“That’s Captain Asshole to you,” Luke teased. With a ninja-like move, he feinted left and snatched the picture from Aldo’s shirt pocket. “Aha!”

“Please,” Aldo scoffed. “Like you didn’t know who it was.”

“What’s going on there?” Luke asked, dumping his box in Aldo’s lap.

Aldo pawed through it on principle and stopped when he got to the small stack of pictures. Harper and the dogs. Harper in the office with Beth and an even grumpier than usual Angry Frank. Harper and Gloria… A fist closed around his heart and squeezed. They had facemasks on and were making fish faces for the camera, and Aldo had never seen anything so damn beautiful in his life.

“Shit.” He’d been doing well. Not thinking of her every ten seconds. Staying focused on what needed to be done. “You think she’s doing okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Harper wouldn’t let her not be okay,” Luke told him, rubbing a hand absently over his chest. “I could really go for a beer or ten right now.”

“How about a run instead?” Aldo offered. “Nothing like a few miles choking on dust in heat that feels like you’re wearing a parka to get your head right.”

“Let me change.”

20

One month into deployment…

It was weird being back here. Back in the same gravel lot where she’d nearly lost her life a few short months ago.

But so much had happened since then. A lifetime in some ways, Gloria thought, deliberately turning away from the spot where she’d taken what she thought was her last gasping breath. She focused on the neon signs in the skinny windows and the music that was leaking out of Remo’s front door.

Different circumstances. Different life. She was an independent woman. Okay, so she was living with her mother, but she was working a full-time job and ready to buy herself a glass of wine with her first official paycheck, damn it.

Her ballet flats hit the planks of the front porch with conviction, and when she opened the door, it was to a jovial Benevolence happy hour, not a murderous monster.

Fortified, Gloria stepped into the Friday night party and made a beeline for the bar. She smiled at the whispers. She was giving them something else to think about. “Poor little Gloria Parker” was slowly being replaced with “that Parker girl who took over the Fourth of July.” She’d yet to do anything grand with the planning, but just volunteering was enough to get tongues wagging.

“Well, if it isn’t I Volunteer as Tribute,” Sophie said with a wink when Gloria slid onto a barstool. “What’ll it be?”

Sophie was pink-cheeked and hustling behind the bar, as much a Friday night staple in Benevolence as the band that crowded onto the tiny scrap of stage.