Page 150 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

“The same barn where the wiring failed?” Hugo’s fully leaning against Pell’s shoulder now, the opposite of the relaxed guy he was two seconds ago.

A micro expression flickers across Pell’s face—anger, maybe, but it’s just as likely to be boredom or hunger or the mental math on how he’d incapacitate all of us if he needed to make a quick escape.

“Same barn.” Pell presses back just as hard, creating an isometric standoff.

Hugo plants his feet and leans harder. “Yet here we are a week later, and you’re just now getting around to fixing it?”

Pell’s boots start a slow slide across the linoleum. He takes his ever-present baseball out of a pants pocket, tossing it up and catching it, as if he and Hugo aren’t in some weird macho standoff.

“Been out of town.” He tosses the ball again.

“That’s it?” Hugo grunts as his shoulder drops three inches. “She almost died.”

“She’s a smart girl.” Pell’s voice shows no strain, and his feet stop sliding. “She knows to check her equipment first.”

“She is right here,” I say testily. I wasn’t expecting an apology from Pell, but I also wasn’t expecting my boyfriend to go all caveman on him.

Hugo’s starting to sweat. “Can you at least install redundant power?”

“Already done.” Pell palms the ball and adjusts his hat. “The Alsop sisters pay well.”

Hugo’s boots slip a full twelve inches. “The fuck did you sa⁠—”

“Pell!” Felicity snaps. “Quit trying to joint lock my future brother-in-law! And Hugo, quit trying to knock my future prison pen pal on his ass!”

Both men freeze, then Hugo mutters a petulant, “Sorry,” and steps away abruptly, rubbing his wrist. Pell tosses the ball one more time and strolls to the chair on the opposite side of the table from us, his face choirboy innocent.

“Who taught you about joint locks?” I ask Felicity.

“I dunno.” She slides back into the seat next to me. “Probably saw it on Dateline. Who told Pell about Mom?”

We both look at him.

“I dunno,” he says. “Watcha cookin’, Quinnie?”

“Your balls,” she answers without turning, maintaining the steady rhythm of her knife as she thwacks through potatoes.

“Oh!” Felicity straightens her floppy bun. “Quinn, if you’re Pell’s chemist, does that mean you made the drunk spray we were going to use on Marcus Navarro?”

“That’s mine,” Quinn says. “How long until onset?”

Fi deflates. “Rue didn’t end up needing it.”

“Damn,” Quinn says as she transfers the potatoes to the pot. “I was hoping for some field reports.”

Pell has the baseball back in his hands. “I told you, Quinnie, you can test anything you want on me anytime.”

“And I told you that I’d inject cyanide directly into your eyeball if you keep calling me that.”

He tilts his head and spins the ball. “Hot.”

As Quinn mutters darkly in a language I don’t recognize, I turn to Hugo and murmur, “Well? Did you get all that out of your system?”

His eyes are still flinty. “You almost died.”

True, but I’d rather not find out what happens if we keep pressing the man at the end of the table, so I slide my hand into his. “I will never again not check my equipment before a mission.”

“Check it all twice next time.” He kisses me again, and my stomach erupts into excited butterflies despite having spent the past week mostly naked in Hugo’s bed.