Now it was Robin’s turn to look questioningly at Cosmo.
Who shrugged. “Dream team,” he pointed out. “Sign me up.”
“But... aren’t you just here for the weekend?” Robin asked. Cos took leave—liberty it was called in the Navy—and zoomed up to LA from San Diego whenever he could. Which was whenever SEAL Team Sixteen was stateside.
“Not exactly,” Cosmo said. “I’d been meaning to tell you and Jules... I, um, I’m out.”
“No way!” Robin couldn’t believe it. “You left the Teams?” Holy,holyshit...
Cos nodded. “I did. I pulled the plug and retired.” He laughed a little. “Hmm. Weird to say that. I haven’t told many people yet. I didn’t think I’d ever leave, but...”
He’d left for a lot of the same reasons that Jules had left the Bureau. It had been a hot topic of discussion in Cos and Jane’s household since last November’s election.
“God, I’m sorry,” Robin said. Now it was his turn to reach out and touch Cosmo, his hand on the other man’s arm.
“I am, too. But... here I am.”
“Welcome to the civilian sector,” Robin said, and with a swoosh, a text from Jules finally appeared. “Safe,” he read aloud. “Oh, thank God.” Swoosh. “Call Cosmo.”
Robin used his thumbs to swiftly type his reply, which herecited for Cos’s benefit. “I’m with him right now. Still at the studio.Where should we go?”
Swoosh.Good question. Hang tight.
Hang tight, Robin could and would do. But while he was hanging tight, he sent Jules a text filled with a thumbs up, a heart, and anI love you.In this crazy world in which they lived, he couldn’t say that often enough.
Jules zapped him back an emoji heart.
Robin put down his phone as he turned back to Cosmo. “Okay. Let’s get into this. Have you ever heard of an old school Hollywood TV producer named Milton Devonshire?”
“Ugh,old schoolHollywood? Is it too late to back out? Run home screaming to Jane and Bill?”
“Dream team,” Robin reminded him.
Cosmo sighed heavily. “Right. No, Rob. No, I have not heard of Milton Devonshire, but I think I already hate him.”
Robin laughed. “Yeah, well, settle in, because there’s a long, weird story here.”
“Oh good,” Cosmo said, laughing, too. “Long and weird. My favorites.”
As Robin laughed again, Cos reached out and touched him again on the shoulder—another brief but solidEverything’s okayalong with aGood work getting through that. And Robin realized that just as Jules had been with Sam through whatever danger they’d just encountered, he hadn’t been alone either. And damn, did he appreciate that.
“Okay,” he told his brother in law, “so TV mogul Milton Devonshire has a son named Milton Devonshire Junior that we will call, for clarity’s sake, Wig-Milt....”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jules: Age Seventeen
Connecticut
“You can get it in Europe, but in Mexico...? Apparently the drug is widely available,” Jules said.
“Like, you can just walk into a pharmacy and buy it?” Tom was aghast.
“Like,Hello, in which aisle can I find your flunitrazepam?” Belle asked.
As Jules had filled them in on the detailed info he’d gotten from Mr. Harrison, they’d all stumbled over the five-syllable monstrosity until Hobbit phonetically wrote out the drug name in marker on the evidence board, right in the very top left corner.
“Yeah, I honestly don’t know if that’s whatwidely availablemeans, or if it simply isn’t hard to find a dealer in a dark alley who’ll sell it to you cheap,” Jules admitted. “Bottom line, it’s easy enough to get.”
