That was a setback, but now that I had access to my accounts again—and a steady income from both the podcast and the work I was doing for Sinclair Security—I’d been shopping for a new van. Mostly when curled up in bed with Eli, scrolling on my tablet, him looking over my shoulder as we debated the relative merits of Rams versus Sprinters, how many feet long, and what I’d do differently on the inside. Especially considering that for the first time since I’d started this gig, it looked like I’d have a copilot on my research trips.
“Are you sure?” I’d asked him as we scrolled through another listing, this one promising. Rebuilt engine. Stripped interior. No rust. “I know your job’s demanding. You’ve been sticking close to home for now, but that won’t last forever.”
He’d grinned at me, his dark eyes lit from within. “My job is what I want it to be,” he said. “I spent a lot of years working around the clock, not taking R and R, going from one assignment to the next because I wanted the adrenaline and the challenge, and because I didn’t have a reason to slow down.”
“Yeah, but you’re not going to walk away from the adrenaline and the challenge. It’s part of you.” I knew him well enough by now to say that with certainty.
“It is,” he said, pressing a kiss to my cheekbone. “But I’m going to spread it out a little bit.” He waited, eyebrows raised. “If you’d rather do these trips alone,that’s different.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that. I’d love to have you go with me. I’ll probably drive you nuts sometimes. I get back to the van after a day of interviews, and all I want to do is talk everything out, but I’ve never had an audience.”
“I’ll be your audience,” he said. “Helping you work through the pieces of a puzzle while we camp out in your van sounds like fun to me. Anyway, you don’t spend all your time on the road.”
“No, definitely not,” I said.
“We’ll make it work. Sometimes we’ll have to make compromises, but, you know, that’s life.”
“Exactly.” I plucked the tablet from his hands and scrolled through the listing again.
“We should go see that one tomorrow,” he said. “And listen, I talked to the team and to Cooper and his brothers about the garage out back.”
“Yeah?” I raised my eyebrows, hoping he was going to say what I thought he might say, but not wanting to expect it.
There was a space tacked on to the back of the barracks—a combination of a storage warehouse and a garage. You could drive into it, but it wasn’t meant for regular parking. It would, however, be the perfect place to rebuild a van.
“They said we can rearrange some of the shelves,” Eli continued. “And when you find a van, you’re welcome to work on it in there. And then if the space is good for that, once you’re done, we may transition it to a regular repair shop for equipment, stuff like that.”
“Really? That would be amazing,” I said. Figuring out where to work on the van had been the piece of the puzzle I hadn’t been able to sort out. I’d done the first one in my parents’ driveway, but that was states away. And as much as I’d loved building the van with my dad, I didn’t want toleave Eli for as long as it would take to get ready to hit the road.
“You’ll have plenty of people around to lend a hand,” he said. “And maybe we can talk your dad into coming out for a visit.”
I loved that idea. Part of what had made the first van special was all the time I’d put in shoulder to shoulder with my dad. I had a feeling with this one—building it basically surrounded by Eli’s family—I wouldn’t have a lack of helpers.
I still grieved my first van, still flinched when I thought of the photographs the detective had shown me of the burned-out shell that had been meant to be my coffin.
But that was the past. Sylvie’s Van: Version Two was going to be fun.
I clicked the save button on the listing and tossed the tablet to the end of the bed, safely out of our way, before turning to Eli. “I’ll make an appointment to go see that one tomorrow. I think it’ll be big enough for both of us. We already know we can handle a small space together.”
Eli glanced around. As he’d said, the space was bigger than a van. The rooms at the barracks weren’t small, and this was one of the larger ones, with a king-size bed and enough room for a couch and an armchair on the other side, along with a walk-in closet and a generous bath.
“We’re all alone in the building,” Eli murmured in my ear, flipping me to my back, pushing the straps of my nightgown down off my shoulders. “Half the team is on assignment, and the other half is still at the office, so you can be as loud as you want.”
“I’m not loud,” I giggled as he nipped the curve of my neck.
“That’s what you think.”
His hand slid down my side, fingertips digging into my ribs in just the right way to make me shriek with laughter.
“Eli—” His name dissolved into giggles as his other hand slid down to clamp just above my knee. “You’re going to pay for that,” I threatened—an empty promise—because while Eli and I shared some skills, mainly in the puzzle-solving department, and he was teaching me a little self-defense when we had the time, I was no match for his hand-to-hand skills.
He caught my wrists in his grip and held them over my head, his tickling fingers hitting my ribs, behind my ear, my elbow—every spot he’d discovered over the last month. His mouth closed over my nipple, and my laughter became a gasp.
And I proved that Eli was right. When I wasn’t worried about our housemates hearing anything, I could be very loud.
I didn’t regret a single scream.
We didn’t endup getting the van I’d bookmarked. The seller had been a little dodgy about the condition of the transmission. Eli didn’t like the feel of him, so we’d walked. He’d slid his arms around my shoulders and given me a comforting hug.
