Going out tonight? Shit. The last thing Cisco wanted to do was watch a gaggle of lustful woman parade by their table like he and Welker were the daily specials.

“You sure you wouldn’t rather come over here?” Cisco posited. “I can throw some steaks on the grill and we can watch the Sox.”

“Lame,” Welker came back. “It’s Saturday night. Come on, old-buddy-old-pal. Join me. We can go farther afield than normal so we don’t see off-limit faces.”

Yeah. It was an unspoken rule that neither of them do any of their trolling in local territory. Orono especially. They were, as known officers and SWAT members, bound to get female interest in the local bars from women with whom they were familiar, or from seriously young college girls going to UMaine. Neither scenario was even remotely appealing. Together or apart, he and Welk normally ended up in Bangor, a larger town, where they still risked seeing women one or the other of them knew, since Welker worked for the BPD, and had a history of not choosing bed-partners wisely.

“Like, where did you have in mind?” Cisco asked, sorting through his mail. He walked to his home office, instantly depositing all the bills in a neat pile on his uncluttered desk. The junk mail hit the bin.

“Let’s try that new place, Brew-Baby, south of Bangor. I’ve heard it’s hopping on the weekends.”

Should Cisco give in or stick with his original plans for a pout-fest?

Welk continued to prod. “Don’t give me any excuses. If anything, we need to celebrate your new schedule.”

“Okay,” Cisco finally capitulated. “But I’m driving myself.”

The last thing he wanted to do was get stuck calling an Uber when Welker hooked up and took off with his ride.

“Excellent. Nine o’clock?”

Cisco grunted. “Do they serve food there?”

“They do.”

“Then let’s make it seven so we can eat.”

“Always hungry,” Welker teased. “But okay, it’s a plan.”

Welker hung up and Cisco pocketed his phone, but…speaking of food, once Cisco disconnected, he walked into his kitchen and pulled open the fridge. Even though his mother had fed him only two hours previous, his stomach was still asking for more. He eyed the leftover pizza.

Yeah. He grabbed two slices out of the box. He’d just have to do twenty extra minutes of cardio this afternoon to burn off those extra calories.

Hunger and neatness. Two constants in his life.

Cisco had long understood that both his need for order and his bottomless appetite stemmed from a time he couldn’t remember; a time before his parents had adopted him. At the age of ten, under the care of a childhood therapist whom his parents had made him see, Cisco had quickly come to the realization that fastidiousness and food were two things that had probably been lacking in his life before he’d been placed with Selma and Genero Andera.

Therapy had given Cisco the mental tools to accept his compulsions, and once he’d come to grips with that, he’d never let either of his persistent urges define him. He simply made sure to assuage his needs in private and with close friends, not letting them interfere with the public portion of his life.

Standing at the kitchen sink in order to keep the fall-out-crumbs contained, Cisco chewed methodically and gazed out the window at his small, but neat back yard. He wasn’t seeing the table and chairs, the stainless grill, or the firepit, though. No. Instead he was envisioning Hilly’s camp.

In a rare bit of good news for him, it was well-ordered and clean, which Cisco truly appreciated. Of course, once a hundred campers descended, he couldn’t expect the same degree of tidiness, but knowing the surroundings had started out the way they had, told him that Hilly also enjoyed an organized environment.

Another plus in her column.

Once his pizza had been devoured, Cisco washed his hands, then silently padded up the runner-carpeted stairs to his room to put on shorts and a t-shirt. On a whim, because it was so nice outside, he’d decided to eschew his indoor workout and go for a run, instead.

Cisco went downstairs to stretch on his living room floor, then feeling buoyed up, he jumped to his feet and jogged to his front porch where he popped in his earbuds and cued up Rage Against the Machine.

Yes. He already felt better, and once the endorphins kicked in, maybe he could forget about Hilly altogether.

It seemed like the healthiest thing to do.

An hour later, having run seven miles at a decent clip, Cisco began doing cool-downs on his front lawn while lamenting the fact that all the sweat and effort he’d expended hadn’t driven one very tenacious woman from his mind. He was wondering if some early alcohol intake wouldn’t be the answer when an alert tone came in over his Bluetooth buds.

A SWAT callout. Excellent. It was just what he needed to shake off his Hilly-fixation.

He quickly went inside and picked up his phone to read the texted details.

Armed robbery in progress. Bangor Five Savings Bank.

Cisco ran upstairs while his thumbs responded.

ETA eighteen minutes.

That gave him five minutes to shower and dress.

He wasted no time.

Kitted out in his BDU’s, vest, and helmet, Cisco hunkered down behind the teams’ armored bearcat with his five-person unit, alongside Welker and his squad. The rest of the team was spread out around the block, but Mason had given B and H squads front row position within twenty feet of the main door.

The chief, along with Opal and Nolan, the team’s tech experts, were currently in the fortified command bus right next to them, orchestrating what they all hoped would be a brief showdown, but now looked like it would last well into the evening.

“So much for our plans,” Welker grumbled.

Cisco sighed. “You mean so much for my dinner.”

Welk snickered. “Of course, you’re thinking about your stomach instead of my⁠—”

“Uh, uh,” Cisco cut Welk off with a hiss. “Mixed company.”

“That’s okay, LT,” one of Welk’s unit members, Moira Bliss, a sheriff with the Penobscot County Department, spoke up with a snort. “We all know what Welker thinks about all the time, and what he gets up to on his off time.”

Cisco found it amusing that it was always Moira who gave Welker shit. He wondered if there was anything between the pair, but quickly dismissed it. Welker, like Cisco, didn’t fraternize within the ranks. Not that it was forbidden, but once a relationship went south, it was often times damned uncomfortable to work when two people on a close-knit team were attempting to ignore each other, post coitus.

Mason’s voice clipped out over their mics. “The perp is asking for a television interview. He wants someone from the press with a camera to meet him outside the building where he’ll be holding the bank manager as his hostage, at gunpoint. He has a message for somebody.”

“Any ID on who he is yet, and who he’s trying to rattle?” Mike’s question followed.

“So far, nothing. The man’s been keeping to the back of the bank, out of our line of vision, even from our snipers’ scopes. Once he steps outside, we’ll have facial rec. But from the sounds of him, he’s probably a local. He’s calling the bank manager by name.”

Shit. Cisco hated when the perp was someone teammates from Bangor might know. It made taking the bad guy down that much more personal.

Mason continued. “Who wants to play reporter?”