it again. But life says, "Tough bounce,' and what are my options? Take it on the chin and keep marching."

She gave a shrug and broke eye contact. "Better than the deal Angie got.

Or Melanie Hessler."

Quinn took her stubborn chin in his hand and turned her face back to

his.

"Are you beating yourself up, Kathryn Elizabeth?"

She nodded and let him wipe the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.

"So am I," he confessed, and found a wry smile. "We're a pair.

Think how great the world would be if you and I really did control it."

"We'd do a better job of it than whoever has the job now," she promised,

then shivered. "Or I'd blow it, and people I cared about would get

hurt."

"Well, here's an ugly rumor I heard today: We're only human. Mistakes come with the territory."

Kate knitted her brow. "Human?" She took his hand and led him to the old weathered cedar garden bench. "You and I? Who told you that? Let me gomelt their brain with death rays."

They sat, and his arm automatically went around her shoulders, just as her head automatically found his shoulder.

"Hey, you. You're early," she said.

"Well, I didn't want to miss TURKEY Wake," he said, deadpan.

"Happy to see me?"

"Not after that answer."

He laughed and brushed a kiss against her temple. They sat in silencefor another few minutes, staring at the blackened back door of the housewhere Quinn and Kovac had carried her out.

"I came back here and built this very specific life," Kate said softly.

"Thinking if I did it that way, I could have control of it, and badthings wouldn't happen. How's that for naive?"

Quinn shrugged. "I thought if I could grab my world by the b.a.l.l.s, Icould ride all the demons out of it. But it doesn't work that way.

There's always another demon. I can't count them all anymore. I can'tkeep them straight. h.e.l.l, I can't even see them right in front of me."

Kate could hear the hint of desperation underlying the toughness, andknew his faith in his abilities had been shaken too. The Mighty Quinn.

Always right, always sure, moving forward like an arrow. She had alwaysloved his unfailing strength, had always admired his bullheadedness. Sheloved him as much for his vulnerability.

"No one saw this coming, John. I hated the guy from the day he took thejob, and not even I suspected this. We see what we expect to see. Scary,considering what can lie beneath the surface."

She stared at the garden, dead and brown, surreal in the fading light.

"Imagine the most horrific, repulsive cruelty one human being can commitagainst another. Someone's out there doing it right now. I don't knowhow you stand it anymore, John."

"I don't," he admitted. "You know how it is when you first come on thejob? Everything gets to you. You have to toughen up. You have to getthat emotional armor on. Then you reach a point when you've seen somuch, nothing gets to you, and you start to wonder about your humanity.Stay at it long enough, the armor starts to corrode, the evil starts toeat through it, and you're back where you started, only you're older andtired, and you know you can't slay all the dragons no matter how hardyou try."

"And then what?" Kate asked quietly.

"And then you either step aside, or you eat your gun, or you drop inyour tracks like Vince Walsh."

"On the surface that choice would seem like a no-brainer."

"Not when the job is all you've got. When you bury yourself in itbecause you're too afraid to go and get the life you really want.Portrait of me for the last five years," he said. "No more. As of today,I am officially on leave. Time to drain the strain, get my head screwedon straight."

"Decide what you want," Kate offered to the list.

"I know what I want," he said simply.

He turned to her on the bench and took her hands in his. "I need something good in my life, Kate. I need something beautiful and warm. Ineed you. I need us. What do you need?"

Kate looked at him, her destroyed home in her peripheral vision, andthought, of all things, of the phoenix rising from the ashes. The eventsthat had brought them to this place in this time may have beendevastating, but here was their chance for a new beginning. Together.

For the first time in five years she felt a sense of warm, sweet peacein place of the hard, aching emptiness she'd grown almost numb to.

She had spent the years without him, merely existing. It was time tolive. After all the death, literal and metaphorical, it was time forboth of them to live.

"I need your arms around me, John Quinn," she said, smiling softly.

"Every day and every night of my life."

Quinn let out a pent-up breath, a grin splitting his handsome face.

"Took you long enough to answer."

He took her into his arms carefully, mindful of her wounds, and held herclose. He imagined he could feel her heart beat even through the heavycanvas of her coat.

"You've got my heart, Kate Conlan," he said, burying his cold nose inthe thick silk of her hair. "You've had it all this time. I lived too long without it."

Kate smiled against his chest, knowing this was home-his embrace, hislove.

"Well, tough, John Quinn," she said, gazing up at him in the last lightof sunset. "I'm not giving it back,"

end.