Chris braced his hands on the tailgate of his truck, staring at the last two boxes. He remembered those boxes. They were heavy and even though they were the last two, he dreaded picking them up.

Jase returned from his trip into the house, wiping sweat from his brow. Even though it was only early spring, they’d been unloading their trucks and carrying boxes and furniture into his house for well over an hour. “Come on. Last two. They aren’t going to walk themselves inside.”

“How did we end up doing the brunt of the physical labor?” Somehow the girls had managed to escape while the guys did the heavy lifting. “Isn’t this supposed to be the twenty-first century? What happened to women’s equality and all that shit?”

Jase laughed. “Why do you think they’re in the woods shooting targets while we’re doing the manual labor?”

“I’m so confused.” Chris slid one of the boxes off the tailgate and hefted it to get a better grip. He wasn’t sure what was in it, but if he had to guess, it was a home gym. Or Bree collected bricks. Or kept all her wealth in gold bullion.

“Bree’s an Olympic power lifter, right?”

Jase’s brow crinkled. “What?”

“That’s the only reason I can come up with for how heavy these boxes are.”

Jase pulled the last box off the truck with a grunt. “They’re probably all books.” He looked up at the overcast sky. “Which is why they’re in your truck, which has a cover, and not mine. The woman would lose her shit if her books got wet in the rain.”

“Why does she have eight boxes of encyclopedias?”

Jase grinned. “You know I’m thinking of that How I Met Your Mother episode, right?”

“Encyclo-pae-dia,” they said in unison, then laughed.

His laughter fading, Jase shook his head. “She has hardbacks, paperbacks, reference books. I suggested donating some of them and you’d have thought I’d said we should cut off Charlie’s other leg. The woman didn’t talk to me for hours. Hours.”

“Huh. Good to know. Denise has a lot of books, too.” He followed Jase through the front door and into the living room. They stacked the boxes on the floor before the fireplace next to all the other boxes they’d dragged in.

“It’s kind of cool though. She’s perfectly happy to sit on the couch and read while I’m watching TV. Doesn’t care what it is as long as we’re on the couch together.”

He’d never been the type of guy to get jealous, but damned if he didn’t envy what Jase had. Knowing the woman he was with wanted nothing more than to be with him. Didn’t matter what they were doing or if they were even doing the same thing, just as long as they were together. He wanted that with Denise. Wanted to sit with her on the couch at the end of the day and not worry about why he was there and whether she questioned it, because the only reason he’d be there was because he wanted to be.

“You want a beer?”

“Does the Pope ride in a mobile?” He flopped down on the couch and gratefully took the beer Jase returned with.

“Where’s she putting the books?”

Jase sat in the recliner. “I’m adding built-ins along this entire wall.” He waved his hand, indicating the brick wall with the large fireplace in the center.

“Wow,” Chris said.

“Pretty much.” Jase sipped his beer. “You okay, man?”

Chris scrubbed a hand over his head. “Chief wants to send me undercover again.”

“How soon?”

“A month if this case isn’t wrapped up by then. Sooner if we manage to capture Eddie or get info on how the Anarchists are regrouping.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

Wasn’t that the question. He had no fucking clue. He didn’t want to leave Denise, or the kids, but this was his job. What he’d signed on to do. What he loved…once.

Shit.

He used to live for it. The adrenaline. The rush of doing whatever it took to get the bad guy. Now… Denise smiling at him for making the kids breakfast. Laughing at his look of horror when she suggested he try to do Kimber’s hair. He’d never understood how guys could just walk away from the job, but now… Now he knew.

And he didn’t know what to do.

“No fucking clue,” he said.

“Can I ask you a question?” Jase asked.

Chris frowned. Since when weren’t they completely honest with each other? “Yeah, man. Always.”

“Why do you still do it?”

“Do what?”

“Go after the target.”

He drew a blank. He didn’t know how to answer the question.

Jase sat forward in the recliner and rested his elbows on his knees. “I loved it—Special Operations. Being a badass. Following the intel, assessing the objective, and taking down the target. It was a rush. Until I realized it was one huge fucking self-licking ice-cream cone. We weren’t making a difference. We weren’t even fighting a bad guy. We were fighting a guy who was defending his country—his home. It wasn’t anything any of us wouldn’t have done if the situation was reversed. I joined the Army to make a difference, but I ended up not liking the difference I made.

“I’m not saying that’s the case with you,” he continued. “But why do you still do it?”

Chris rubbed his hand over his head, rolling Jase’s words over in his mind. “I guess it was the same. Didn’t really have a plan when I got out and started college. Figured I take a few classes and figure out what I was going to do with my life. Go into management or something. All those leadership skills I picked up as an NCO,” he scoffed.

“This girl I was dating, her little sister went missing. Local cops chalked it up to a runaway, but this girl swore up and down her sister wouldn’t run away. They were close and if there was anything going on, she’d have known about it. Her parents took the girl’s phone to the local FBI field office and begged them to look it. They found a whole bunch of hidden apps. She’d been lured out, probably trafficked.”

He took another drink. “Right in the middle of fucking America. How does that happen? Girl I was seeing dropped out and went back home. I looked into joining the FBI. Had no interest in being a cyber analyst, but special agent? Fuck, yeah. That was right in my wheelhouse. Declared pre-law as my major and the rest is history.”

“And now?” Jase asked.

Chris stared into the cold fireplace. “And now, I’m where I was when I got out of the Army. When the Southern Anarchists are gone, another gang will fill the void. The drugs won’t stop, the guns won’t stop, and families losing their kids won’t stop.” He looked at Jase. “So what difference am I making?”

“When I started V.E.T. Adventures I just wanted to stop one guy from killing himself the way Tony did. Just one. If I could do that, I’d be a success. The difference we make doesn’t have to be huge. Doesn’t have to be epic. It can just be one guy.” He held up his index finger. “But that guy—he’s got a wife. Friends. Parents. Maybe kids. So that one difference can ripple out and affect dozens of people.”

“I get it, but why are you telling me this?”

Jase nodded, as if psyching himself up for what he said next. “I’m expanding V.E.T. Adventures. I’m partnering with Denise to pair guys who come through my programs with dogs she has and I got a subcontract with a Veterans Affairs outreach program.”

“That’s great,” Chris said. “Congrats.”

“Thanks, but it means more work and more time away from Bree. I’ve been considering taking on a partner—someone who understands the mission and how important it is. Someone who wants to really make a difference. Normally, I wouldn’t have considered asking you, but…things being what they are…”

“What do you mean?”

Jase leaned back in his chair. “Something’s off with you. I don’t think it’s this case, because things were going off before you left. I think you’ve lost your purpose.”

Had he? He was conflicted, that was for sure. He wanted to bring the Anarchists down. Wanted to give his agents’ families closure. Stop one more little girl from being taken from her family. But the void they created would be filled by another gang. Maybe one smarter and harder to take down.

“What are you saying?”

Jase pulled at his short beard. “Would you consider coming on as my partner? Not trying to make the decision to transfer harder, but maybe it’d be something you’d consider.”

Shock didn’t even begin to describe his reaction. Being a badass door-kicker was pretty much all he’d ever done. It was what he knew. In the Army and the FBI. Could he be satisfied doing a job where all he did was camp and hunt? Hell, he did it a lot in his off-time anyway. He’d seen the change in a couple of guys who went on repeat trips, how the tension and anxiety would lessen over time. Jase made a difference. Maybe not the difference Chris thought he’d make by joining the FBI, but was it more important to stop bad guys from doing bad things or remind good people what they had?

Accepting the offer meant staying. It meant not leaving Denise. It meant lazy weekends together with Kimber and Kaden. The longing for normalcy and Rockwellian bliss was almost debilitating in its intensity.

It also meant giving up the only identity he’d held as an adult.

“When do you need an answer?”

“No rush. Think it over. I can handle things until you know which way you’re going to go.”