Cozy Christian Fiction
Simple Faith | Solid Friendships | Strong Families

A wet sneeze burst from the tent behind me, followed by two more, each rougher than the last. Leave it to Drew not to do anything by halves, even when it came to catching a cold on a camping trip.

“You should get some fresh air. Might feel better.” I nodded to the camp chair next to mine without looking back at him, and Drew’s answering huff turned into a cough.

“No thanks.” How his voice managed to sound so thick and so shivery at the same time, I wasn’t sure, but if he was going for pathetic, it was definitely working. “Not unless you’re taking down the tent.”

I couldn’t tell if he’d lost the ability for subtlety or just didn’t care anymore. He’d been angling for us to retreat to the motel in town since I’d sloshed back into camp to find him shivering in his sleeping bag the evening before, and I’d be forced into an outright denial sooner or later.

“What if I build the fire again?”

“With what? All the wood’s been rained on.” He sucked in a miserable sniff before sneezing again. “Should’ve brought a space heater.”

“The Baxter brothers? Outdoorsmen extraordinaire? We’d have been laughed off the lot.”

“Pretty sure there’s nothing in Dylan Baxter’s file that says he’s boneheaded enough to ignore a le—” The word cut off with a series of sharp breaths, like he was anticipating another sneeze. “—legitimate medical—” It arrived with a vengeance, followed by another before he could even suck in a breath. “—medical issue just to prove his grit.”

“But you’re the one who listed ‘stubborn’ as one of Steve’s defining traits.” We were flirting with the line, discussing our cover identities this way, but the lots near us had all cleared out, and it wasn’t like I’d never talked casually about myself in the third person before.

“Yeah, and you’re the one that made me birdwatch in a rainstorm.”

“You did promise Maggie you’d sight her a cormorant.” Truth be told, I felt bad for insisting he go out, but the mission was critical, and the rain had been much heavier than predicted. “You know, if you weren’t so inept at making coffee, you could’ve been warm and dry before I got back, and probably avoided this altogether.”

“You try making coffee in a nor’easter, when you’re shaking so bad you can’t even hold the pot.” Drew subsided into a coughing fit, and I winced. The storm hadn’t been that bad, but his assessment of his own state was less of an exaggeration than it should’ve been. Still, he was better off sniping at me than sinking further into his misery, so I prodded back.

“Definitely telling Maggie to update Dylan’s description to ‘dramatic’.”

“Don’t care what she updates, so long as I get a hot shower and a soft bed.” Drew gave a little moan but didn’t protest the characterization, which was a bit worrying, if I was honest. “And I got this finding her cormorant, so she owes me.”

Our imaginary younger sister Maggie might not care that much about her waterfowl, but our boss Sofia would certainly value the pictures Drew had taken of the suspected terrorist now confirmed in the area. And with as pitiful as he looked and sounded, he’d be guaranteed at least a week to recover once we got back. All I had to do was keep him alive and kicking until our contact checked in tomorrow morning, and then he’d get all the rest and warmth he could handle.

Drew let out another slushy sneeze and blew his nose once, twice, three times, then gave a little choking groan.

“Au—” He smothered the word in a watery sniff and tried again. “Steve, are there any more tissues?”

I got up silently and stalked toward the truck, the satisfaction of having wisely chosen the four-pack swallowed up in my mounting worry. Not at the number of tissues, but at the realization that he’d been out of it enough, even for just a second, to start to call me Austin.

It was a natural mistake—he’d reverted to habit and caught himself before anyone would’ve noticed—but I’d never heard his focus slip so badly on a mission. I grabbed a fresh box of tissues from the truck and strode back to the tent, suppressing a shiver as my arm brushed the waterlogged canopy. If the place felt this miserable to me, I could only imagine how it was affecting Drew.

My brother lay on his back with one arm pressed over his nose, hair damp and sticking out in all directions beneath his hoodie. His sleeping bag was bunched and twisted like he’d been shifting in it all night, which I knew for a fact that he had. As I came up beside him, he opened watery, red-rimmed eyes and reached for the box, and I sat next to him and handed it over.

Drew ripped into it viciously and blew his nose over and over while I worked on cleaning up the used tissues that’d missed the grocery bag. He finally subsided with a soft whimper, and I dug around in my pack for the thermometer I’d filched from the truck’s first aid kit. It registered only a couple points off normal—not even enough to be concerning, let alone to account for his slip.

“’M sorry.” The apology was mumbled, and I was sure he’d guessed where my brain had gone. “I just feel—so bad.”

I knew that, but it still didn’t track. I’d seen him hike an entire mountain with a broken wrist and never offer a word of complaint. And suddenly a cold had him fuzzy enough to forget our cover and begging to call off the mission early?

“What’s the worst?” It wasn’t like I could do much for any of it, but maybe I could find a way to make him just a little more comfortable.

“So cold.” The words choked out like a sob. “I can’t quit shaking. I can’t get warm. Everything’s damp and chilly and—” He muffled his face in his arm as a string of violent sneezes shook him, and when they finished, his words were so low I barely caught them. “Like the fishery all over again.”

The words nailed me like a punch to the gut. I hadn’t worked the fishery—hadn’t even been told about it until I got back from a training assignment to find Drew recovering in the hospital. Sofia and I had had words about that later, and she still hadn’t let me read the entire file. But I knew enough. The informant had been a plant, the mission a set-up. Drew had been caught and locked in cold storage for hours before a team made it in to break him out. We’d lost our chance to prove espionage on the owner but did get two goons committed for attempted murder, which they richly deserved.

And somehow, lying around this bleak, soggy campsite with an incorrigible cold and a brother seemingly determined to make him sweat it out for no valid reason had put him back in that same mindset—raw, hopeless, and alone—unsure whether anyone had his back, or whether they’d come through in time.

I opened my mouth to offer the truth, but Drew was there ahead of me.

“Please, Bobby.” There was nothing incriminating in the words—Steve Baxter’s file listed my own middle name—but the childhood nickname had never been recorded in any of my aliases, or even my main personnel file at the agency. Drew wasn’t speaking to me as a cover, or even as an agent—he was appealing to me as the boy who’d helped doctor his scrapes and bruises since I was old enough to hold the bandaids. “I give. I’m done. Tell them—my fault. You were right. I can’t cut it. I’m tapping out. Just—please.”

“Whoa, whoa!” I reached to pull his chin back toward me as he started to turn away and was rewarded with two massive sneezes squarely in the middle of my chest. We both stared in horror for a few seconds before a laugh bubbled up unexpectedly. “Okay—I guess I deserved that.”

Drew hummed in what might have been agreement before rolling over to vent his next sneeze in the opposite direction. I grabbed one of his tissues and worked on cleaning myself up, waiting for the fit to slow before resting a hand on his shoulder.

“Can you look at me, please? When you’re done?”

He lay for a few seconds without responding, and I wondered whether he was ignoring me, but then a final sneeze ripped through him, and he rolled onto his back and lifted heavy eyes to my face.

“What do you mean, I was right? When did I say you couldn’t cut it?”

“You serious?” Drew’s forehead furrowed, and he rubbed it with a weary hand. “When I first joined the—the team. You told—Maggie—it was a mistake.”

Somehow even in the middle of a forced heart-to-heart, he made it sound innocuous to listening ears. And now that he mentioned it, I did remember my reaction when I discovered that my little brother had been recruited by the same agency that’d chosen me. But Drew had proved himself in every way, and it’d been years since I’d thought of him as anything less than a competent agent and my favorite partner on any mission we were both assigned. Had he really held onto that all this time?

“I was wrong, okay? Protective big brother who didn’t want you to get hurt. That’s all. Well, that plus the ego that needed knocking down a peg. You’re a perfect fit for the team, and nothing’s changed that. Hear me?”

Drew gave a faint nod, and I swallowed hard.

“About the motel, though. I scoped it out yesterday, when I went for tissues and soup. There was a huge skunk in the parking lot. Didn’t look like a safe place to stick around.”

“Skunk.” Drew’s watery eyes narrowed, and I knew he’d picked up my meaning. “What kind?”

“Colombian. Recognized it from your pictures.” I had no idea if there was such a thing as a Colombian skunk, but from Drew’s sharp inhale, I knew he got the message. The gasp sent him into a coughing fit, and I rubbed his shoulder gently until he was through.

“That’s something—Maggie’ll—want to know.”

“I’m handing it over tomorrow, and then getting you straight home. If you can’t make it here one more night, that’s fine. I’ll book us a room and sit with my gun trained on the door till they break us out with SWAT. Probably be the last anyone sees of the Baxter boys, though.”

“You’d—mind that?” The catch in Drew’s voice was somehow distinct from the effects of the cold, and I had to swallow a lump in my throat before I could answer.

“Come here, little brother.” I began manhandling his sleeping bag back into a semblance of order, and Drew moaned, but when I dragged my own next to him and zipped them together, the protests quieted. I crawled in beside him and gathered his shivering body against mine, and Drew relaxed into me with a stifled sob. “Yeah, I’d mind. So would Maggie. The Baxters are the best brother team we’ve got. I’d give a lot to keep us together. But if you need it, I’ll do it. You mean more to me than anything out there—including the team. If you can’t stick it out till tomorrow, we’ll throw in the towel—together.”

Drew breathed in like he might say something but was overtaken by an explosive sneeze. He fumbled for a tissue and blew his nose miserably, then curled into my arms again.

“I think I can make it. It’s not so cold—now.”