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

I returned from the Laundromat to find the entire cabin wiped down and the twin beds we’d been using pushed back into their original positions. The trash was in the bags from the Chinese restaurant and the hardware store, and stacked by the door.


“We’ll dump the contents in various dumpsters, then drive back through here and chuck the bags,” Mark told me. “No one will be surprised to see them here, or question it. Give me a sheet.”


I handed him a fitted sheet, then took another one and began working on a bed neither of us had used. If it should prove necessary, it would further muddy the scene.


The sheets were so wrinkled from being stuffed into a pillowcase that we didn’t even need to do anything extra.


Chapter 142