“What?” Nick asked. The roar of the ballpark made it hard to hear, so he tipped his head closer to the boy.

“Your convention speech was way cooler and so was what happened afterward.” That was the night Scotty told them that he’d like to live with them permanently, which ranked as one of the best moments in Nick’s life—and Sam’s.

Smiling, Nick slung an arm around Scotty. “This is pretty darned cool too. It’s okay to push it into first place.”

Scotty shook his head. “It’s a close second to that night.”

“I’ll give you that.”

Scotty looked up at him with a loving smile that nearly stopped Nick’s heart. He’d had no idea it was possible to love so deeply until Sam and Scotty had come into his life. He kept his arm around his son as the third Giants hitter stepped into the batter’s box and Lind went into his famously contorted windup. How he ever managed to throw strikes out of that windup was a mystery to every baseball fan in America.

“He looks like Big Bird on acid,” Sam said dryly, cracking up everyone in the box.

The fans stood as one, roaring as the game came down to two more pitches from the best closer in baseball.

The snap of the second strike hitting the catcher’s mitt could be heard seven levels up in the skybox. Nick glanced at the scoreboard in center field where the pitch speed had been posted at 103 miles per hour. Holy shit. Lind was pulling out the biggest of the big guns for this final inning.

The volume in the park was earsplitting by the time Lind threw the second strike of the at bat.

To Nick’s left were Sam, her partner Detective Freddie Cruz and his girlfriend Elin, Detective Tommy “Gonzo” Gonzales holding his son Alex, Gonzo’s fiancée—and Nick’s chief of staff—Christina Billings, Sam’s dad Skip, and his wife Celia, Graham and his wife Laine, Terry O’Connor and his girlfriend, D.C. Medical Examiner Dr. Lindsey McNamara, the O’Connors’ daughter Lizbeth and her family, and Sam’s sister Tracy and her family.

Also enjoying the box seats were Sam and Nick’s assistant, Shelby Faircloth, and Nick’s friend Derek Kavanaugh, who’d brought his baby daughter Maeve. Nick was glad to see Derek getting out again after the devastating loss of his wife Victoria. Derek was talking to Shelby, who held Maeve and laughed with Derek at the baby’s antics. Derek seemed more relaxed than Nick had seen him since his life imploded, which was a welcome relief.