Mark Vincent has risen from senior special agent to Director of Interior Affairs in the WBIS. Lately, life has been sweet for him -- in addition to his promotion, he's found a partner in Quinton Mann, who can almost match his ability in the intelligence field, in spite of the fact Quinn's CIA. Mark has also found a condo in Alexandria with the help of Portia Mann, Quinn's mother, and it's closer to Quinn's town house than Mark's present apartment. Sweetest of all, Mark plans to take Quinn to his island in the Caribbean for the holidays.<br><br>Quinn's glad he has the holiday with Mark to look forward to -- something is going on at Langley, and he feels he's being kept out of the loop. To make matters even worse, useless missions and sleepless nights filled with nightmares are leaving him exhausted. But then his mother's life if threatened, and Quinn discovers the accident that resulted in her hospitalization was no accident. The obsessively self-absorbed Senator Wexler is involved, and while Quinn considers himself a civilized man, now he's out for blood.<br><br>Up until this point, Mark has stayed out of Quinn's CIA business. But hurting Quinn and those he loves isn't a smart move, and Mark has every intention of seeing Wexler pays. Quinn demands to come along, and while Mark isn't happy, he finally agrees, and they set out together to deal with the senator. There's just one catch: this will be the first time Quinn sees Mark at his deadly best, and Mark isn't sure how his lover will react.

Forever

Black Friday was the day everyone shopped to get the best buys they could before Christmas, and the stores were madhouses. Not that I knew this from personal experience, since if it happened to be one of those rare occasions when I was in the country, I still wasn’t dumb enough to go out on the roads that day. I’d heard Ms. Parker talking about it afterward, about the asshole drivers who’d tried to steal her parking spots and the fantastic buys she’d scored.


I had better things to do, and so did Quinn.


We were in my kitchen, and while I fried bacon and eggs for our breakfast, he brewed the coffee and toasted some whole wheat bread he’d insisted we buy. I didn’t see anything wrong with Wonder Bread—it built strong bones twelve ways, didn’t it?—but I’d been overruled.


Quinn’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the LCD screen and flipped it open. “Good morning, Mother.”


He listened for a minute before handing the phone to me.


Chapter 82