She didn’t look at him, keeping steady watch into the woods. “I’m not weak.”

“Never said you were.”

“I can do my arm myself.”

Cash shrugged, starting the process of binding her arm into a secure position. Her skin was silken, her arm toned. The girl had muscles, but not in a bulky way. A little deceiving. He liked it. Different from what she had been before: a little skinny, not flabby but no definition. Reaching behind her, he grabbed the sling and bent her arm in, careful to adjust the strap.

“Done.”

“Why are you being nice to me?”

“Shit, Nicola. I don’t know. I gotta figure you’re fucked in the head right now, as much as Roman and I are. True?”

She nodded. “You never told him?”

“What? About you and me?”

“Yeah.”

“That’d be a hell no. Hey, sorry your sister died, and, oh yeah. I was doing her on the side.”

“We were more than that,” she whispered.

Cash stretched his arms over his head, trying to alleviate the discomfort in his chest. Didn’t work. Instead, he leaned back on the table top and stared at the sliver of moon teasing the dark night. “Yeah, we were.”

A light breeze picked up. An owl hooted. Time floated by, until she also lay back on the table. He turned his head. Nicola was as stunning now, staring into the night sky, as she’d been in that pool years ago. “Life’s thrown a few curve balls, huh?”

“Did you ever think about what if?”

“Did you?”

“I did for a while. And then I drowned myself in work.”

“You going to tell me who you work for?”

“CIA.”

The CIA? Well, shit. Color him flabbergasted. “Not what I thought you were going to say.”

“You were thinking more like, FBI. Linguistics department?”

He laughed. “Yeah. Truth is, well, yeah.”

“I guess Uncle Sam thought I had too much to offer to stick me in a middle of nowhere Podunk town in witness protection when they found out I was fluent in, like, eight languages.”

“Eight? Come on, slacker. I thought it was more like twenty.”

She laughed. “Oh, now you’re counting dialects.”

It felt so familiar it made him want to tear his hair out. “You could say the same thing about me and Roman. Drowning ourselves in work. He never questioned why I was just as torn up about you as he was.”

“We’d been inseparable, the three of us, since we were kids.”

“True.” He took her hand in his and leaned them both up. The heat from her touch stayed with him after she drew her fingers away.

“I never told you this, but I actually had a crush on you way before college. Like sixth grade.”

He heard the smile in her voice. “Now you’re just making shit up. You need another favor? Cell phone privileges again, huh? Maybe you want the cute little gun you pointed at my head?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I do.”