Olive leaned over the table and pointed at an apartment listing. "How about that one?"

Peter looked up from the paper and glared at her. Three weeks after he'd abandoned any pretense of playing along with the organization's training program, he'd been handed a thick manila envelope containing his new identity. Peter King was now sleeping on a couch at his friends' apartment in Mattapan while trying to find his own place to live.

The proximity was grating on all of their nerves.

Peter batted Olive's finger away. "How can you even read that? It's upside down."

She shrugged. "It's not a bad location."

"No garage." Peter pushed the paper away from him. "I'm never gonna find anyplace I like."

Nick looked up from his GameBoy. "You're too fuckin' picky."

Olive tapped a finger against the table. "You should let my property management group find someplace for you."

Peter wrinkled his nose. "Your what?"

"Oh, I've got a bunch of real estate, and they take care of it all for me, manage the leases, find new stuff to buy. That sort of thing."

Peter shook his head and pulled a serious face at her. "Olivia, are you a slumlord?"

She laughed. "No! I own office buildings mostly, a few rental houses. I've got one apartment complex, but it's a pretty nice one."

"So… what? This is part of your cover or something?"

"No. This is mine. They know about it, but they don't have anything to do with it. I didn't plan on it or anything, it just kind of happened. After I bought the beach house…"

"What?"

She swallowed hard and dropped her eyes to the table. "Oh."

"Olivia? You bought the beach house? Walter's beach house?"

She nodded and stared intently at her fingers as she picked at her cuticles.

Peter reached across the table and caught her hands, stilled them under his before she drew blood. "Why did you buy the beach house?"

She darted her eyes to Nick for a moment before looking down again. "I didn't want anyone else to have it."

"So you guys go to the beach for the weekend? That's fucking fantastic."

"No. Peter. We haven't. We haven't been there since before…" She pulled her hands out from under his and curled her fingers in, digging her nails into the top of her thumbs. The pain flickered across their connection and Peter grabbed her hands again.

"Stop that." He frowned at her. "So it's just sitting empty?"

"Someone from the management group goes in and cleans and takes care of the yard and stuff once a month. None of the appliances are plugged in or anything, but they keep the furnace on so the pipes don't freeze. I had new windows and storm shutters installed last year."

"But you never go there?"

She shrugged, and Peter could feel despair rolling off of her like waves.

"It didn't seem right to go there without you," Nick said.

Peter looked over at him. "What about the house in Cambridge?"

Nick shook his head. "We thought about it, but there really wasn't anything left after the fire."

Peter swallowed against the unexpected tightness in his throat.

"We can go sometime. If you want." Olive pulled her hands away again. "To the beach house, I mean."

"No." He pushed away from the table. "Call your… whatever. Have them find me someplace to live."

Olive's property manager was a thirty-something woman named Elena. She worked out of a modest office in Dorchester. The number of large men in ill-fitting dark suits made Peter think that real estate was perhaps not her only business. She raked her eyes over Peter and wrinkled her nose. The look she gave Olive from under her bright red bangs was dubious at best. "Friend of yours?"

"Yeah, something like that."

She was friendly, though, listened to what Peter wanted, what Olive said Peter wanted, and offered a variety of options.

Too many options, really. Peter was tired of being driven around town, listening to Olive and Elena bicker incessantly. He wished Nick were there, because he could at least distract her. Nick had left the apartment early that morning after his pager had gone off that morning, muttering a terse, "Work," on his way out of the door.

They were in an older neighborhood that was a mix of residential and business. He could hear the steady roar of the expressway a block away, and just faintly smell the ocean beyond it. There were three Thai restaurants within walking distance. The apartment was on the third floor of a brick building, over an empty retail space that had once been a dress shop.

It was small and dusty. Peter thought it had been empty for a while. There was a pile of phone books in one corner.

Olive wrinkled her nose and looked around the little apartment. "This place is a dump." She looked over her shoulder at her real estate agent. "What the hell, Elena?"

"It needs a bit of cleaning, but the garage downstairs comes with it. Off-street parking for one car in addition to the one-car garage. That's not exactly easy to find unless you want a free standing house, which he didn't."

The window looked over the intersection at the front of the building. The glass was old and wavy, distorting the view of the building across the street.

"Yeah, but this place is awful. He doesn't want to live here."

Peter turned away from the window to look at the two women. "Uh. I'm right here. You don't have to talk about me like I'm not."

They both blinked at him in surprise. Elena recovered first. "Ah… I apologize, Mr. Bishop. I'm used to dealing with Ms. Dunham alone. If this isn't to your liking, we can certainly keep looking."

Peter scuffed the toe of his shoe in he dust on the floor. "It's kind of small."

"My uncle owns this building and the ah… business next door. In addition to the downstairs garage I can see if I can negotiate use of the mechanic facility next door provided you can be ah… discreet."

Peter blinked. "Your uncle owns a chop shop?"

She grinned. "He prefers automotive redistribution center."

"They have a lift I can use?"

"Sure."

Peter looked around again. "I'll take it."

Nick rapped his knuckles on the battered door to Peter's apartment. The hallway was dingy and smelled faintly of motor oil. Nick nudged a cardboard box open with his toe, and frowned at the collection of small engine parts.

Peter looked sleep-rumpled and a little dazed when he opened the door. "What?" He scratched at his shaggy hair and yawned.

"Nothing," Nick said, smiling. "Stopping by."

"It's early."

"It isn't, really."

Peter stepped back from the door and motioned Nick inside.

The room was considerably cleaner than what Olive had described, with freshly painted walls and well-cleaned floors. A flat-packed futon was still in its box under the window, along with a few bookshelves. A TV sat on the floor against one wall.

Nick held out the Toys R Us bag. "Here. Didn't wrap it or anything but happy house warming. I see Olive's been here."

"Yeah, she broke in and painted. And cleaned. She didn't have to do that."

Nick grinned. "The painting and cleaning or the breaking in?"

"Both, really." Peter ran a hand through his hair. "Look, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but where the fuck does she get off breaking into my apartment?"

"Yeah, sorry. She thought you'd say no. Are those curtains?"

"Yeah. Nick, is she okay? I mean, I remember her being batshit when we were kids…"

The amusement vanished from Nick face and was replaced by a carefully neutral mask. His eyes were hard, though, and Peter made a mental note of the line he'd just stumbled across.

"This hasn't been easy for her."

Peter nodded and ducked his head, swallowing around the lump in his throat.

"Hey." Nick crossed the tiny room. He hesitated a moment before laying his hand on Peter's shoulder. "This has been hard on all of us. I know she seems off, but she isn't. She just doesn't deal well with change."

Peter nodded again and stared at Nick's sneakers. Nick's hand slid from Peter's shoulder to his wrist, curling his fingers below the sleeve of Peter's shirt. Comfort bled over their connection, seeping though to Peter though Nick's grip on his arm. It buzzed pleasantly over his nerves, and he was smiling. Peter blinked a little groggily.

"How do you do that?"

Nick squeezed his arm before letting go. "Lots of practice. Come on, open your present."

Peter opened the bag, peering in for a moment before his eyes widened.

"Oh, awesome. Thanks!" He pulled the Nintento64 bag out and started at it.

"I got GoldenEye and Madden for it. I wasn't sure if you'd like Madden. Or any of it. I mean, you can take it back if you want something else."

"No!" Peter looked up quickly. "No, Nick, this is great. Thank you."

"You're welcome." Nick smiled. "Um. You want some help setting it up?"

The flutter of emotion was light against Peter's mind. "Do I detect a touch of ulterior motive here?"

"No, no." Nick rocked back on his heels and tried for an innocent look. He didn't quite pull it off. "Well. Yeah. Olive says I can't buy any more games for myself, that I have too many already."

"You're so whipped." Peter dropped to the floor in front of the TV and started pulling the console out of the box.

Nick sat next to him, opening the games. "Am not."

"Whatever. You can stay if you promise to help me put the futon together."

Nick grinned. "Deal."

Peter shoved his laptop onto the couch next to him, and slumped against the back of the couch. He really needed to get a desk or something. Propping his feet up on the coffee table and balancing the laptop on his thighs was alright for a little while, but it wasn't good for any long term work.

The tiny apartment was starting to seem like not such a good idea now, but he'd be dammed if he'd admit that Olive had been right. He wondered if he could get her to find him an actual office without somehow giving her reason to sneer at him with that I-told-you-so expression on her face.

He sighed and rubbed at his eyes.

He could just go to their apartment to work. Olive had offered tentatively that he was welcome to use the office they had set up in their spare bedroom. Nick hadn't been quite quick enough to mask the look of surprise on his face when she had.

Peter was glad to have something to do, even if it was just charming his way past receptionists to pilfer file cabinets and writing bullshit reports about it. He was mostly working on his own, although Nick came with him occasionally. When he did, they usually knocked the job off quickly and spent the rest of the day playing video games. Sometimes Olive came with Nick, and everything Peter tried to do was wrong and they spent the whole job fighting with each other. On those days he just finished whatever he was supposed to be doing and reported to their handler as quickly as possible.

That still sounded weird to his ears: handler. Like he was some sort of super-spy instead of a petty thief working for a domestic terrorist organization. An organization fueled by the sort of insanity that made it hard for Peter to buy into. Some of the stories that he was wringing out of Nick made Peter wonder if he and Olive weren't super-spies, and their belief in the organization was, if not absolute, then at least strong enough to pass as such.

Being around them was getting easier. The constant, low buzz of Olive's presence in his mind was getting easier to filter out, to reduce it to background noise. He thought he could probably block her out completely, but the thought of that filled him with terror. He didn't really want too examine that too closely. It was getting easier to slip around her and get at Nick and the warm comfort that he provided, and that wasn't something Peter allowed himself to think about, either.

It was still dark, and traffic on the street outside was just beginning to pick up. The apartment was full of soft, distant sounds of neighbors waking up, getting ready for work. The sounds were familiar, and Olive let her mind catalogue them absently.

Olive stretched and reached her arm across the bed, but Nick was already up, the space on his side of the bed cold. She burrowed back under the blankets and clutched Nick's pillow to her chest. She dozed back off immediately. She wasn't sure how long she slept, but the next time she opened her eyes, light was filtering past the curtains and Nick was standing in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee. Olive pushed herself into a setting position and rubbed her eyes.

Nick offered the coffee to her and sat on the edge of the bed. "Sam's got something for us."

"Mmm."

"You sleep okay, sleepy thing?" Nick slipped his hand under the blanket and curled it around her ankle.

Olive sipped the coffee and looked over the rim of the mug. "Mmmhmm."

Nick grinned. "Not talking today?"

She stuck her tongue out at him.

Nick tilted his head slightly. "I was thinking we could go get Peter, bringing him with us on this."

Olive wrinkled her nose. "He's a pain in the ass to work with."

"And you're not?"

Olive punched Nick in the shoulder.

"Seriously, Olive, he's good in the field," Nick said. "He reads people really well."

She sighed. "Yeah. I know."

Nick made an incredulous face at her.

"I do!" She drained the last of the coffee. "Just… not this, okay? We'll take him with us on the next job."

"Alight." Nick squeezed her ankle before standing up. "Come on, go get ready."

She stood and brushed the curtains aside from the window, stretching up on her toes. "Looks kinda cold. I'll drive."

"Parking'll be a bitch."

"Better than freezing to death on the back of your bike." She grinned at him over her shoulder.

Nick caught her around her waist and pulled her into a hug. "Hey."

She turned in his arms and looked up at him through her eyelashes. "Hi."

"You're feeling better."

"Yeah." She nodded and smiled. "It's better now that he's not there."

"Good." Nick kissed the tip of her nose. "I missed you."

Olive tightened her arms around Nick's chest.

An older man was browsing the case of watches when Nick and Olive got to the antique shop. They wandered the store, pointing out oddities until he left. A delicate mechanical dragonfly caught Olive's attention, and Nick smiled at her wonder.

Sam held up a small, folded piece of paper. "As it turns, I didn't have to look far from home. Your Mr. Devon is convalescing in a clinic that is rather central to my… operation."

Olive's forehead creased in confusion. "He's at a ZFT clinic?"

"Not. Exactly."

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Ah."

"I don't really want to have to move this particular establishment, so I would appreciate your discretion in this matter. That is to say, please don't blow the place up."

"Of course." Nick took the paper and tucked it into his pocket. "In and out, no one will even know we're there."

Nick paused outside the door to Devon's room, one hand on Olive's arm to still her. The hallway was dark, and the building gave the appearance of being deserted. The doors to all the rooms were closed save one, and the makeshift nurses' station at the end of the hall was empty. That Sam had called ahead made Nick uneasy, but there wasn't much they could do about it now. They stepped into the room.

The man in the bed watched them with barely-open bloodshot eyes. Bandages covered most of his skin, sickly yellow pus oozing out form the edges. His voice was raspy. "Figures. Knew coming here was a bad idea. Jones send you to finish me off?"

They hid their shock well. Nick was the first to recover. "We don't work for Jones. There a reason he'd be sending someone after you?"

Devon barked out a laugh that dissolved into a hacking cough. "No idea, seeing that I'm as good as dead. Bastard said it was safe, that nothing was gonna happen to me. He said that it was gonna be easy money. Knew it was too good to be true."

Olive stepped closer to the bed. "Mr. Jones has a habit of misleading people."

"You ain't kidding."

"Mr. Devon, my partner and I would like to have words with Mr. Jones about this and other of his enterprises," Nick said. "He's a difficult man to contact."

Devon pushed himself up, half-sitting against the pillows. "Hand me that water, would ya, doll?"

Olive glared but handed him the glass.

"Look, I'd give you that fucker's home address if I had it, but all I've got is where we would meet up, where they stored things. Warehouse outside of Worcester, right off the 20."

"What were you doing?"

"Reaching into a box. No shit. We'd take the thing to a building, and it'd take for fucking ever for them to set the thing up. It'd make this horrible sound, then I'd reach in and grab whatever's in there. Mostly weird shit I don't know what it was, but one time, it was a gun. Like from a cartoon or something. I thought it was a toy, but those fuckers that worked with Jones got real excited. After that, it was almost always the guns. They set me up with a guy who was buying them."

Devon started coughing again and slumped back into the bed. "Guess that was what they were after, some fucking cartoon guns. I thought I just had a cold at first, but then I started getting these sores on my hand. Jones said it would go away, but they kept spreading. Ain't no one's said anything, but I know I'm dying."

Nick stepped closer to the bed. "What's the address of the building?"

"You find Jones, you gonna kill him?"

Olive met Devon's eyes. "Yes. Slowly."

Olive strode down the hall, and Nick could feel her mentally inventorying the guns and ammo in the trunk, felt her mind racing ahead.

"Olive. Olive, just wait."

"We need to stop him. We need…"

"Olive!" He caught her arm and pulled her to a stop. "If we rush in, we're gonna get killed. We've got to know what their security is like at least."

"Fine. We'll stake it out a few nights…"

"No, Olive, we'll give the address to Clive and let him handle the surveillance."

"We can do our own surveillance!"

"Olive, we have the resources of the entire organization. We can let them do the damn surveillance."

She clenched her jaw and glared at the ground for a moment. "Fine."

"We don't have to do everything on our own."

She sighed and looked up at the lead-gray sky. "I know."

Olive was standing by the ocean. She was small again, young. The stars in the night sky were dim, hidden behind scuttling clouds, and the water that lapped over her bare feet was as cold as ice. When she tried to back away from the water, she sank into the sand. Its freezing weight crept over her feet to clutch at her ankles. She lost her balance and fell to the ground and the water washed over her. Her nose and mouth filled with sand and salt water, leaving her coughing. She turned and clawed at the beach, but the sand was sharp and tore her hands. In the far distance, warm lights promised safety she'd never reach.

Olive jolted awake. Her heart was pounding, the sound of her pulse rushing in her ears. She could feel the remnants of Peter's dream crawling in her mind, feel the grip of the dream on his mind and shuddered with his terror. She eased along their connection and shook him awake before retreating back to her own mind.

Beside her, Nick grumbled in his sleep, and she leaned over to kiss his shoulder. She molded herself along his back, and waited until he stilled, until his sleeping mind was quiet again. The warmth of his skin was comforting, and she could feel the threads that bound their minds together. She nuzzled the back of his neck. The temptation to stay in bed was strong, but there was no way she'd get back to sleep at this point, and staying there would only wake Nick up.

She rolled out of bed and pulled on warm pajamas, the fuzzy black ones that Nick had bought for her. The apartment was chilly, and they needed to prod maintenance again about the furnace. She took her laptop to the living room, and spread reports on the floor around her. She turned on the TV and muted it, silent infomercials flickering at the edge of her vision. She pulled the red and black Northeastern blanket off the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders.

She'd nearly lost herself in the numbers when she felt a prickling between her shoulder blades and turned her head towards the door. She could feel Peter there, hesitating in the hallway. He felt lost and hopeless.

When she got to the door he was already leaving, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, shoulders slumped.

She called softly to him and he turned back at the end of the hallway. "Peter."

"Ah. Shit, Olive. Sorry it's so early. I didn't mean to wake you up."

"It's okay. You didn't. Well, I mean, you did, but it's okay."

He wandered back down the hall and stopped in front of the door. "Uh. Can I come in?"

"Oh! Yeah. Sorry."

They stood just inside the door and watched each other for a moment before Olive moved to the kitchen. She felt Nick stirring in the bedroom, and opened the refrigerator to peer inside.

"You want breakfast? Nick can cook something for us."

"Nah. Not hungry." Peter sat at the table and toyed with the saltshaker.

Olive sat across from him and watched his hands. "You have that dream a lot."

He didn't look surprised. "Yeah." He cleared his throat. "I've been having it since I left. That and the one with the fire."

Olive nodded and Peter tilted his head.

"You've seen that one, too?"

"Yeah."

He watched her, felt along the outskirts of her thoughts. "Do you see all my dreams?"

The shake of her head was abrupt. "Not all of them. Just the really strong ones."

"What other ones have you seen?" She wouldn't meet his eyes. "Olivia."

She stared at the table and counted the little lines in the fake woodgrain. "You dream about me sometimes."

Peter felt himself blushing at the confirmation of what he suspected.

"I don't see them on purpose," she whispered.

He nodded. "I know. I'm sorry."

Nick paused in the doorway before entering the kitchen. He brushed his hand across Olive's back before he busied himself making coffee. By the time he sat down, handing mugs of coffee to each of them, Peter thought he probably wasn't going to die of embarrassment. He sipped his coffee then went ahead with what he'd come there for in the first place.

"I wanna go to the beach house."

Nick squinted through the rain that was lashing against the windshield. "Shit."

Peter sighed from the backseat. "Man, I'm sorry. I didn't think to check the weather before we left."

Olive glanced over the seat at him and shrugged a little. "It's okay. We didn't check either. We're almost there."

They had taken a few wrong turns, the driving rain and the length of time since their last visit making their navigation unusually faulty. They pulled into the wide sandy driveway and sat in the car, peering through the rain.

Peter leaned forward, sticking his head between the two front seats. "There are lights on."

"Yeah, it's a timer system that Elena designed. It randomizes the lights so it looks more like someone's actually living there."

A gust of wind shook the car. It was cooling off rapidly and Peter shivered.

Nick turned his head slightly, watching Peter from the corner of his eye. "We going in?"

Peter wanted to say no, that this had been a bad idea, but he felt trapped by the storm. He nodded.

They ducked through the rain and clustered tightly around Olive as she unlocked the door.

Peter looked around, feeling lost despite the familiarity. It felt like far more than three years since the last time he'd been here. It felt like a lifetime. Behind him, Olive spoke softly.

"Everything's more or less how it was."

Nick stepped past her, rubbing his hand across the small of her back. "I'll go turn the furnace up. It's freezing in here."

Peter watched him disappear down the hall. Olive drifted to the window seat that faced the beach. She was walled off from him, just a dim, miserable shape at the edge of his awareness. She leaned her forehead against the cold glass and ignored him. Peter decided he could play along if that was what she wanted, and left the room without a word.

The cadence of the rain changed, rattling sharply against the windows. Nick glanced up from the kitchen table, then rose to cross to the windows. Olive and Peter had been staying at opposite ends of the house, and Nick had parked himself in the kitchen, sifting through old recipe cards. They were all handwritten, familiar. Someday he'd ask Peter if he could have them.

Nick squinted out into the storm and warmth spread along his back as Olive stepped close to him and rested her chin on his shoulder. "Where's Peter?"

Nick nodded towards the back of the house. "Walter's room."

Nick slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her against his side. She sighed, an unhappy little sound.

"It looks pretty shitty out there." Olive drew a spiral in the condensation on the window.

He nodded, watching her muted reflection in the steam-frosted glass. "Yeah, it's starting to freeze." He turned at a sound behind him to find Peter standing in the doorway.

Peter's eyes were red-rimmed and his voice was rough. "I dug out some blankets and stuff. I mean, because it's awful out there. We shouldn't try to drive back tonight."

Nick nodded. "Thanks."

"I found a box of pictures. Of us."

Nick followed Peter towards the back of the house, pulling a reluctant Olive along behind him. Peter had taken the dust cover off the bed and replaced it with photos. Nick picked one up; Peter and Olive were jumping in the surf, hands linked together and grinning. Olive's hair was still cropped short and Peter's was long and curly.

"Seals."

"Huh?"

"You and Olive were like seals. You were always in the water."

Olive held up a picture of Nick sticking his tongue out at the camera. "You were always a brat."

She sat on the edge of the bed. "I don't even remember Walter taking these. How are there so many pictures of us?"

"Guess we weren't paying attention," Nick said.

Peter crawled up on the bed and sat cross-legged, leaning against the headboard. "There aren't any pictures of Walter or mom or anyone else. I thought there might be some, but they're all of us."

Nick lay across in the end of the bed, resting on his side. "We tried to find stuff at the house, but everything was too badly burned."

Peter touched a finger to the edge of a photo. They were older; he thought it was only a couple summers before everything fell apart. The three of them were sitting on the steps of the back porch, looking out at the ocean. They looked unguarded. Happy. Peter could almost remember it.

Lightning strobed in the sky, followed by a crack of thunder that rattled the windows. The lights flickered erratically before going out.

"I didn't do that," Olive muttered sleepily.

Peter scooped the pictures back into the box and grabbed the blankets off the chair next to the bed. "You guys wanna sleep in here?"

Nick looked around at Walter's things still scattered over the surfaces of the furniture. "Not really."

Olive took a blanket from Peter and wrapped it around her shoulders.

They were all sleepy and tangled in each other's minds, and it clicked then, like when she and Nick were working and they didn't need words. They followed Peter down the hall to the room Nick and Peter had shared as kids. Nick pulled the mattress off the upper bunk, tossing the plastic dust cover aside. Peter already had his mattress off the lower bunk bed, and they pushed them together on the floor in the center of the room.

She and Nick settled on one mattress, spooned together under the blankets. Peter lay on his side facing them. Olive slipped her hand out from under the blanket and tucked her fingers into Peter's. They were asleep long before the storm had passed.

Olive bounced on her toes and watched the entrance of the warehouse. Peter watched her from the relative shelter of the overpass pylon. The wind had kicked up, blowing cold and fierce, biting through his clothing. They were wearing black, all three of them, like some sort of urban ninjas, which Peter thought looked ridiculously suspicious.

Peter also thought Olive looked ridiculously good in her ninja gear, but he made a point of keeping that to himself.

He tugged his cap lower over his ears and regarded the rundown building that was their target. The hired muscle loitering in front had traded shifts and it was just a matter of waiting now. Waiting for Olive to decide it was time to move, because apparently she called the shots in the field, and that made Peter bristle.

Olivia glanced over her shoulder at him and Nick. "Okay, when the guards settle in, we go in the front."

Peter made an annoyed sound. "The front? Who goes in the front of a building they're breaking into?"

"We do. We'll…"

"That's stupid. The front's in plain view of that building across the street. There's an entrance around the east side. We should go in there."

She turned to glare at Peter. "We're going in the front."

Peter turned to Nick. "You're okay with this?"

Nick's gaze drifted to the other building and went unfocused for a moment before he shrugged. "There's not really anyone in that building who's going to be paying attention to us."

Peter glanced at the building. "That's not the point. It's the principle of the thing. You don't just walk up to the front door."

"The principle? Peter, we don't have principles, we're here to find out where the guns are coming from and kill anyone who tries to stop us."

"Everyone has principles."

She made an exasperated sound and turned back to the warehouse.

Peter looked at Nick who was trying to hide the fact that he was smiling by rubbing his nose. Peter felt the shift in Olive's and Nick dropped his hand, face serious. Peter followed his attention to Olive. Her head was tilted, watching the guards closely. He felt Nick reach past them to circle his thoughts around the guards' minds.

And they were moving, Nick and Olive taking the lead. The streetlight flickered before dying, and they spread like shadows across the street. The two guards had retreated into the little circle of light that surrounded the door, but it died, too, as Olive closed on them. Peter could feel the suggestion of terror that Nick was projecting, and the guards in their blind panic never called for reinforcements before the pair was on them. Peter scrambled to get his connection closed before the guards' fear cascaded over to him, a feedback look from Nick that pulsed through Olive to him.

They were ruthless, and Peter knew this, but seeing it up close was disturbing and thrilling both. They waited until they were close to their targets before even lifting their guns. The guards had enough sense left to fumble for their weapons, but Nick and Olive stepped into the shelter of the doorway too quickly. The muffled pop of their silencers was almost simultaneous.

The ghost of panic left Peter jittery. He wondered how Olive kept that out, kept it from spreading to her own mind from Nick's. His hand was shaking slightly as he got to work on the locks, and the familiarity of the movement soothed him. He felt Nick and Olive step close behind him, a rear guard, and the last of the fear bled away.

The lock opened with a satisfying click, and they were inside.

Olive took point down the dimly lit hallway. She flexed her hand around the grip of her gun, and darted her eyes towards each doorway in turn. She felt Nick's presence at the back of her mind as he swept forward watching for resistance. Between them, Peter was a warm blur, holding his thoughts away from her. That was just fine. She was getting used to him, but he was still a distraction.

"Three in the room on the left." Nick's voice was barely audible, and Peter thought he felt the words in his mind more than actually hearing them.

Olive nodded in acknowledgement, and motioned Peter back. Nick fell into step behind her. They were in the room and firing before any of the three men looked up. The silencers reduced their shots to dull pops, and the third man barely had time to push himself away from the table before Olive rounded on him. Her shot caught him in the center of his forehead.

"Jesus."

She glanced back at Peter.

"Don't you like… question people?"

Nick looked over his shoulder. "Jones' men are exceptionally well trained. They won't tell us anything and there's a chance that they'll have some sort of ability that makes neutralizing them quickly a necessity."

Peter swallowed hard and stared at the pool of blood spreading from the back of the man's head. The calm disinterest radiating off of Nick and Olive both made him shiver.

Olive was staring across the room. "That's it."

An open-sided box sat on a tripod across the room. The framework gleamed in the dim light, like brass, and cables snaked off of it, winding across the floor to a table holding a laptop, then down again to disappear into a maze of generators towards the back of the room.

"That must be the box Devon was talking about," Nick said.

Olive glanced back towards the door and her eyes went unfocused for a moment. "The place is clear. We should see what else is here."

Nick tilted his head at the device. "Peter, do you think we can move that thing?"

Peter looked up from the cable he was following. "Maybe. This thing is hooked up to a massive power supply. Take me a bit to figure out how to disconnect it. I'll see what I can do."

"If you can't, we can call in a team to secure the site."

Peter nodded.

Olive was out the door and Nick trailed, turning back to Peter before he entered the hallway. "You okay here?"

Peter glanced at the bodies then at Olive's retreating form. "There's no one else here, right?"

"Nah, it's clear."

"Go. I'm good."

The mass of cables was a tangled mess, leading to three huge generators on the far side of the room. The ones that went to the laptop passed though a relay before connecting to the machine. Peter was tempted to turn the whole thing one, just to see, but Olive's description of the dying man made him abandon that. They'd have to get it somewhere isolated to figure out how it worked.

There was a soft sound behind him, barely audible, and without the accompanying pressure of someone's thoughts near his, Peter almost ignored it. He was just starting to turn when he caught the blur of movement, and ducked to the side.

His attacker was thin and pale, quick as Olive was, and Peter couldn't catch even the faintest hint of his thoughts. He swung a tire iron at Peter's head, barely missing, and Peter went for his gun.

The next swing caught his wrist and the gun tumbled away. Peter howled, felt pain and panic echoing back from Olive. He dove after the gun, but the bastard with the tire iron was fast, and brought it down on Peter's thigh. The crunching sound it made was sickening, and the pain was blinding.

Peter thrashed on the floor, just trying to get away and bumped into the tripod that the frame was on. He reached up, grasped the edge of it and tipped it forward onto his attacker. The frame hit the man's chest before striking the ground, splitting open and shattering the metal like it was glass. Sparks showered the room.

The man hissed, "You idiot."

The stench of burning electronics filled the room, and over the snap of electricity Peter could hear footsteps running towards them.

His attacker snarled then fled towards the back of the room. Olive was running after him, firing off shots that just missed their target. She made an inarticulate sound of rage, then dropped to her knees beside Peter.

"Peter?"

The panic in her voice cut through his pain enough to make him grate out, "I'm fine."

"Bullshit. Can you move? We've gotta get out of here." She pulled him so he was sitting up, and he curled forward, clutching his leg.

"Who the fuck was that?"

"One of Jones' men. We walked into a damn trap." Peter could feel the heat of her anger and the deep, sickening guilt that laced it. She got her arm under his and eased him up. "Come on."

Smoke was filling the room, and Peter winced when he coughed. He heard footsteps running towards them, Nick's voice yelling from the hallway.

"Out. Now."

Nick was on the other side of him and they hauled Peter to his feet. He bit back a scream.

Olive looked across Peter to Nick. "Front clear?"

"It is now."

They started towards the door when Peter grated out, "Grab the damn laptop."

Olive's eyes darted to the table, and she dropped her hold on Peter to retrieve it.

As soon as they were in the car, Olive fished around in the glove box, coming up with pills that Peter dry swallowed without question. His leg hurt like hell, but he was pretty sure that damage wasn't permanent. The blood that had soaked though the front of his jeans wasn't too much to be alarming. He shifted on the seat, trying to get comfortable and groaned when his knee thumped against the front seat. Olive hissed as his pain bled over to her.

Nick threw the car in gear, drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel. "We need to go to medical."

Peter jerked his head up at that. "No."

Nick shook his head. "Peter, you're hurt."

"No. I don't care. Don't take me back there." Peter was beyond caring about the pleading note in his voice.

"Peter…"

"Nick, please. Please don't."

Olive reached over the seat and took Peter's hand. "Nick, we can take care of him."

Nick shook his head, but headed to the apartment.

Olive helped him out of the car, and helped him limp towards the apartment. Getting up the stairs was a challenge; whatever pain medicine she'd given him was making his head swim. He was surprised at the amount of worry spiking off of her. He was surprised that he couldn't really push her out of his head, thoughts sliding along hers, unable to find purchase.

"Stop that." She propelled him towards the bathroom. She curled through his mind, easing comfort across their connection.

Nick got a first aid kit from the closet by the front door. "Pants off, dude."

"What, you're not even going to buy me a drink first?"

"Funny."

Nick's hands were at his belt, and for a dizzying moment Peter felt a hot wave of lust wash over him, uncertain if it was his or Olive's or just a reaction because he was so goddamn dizzy. He batted Nick's hands away and pushed his jeans down, yelping as they scraped over the swollen knot on his thigh.

The bruise was swelling, a goose egg under mottled, split skin. Blood was oozing from the split, and Peter nearly giggled at the thought that it looked like a little volcano. Peter thumped down onto the toilet, too dizzy to stand.

"Christ, Olive, what did you give him?" Nick tore open an alcohol wipe and Peter nearly screamed when he swabbed it over his leg.

"Vicoden. Maybe one too many. I didn't think he'd be such a lightweight."

"Hello. I'm right here." Peter waved a hand in front of Nick's face.

Olive caught Peter's hand. Nick prodded the skin around the cut and Peter hissed.

"Not very deep. You should be okay without stitches. Lemme clean it out and get it bandaged. Ol, go get an icepack for him. The swelling is pretty bad."

"I'm fine." Peter tried to stand up and Nick pushed him back down.

"Peter, for fuck's sake, stay still. You're worse than Olive."

Peter pointed at Nick. "You take that back, asshole."

"Dude, what happened to your hand?"

An ugly bruise was spreading over the back of it. Peter frowned. "I don't kno…owww!"

Nick prodded the bones of Peter's hand. "Don't think anything's broken."

"You're a terrible fucking doctor. Oh my god, that hurts." Peter tried to push Nick away from him, movement slow and clumsy.

Olive slipped back into the room and held the ice pack against the back of Peter's hand, trapping it under her own on his uninjured leg. She curled her free hand over the back of his neck and ghosted comfort over their connection, carefully unraveling the emotions to avoid his pain. He scrabbled over the link to pull her to him, clutching at the comfort until the pain was distant and unreal. The feeling circled back on their connection, a feedback loop that left them both glassy-eyed and blissful.

Nick taped a butterfly bandage over Peter's thigh and chuckled at them, keeping himself well-distant from their minds. "You two alright up there?"

Peter blinked slowly. "Holy shit."

The last of the barrier between them fell away, and Peter was dizzy with the rush of Olive's mind over his. For a moment the room wavered, became a chaotic blur of misplaced colors and sounds. It felt good, better than any high he'd ever had, better than he could imagine. The fit of her mind against his was perfect, echoed by the solid, amused presence of Nick on the other side of her. Things tilted back where they ought to be, but the bone-deep pleasure remained, and Peter wanted to claw at her skin to get more.

"Bed, guys. Come on." Nick helped him to his feet, and Olive tucked herself against his side. The hallway was too narrow for the three of them, so they shuffled sideways to the bedroom. Between them, Peter felt warm and sleepy, pain ebbing away to almost nothing. They eased him onto the bed and Olive curled against his side.

He felt safe.

"Home," he muttered.

Olive lifted her head from his chest and blinked at him, sleepy and confused. After a moment, she smiled, wide and genuine. She laid her head back onto his chest, and Peter could feel the weight of her mind go heavy with sleep. Nick curled against Olive's back and draped his arm over her to rest on Peter's stomach. He was nearly asleep when Peter tucked his hand into Nick's, and Nick smiled against the back of Olive's neck.

Peter stood in the narrow hallway and stared at the keys in his hand. They were on a keychain that had a cartoon cat with huge ears on it, from some show that Nick liked. Peter turned his hand over and frowned at the bruises on the back of it. They were just starting to fade, going sickly yellow along the edges, like the one on his thigh. His leg ached like hell, aggravated by the walk to Nick and Olive's apartment, since there was never any nearby parking. The walk had given him time to think over again what he had found on the laptop.

He looked at the keys again, shiny and new and stuffed them back in his pocket. After a few minutes, Peter knocked on the door.

Olive was dressed in dark dress pants and a gray button-down shirt. A matching suit jacket was draped over the back of the couch. She looked grim.

"I see you're all smiles this morning."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah, getting reamed by our handler is loads of fun."

"That bad?"

"Peter, Jones had found a way to make guns out of thin air and not only did we break it, we burnt the building it was in to the ground."

"Well, technically I broke the thing, and the building burning down wasn't anyone's fault, really."

Nick was still pulling a gray t-shirt over his head when he walked into the kitchen. "At least we've got the laptop. Nice call on saving that. I can't believe we forgot about it."

"About that." He licked his lips. "How well do you trust him?"

Olive wrinkled her nose. "Who?"

"Gaston."

Olive shrugged. "Well enough. Why?"

"That laptop. It didn't have information about the box or however Jones was getting them. It had stuff about you. Both of you. The weapons were bait."

Nick dropped into a chair and braced his elbows on the table. "To get us to the warehouse."

Peter nodded. "There's stuff about me, too. Progress reports. They knew I was working with you."

Olive shook her head. "Jones must have…" She trailed off and frowned at Nick.

Nick's eyes were serious when he looked at Peter. "He's got someone inside, doesn't he?"

"I don't see any other explanation," Peter said. "So with that in mind, how well do you trust Gaston?"

Olive's voice was small. "Do you think he knew?"

Nick said, "He did give us the assignment."

Peter tried to keep the feeling of betrayal that was rolling off Olive out of his mind. "Have you reported anything yet?"

"No details, just that it didn't go to plan." Nick reached across the table and took Olive's hand.

"He doesn't know about the laptop?"

Olive shook her head.

"Let's keep it that way."

"Peter, we don't lie to our handler."

"Someone tried to kill you. Someone with training that let them get close to you without you being able to tell that they were there. Someone who was trained like you are." Peter grabbed her hand and punched right through her defenses. "I am not going to lose you again, and I don't care who I have to lie to to keep you safe."

Olive's eyes went wide, and her mouth formed a little O. She curled her fingers around Peter's. She dropped her head after a moment.

"He's right, Ol."

She looked at Nick, then back to Peter. "We have to trust them. We don't have anyone else."

Peter's eyes were intensely blue as he leaned forward and squeezed her hand. "I'm not going anywhere. We have each other."