multimillion-dollar operation that supported the entire DC area.”
    Lucy stepped into the kitchen. She looked a million times better, her face bright, her wet hair pulled back into a ponytail. Sean loved it when she was fresh out of the shower, no makeup, just her beautiful self. He kissed her. “Telling stories, Sean?” she said with a grin.
    “Just trying to get Ryan to spill the