The next evening Trinity and Hawkeye were ensconced at a round table near the back of their favorite diner.

Trinity sighed with contentment and looked around at her best friends.

Veronica was leaning forward, eyes sparkling, ready to hear a good story. Lobo sat beside her, leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face, as if he didn’t care what Trinity was about to tell them, he was just happy to be here.

On the other side of Lobo, Brooke drummed her fingers against the tabletop with characteristic impatience. Conan sat beside Brooke, gazing at her as if he were starving and she were a picnic lunch.

Next to Trinity, Hawkeye’s big presence was palpable even when she wasn’t glancing over at him, which she couldn’t seem to help doing almost constantly.

After all, he seemed too good to be true.

“So, what was the deal with Henderson?” Brooke demanded.

“Well, I wasn’t there of course,” Trinity said. “But Officer Lloyd was kind enough to share some info. He said it’s going to hit the papers soon enough anyway.”

“Besides, Trinity was instrumental in apprehending Henderson,” Hawkeye said proudly.

“Instrumental in apprehending,” Conan echoed appreciatively. “You sound like a police officer yourself, brother.”

“Who knows what the future will hold?” Hawkeye said with a shrug. “For now I only want to spend more quality time with my new mate.”

“Anyway,” Trinity continued, before he could share anything too private. “It turns out that Henderson was stealing money from the academy’s budget.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Brooke said. “He tried to say I had a conflict of interest in running a gym in my off hours and he was stealing from the academy the whole time?”

“Apparently. Captain Henderson was angry that the academy’s budget didn’t accommodate an annual raise and bonus for the captain,” Trinity explained. “He felt that since the big city academies had perks for their captains, he deserved them too.”

“So he just… took money?” Veronica asked with wide eyes.

“No,” Trinity said.

“Yes,” said Hawkeye.

“Well, yes and no,” Trinity allowed. “He had a spreadsheet. He figured out exactly what he thought he was entitled to, and then he took it on a schedule. They found it all on his laptop.”

“I thought there wasn’t money in the budget,” Brooke said.

“There wasn’t,” Trinity said. “He took it from the discretionary fund at first. Then from the capital improvement fund. But when they began renovations on the monastery in earnest he realized he would have to sell the old academy right away to get the money back in the capital fund before anyone noticed it was short.”

“And that’s why he was going to force us out,” Brooke breathed.

“Yep.” Trinity nodded.

“Wow,” Veronica said.

“I hope they’ll still let me buy the building,” Brooke said.

“Ostensibly, they still need to refill the capital fund right away,” Trinity said. “I don’t know where else they could get that kind of money so quickly.”

Brooke bit her lip and nodded.

Trinity hoped that the committee assigned to straighten everything out would approve moving forward with the sale of the building soon. It was important to her friend.

“Anyway, a member of the board already suspected something was off,” Trinity said. “That’s why they hired me to digitize the files in the first place.”

“Do we know yet what will happen to Rex?” Veronica asked.

“He’s out on bail for now,” Trinity said. “Hawkeye and I are going over tomorrow to check on him and his sisters. We’re hoping that since he cooperated with authorities he’ll be able to avoid jail time.”

“I can’t believe he actually set the academy on fire,” Brooke said. “I mean the break-ins I could maybe see, but the fire was really dangerous. A lot of people could have been hurt or worse.”

“Lloyd said they expected us to report the break-ins,” Trinity explained. “Henderson told Rex that once that happened he’d have the right to confiscate all the files to do an ‘investigation’.”

“But we didn’t report them,” Veronica said.

“Right,” Trinity agreed. “So Henderson felt he had no choice but to destroy the files. Rex didn’t want to do it, but Henderson told him he already had him on breaking and entering so he had no choice.”

“Wow,” Brooke said. Her expression told Trinity she would like to punch Henderson in the face. Trinity didn’t like violence as a rule, but after what he put them all through, even she could see the appeal of that.

“I’m glad no one was hurt,” Veronica said. “We were pretty lucky.”

“Six burgers, six fries, six cokes,” a waitress sang out, as she and two other servers handed out their food.

“Excellent,” Hawkeye said, studying his meal with obvious delight.

Trinity might have been jealous of the way the servers eyed up Hawkeye if she hadn’t known that he was hers, heart and soul - hers so much that she shared his gift now. She still wasn’t sure exactly what she could do with it yet. But at least she knew her laptop would never overheat again.

There was a moment of silence as they all dug into their meal.

As far as Trinity was concerned it could not have been more delicious if it had come from a five star restaurant. She hadn’t eaten much the day before in her agony over leaving.

And today she and Hawkeye had barely been able to drag themselves out of bed and into clothes to meet with Officer Lloyd before meeting the others for dinner.

“So, um, do you mind if I ask where you guys are going?” Veronica asked nervously.

“What are you talking about?” Trinity asked.

“I was looking for you an hour ago and the door was open, so…” Veronica trailed off.

She’d noticed that Trinity had packed up everything she owned.

“Oh, I was just thinking of moving into Hawkeye’s suite, that’s all,” Trinity said lightly.

“Oh, good,” Veronica said with a relieved smile.

Brooke kicked Trinity hard under the table. She wasn’t as easily fooled as Veronica. But she looked happy too. Trinity hoped it was enough for her friend that she was no longer thinking of bailing.

“Glad you’re sticking around, kid,” Brooke said gruffly.

Hawkeye grinned down at Trinity. “I’m glad too,” he said.

“This is excellent news,” Lobo said. “Because Veronica and I received a phone call from Georgia. She and her friends and three of our brothers are coming to visit.”

Whoa.

“Why are they coming?” Brooke asked with interest.

“For the wedding,” Conan replied.

“The what?” Brooke asked.

“Gentlemen?” Hawkeye said.

The three pulled out their chairs and knelt on the floor.

Chairs scraped as people at nearby tables turned to look.

“Veronica,” Lobo said.

“Brooke,” whispered Conan.

“Trinity,” Hawkeye said, his eyes sparkling.

Trinity held her breath.

“Will you marry me?” Hawkeye asked.

Trinity heard the question echoed around the table, but her whole world was Hawkeye.

“It’s so soon,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“This is crazy,” she whispered.

“Yes, it is.” He smiled up at her.

“So I guess you want an answer, don’t you?” she asked.

“When you’re ready,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be today. But I wanted you to know that whenever you’re ready, I am too.”

Trinity was surprised to find that she didn’t have to search her heart. She already knew.

“I don’t need time,” she said. “I already know my answer.”

For the first time his expression faltered and her big confident alien looked boyish and worried.

“It’s yes,” she said immediately.

He leapt up, pulled her out of her seat and wrapped his arms around her.

“It’s about damned time, Trinity,” Brooke muttered.

But Trinity was too busy kissing her fiancé to care.