“No, I want to see Atlas. And I don’t want him missing you.” Viv took in the row of crates and the watchful dogs, all of whom seemed perfectly content. The car was warm and smelled like fur and coffee. An agent sat in a booth at the rear of the car with his feet up, reading a magazine. He put it down when they came in, his eyes lighting with interest. She recognized him from the crew car. Joe Aiello. Thirty, dark and handsome, and he knew it.

“Hey,” Joe said, rising. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing.” Dusty crouched in front of Atlas’s crate. “Just came to get the boy.”

“You on shift?” Joe joined them, talking to Dusty but focused on Viv. “I don’t have you on the duty roster for tonight.”

“Nope.” Dusty attached Atlas’s short walking lead and stood up. Atlas bounded out and nosed her hand. “Just taking him to my cabin for the night.”

Joe glanced at Viv. “How’s the article coming?”

She smiled. He was a nice guy, not exactly pushy, but he’d let his interest be known earlier. “It’s great. You’ve all been super helpful.”

“I’m off in a few hours,” he said in what she was sure he thought was a casual tone.

“Maybe I’ll catch up to you and the other guys tomorrow,” Viv said. “I still want to hear about how you ended up in this division.”

Disappointment flickered across his face for a second and then he grinned. “Sure. Why don’t I give you my number, you can text me?”

“I think I’ll know where to find you.” Viv laughed and gestured to the car. “We’re kind of in our own little world here.”

Dusty thought about that as she walked Viv back to her cabin. They were in their own little world, on a train speeding through the dark in the middle of one of the least populated per capita areas in the country. If she was permanently transported from her life in DC to this train, nothing much would change for her. Other than her parents missing her weekly call, no one would even know she was gone. Her friends, more colleagues really, were mostly here on the train. Atlas was here. And now Viv. When she thought of Viv, though, she didn’t think of her the way she thought about friends. Friends were people you greeted, had casual words with, maybe even a beer. Friends weren’t people you told about growing up in a small town, where everyone knew you, and everyone formed expectations based on who your parents were and things like whether you stuttered or not. She’d already told Viv more about herself than she’d ever told a single person in her life. She’d never told her parents about the misery and humiliation at school, before she mastered the shyness that led to the stuttering, or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe when she’d gotten to the point where she didn’t care if other people liked her, the stuttering had started to go away. It didn’t matter now, at least not so much.

“Are you all right?” Viv asked quietly.

Dusty jumped a little, chagrined. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”

Viv slid her hand around Dusty’s forearm. “Hey, you know, he was just being friendly.”

“Funny, I was just thinking about friends. I don’t think he was being friendly. I think he was trying to ask you for, you know, a date or something.”

“Maybe. Probably.” Viv squeezed her arm. “Being friendly is usually the first step in that direction. But I’m not interested.”

Dusty unlocked her cabin and let Atlas enter first. Dave had left the night-light on above the dresser when he’d left, and the small room was dimly lit in a soft yellow glow. When she took Atlas off his lead, he immediately toured the room, sniffing under the bunk and in the corners and even putting his paws up onto the dresser to check out the top where Dave had stowed his shaving kit.

“What’s he doing?” Viv asked.

“Making sure we’re secure. That we have a safe den.”

Viv laughed, delighted. “He thinks of you like pack, right?”

Dusty nodded. “You meant it when you said you knew dogs.”

“Thanks, but actually I was thinking about wolves. I’m fascinated by their social structure. Have you ever seen that documentary about the guy who lived with wolves for two and a half years, eating and sleeping with them, like he was a wolf? Left his family—or maybe they left him.”

“I’ve seen it. Maybe a little extreme.”

“Oh, totally,” Viv said. “But fascinating just the same. I love how they work out who’s responsible for rearing their young and hunting for food. How they’re a family.”

Atlas lay down in front of the berth and watched them. Dusty scratched behind his ears and he sighed.

“You don’t think it’s weird, that I think of him like family?”

“Not at all.”

“You know,” Dusty said, “I don’t think about you like a friend.”

“No?” Viv’s tone was curious, not critical or upset. “How do you think of me, then?”

“As something special, something I don’t have a category for.”

“All right, no labels. But how about descriptions?”

Dusty pointed to the bag of food the steward had given Viv. “Any chance we could eat while I tell you?”

“Oh.” Viv laughed and passed the bag to Dusty. “I almost forgot about it.” She glanced down at Atlas. “What about him? Will he be upset if we eat in front of him?”

Dusty shook her head. “He knows he doesn’t eat people food. It’s important for his safety and his work that he only eats what I or one of the handlers feed him, and never food from the hand, the table, or anywhere else. He’d starve before he’d take food from a stranger.”

“God, I can’t even think about that. I understand why it’s necessary, but what if he got separated from you?”

“Then he’d find me, or one of us would find him. If I go down out there, I know the guys will rescue him, no matter what.”

Viv’s heart seized. Until now, she’d thought of her article as a sure-win popular piece, because everyone loved dogs. Well, everyone who wasn’t a cat person, at least. Maybe because attacks on the president were so rare as to be unthinkable, she’d never really considered the life-and-death nature of what Dusty and those like her did every day. How shallow of her. To Dusty, something that horrible was all in a day’s work. The thought of Dusty being injured left her feeling superficial and a little naïve. And beyond that, frightened. “Would you mind not saying that again?”

Dusty paused in the midst of taking the food from the bag. “What?”

“About you being hurt. When I think about it, it hurts me.”

“Hey, I’m sorry. You know, it’s not very likely.”

“I’m glad. Very glad.” Viv brushed Dusty’s cheek with her fingertips. “But I’d just as soon not think about it all the same.”

Dusty would have stood in that spot until she perished just so Viv would never move her fingers. She swallowed around the lump that developed out of nowhere in her throat. No one had ever looked at her the way Viv looked at her, as if she meant more than anything in the world. “Atlas isn’t going to let anything happen to me. He can tell a long time before me when there’s danger. So you don’t have to worry.”

Viv’s eyes glistened as she slowly nodded. “Fair enough.” She glanced down at Atlas. “And I expect you to look after her every day, all right?”

His ears flickered and he raised his muzzle, his jaws opening in a perfect approximation of a doggie grin. Her heart lightened at the sight, and she shook off the melancholy. “Hey, let’s eat. And you can tell me about why we’re not friends.”

“Deal.” Dusty handed Viv one of the plastic plates the steward had placed in the big bag along with containers filled with what looked like the makings of a gourmet dinner. He’d even included real silverware and linen napkins. A chilled bottle of white burgundy, a couple of sweating ales in a thermal sleeve, and a corkscrew completed the assembly. “Some picnic.”

Viv sat beside her, opened the bottle of wine, and filled her plastic wineglass while Dusty removed the cap on the ale with the bottle opener she found in the bag. Viv tapped her glass to Dusty’s bottle. “To our first picnic.”

“To spring and a real picnic on the grass.”

“And it can’t come too soon.” Viv sipped her wine thinking about spring, and how her emotions always veered from a little sad she wasn’t sharing the joy of fresh blossoms and new life everywhere with anyone special to the heady anticipation of possibilities yet to come. Maybe this year would be different. If Dusty was there to share it with her, she was certain it would be. She was likely making plans when she shouldn’t, but it felt so right she couldn’t deny herself the pleasure. “To spring.”

Dusty sipped her ale. She wasn’t the least bit hungry. All she really cared about was being near Viv, watching her smile, talking to her, sharing in her enthusiasm and energy. “You know what you were saying about Joe earlier?”

“About him being friendly?”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean that I didn’t want to be friends with you, but I don’t feel casual. I haven’t since the very beginning. Being with you feels a lot more than casual. I don’t think about my friends when I’m not with them…but I think about you.”

Viv swallowed hard. “Do you?”

“Pretty much all the time, except, you know, when I’m working.”

“I don’t want you thinking about me when you’re working. But the rest of the time, that would be just fine. In fact, I’d pretty much like it if you thought about me all the time when we’re not together.” Viv set her food aside and sipped her wine again. They were sitting close and her thigh brushed Dusty’s. She edged a little closer until the contact joined them from hip to knee. The pressure was more erotic than when she’d been naked in bed with some women. She literally trembled inside. She hadn’t thought that possible. “I’ve been thinking about you too.”