Page 72 of Lawless in Leather

Chen nodded. “On it.” He started walking back the way he’d come then broke into a jog. Raina didn’t blame him. She kind of felt like running away herself.

“And what are we going to do?” she asked.

“Well, the first step is telling Lucas and Alex.”

They met in Alex’s office. Raina hadn’t been in it since the day Alex had first brought her in for an interview. Maybe she should have said no right back then and none of this would be happening now.

Mal made her sit down.

“I’m fine,” she said. It was a lie. She felt hot and clammy, stomach rolling queasily. All that work. Brady’s beautiful work. Destroyed. Savaged. Did someone want to do that to her?

“Just sit,” he said.

“I’m not a dog, Malachi.” She wasn’t going to cringe like one.

Maggie, who was in the chair to Raina’s right, put a hand on her arm. “That must have been a shock, seeing those wings.”

“It was. But I’m not going to fall over.” Well, she didn’t think she was going to. She hoped. She sucked in a breath, locking down the fear. Working on focusing on the anger. Who the hell was doing this and what the hell gave him the right? All that hard work that Brady had put in. All the work the girls had put in. All the hard work she’d put in, goddamn it, and now someone was trying to scare them all away.

Make them scared.

Make them hurt.

Well screw that. She scowled. Her expression pretty much matched that on the faces of Alex, Mal, and Lucas. Alex was sitting at his desk, Lucas was standing in front of it, and Mal was standing on Raina’s left ignoring the chair right behind his legs.

“I should have brought the cookies,” Maggie said.

Raina smiled. The guys didn’t.

“Definitely cookies,” Maggie said. “C’mon, guys, this is serious but do you have to stand there looking like you want to burn the place down?”

“What I want to know is how this happened?” Alex said.

“I’m working on that,” Mal growled. “It might be that whoever did this used the power outages from the lighting work to at least get into the storeroom. How he?—”

“It could be a she,” Maggie said.

A she. Raina blinked. She hadn’t thought about that. Someone on the squad? Someone who was pissed off about not getting her due? Ana? Surely not.

“I don’t know,” Mal said. “Those wings are pretty big. To tear them up like that, just one person. That takes some strength.”

“Maybe they used a knife or something,” Lucas said. “Blades can do plenty of damage.”

Lucas would know. He was the surgeon, after all. Raina didn’t want to think about someone slashing up the wings. Knife or otherwise.

Maggie turned to Raina. “What do you think? You told me Ana was pretty mad about missing out on the interviews. Would she do something like this?”

“I … don’t know. I think she’s pretty ruthless and wants her own way. But I’m not sure she’s crazy enough to sabotage the whole team. I can see her doing sneaky things to individual girls, maybe. But this, this risks having the whole team not get to perform. Which means she wouldn’t get to perform. I don’t know.”

“We’d better talk to her,” Maggie said. “See what she has to say.”

Mal nodded. “Can’t hurt. Though Raina’s right, it seems like shooting yourself in the foot, to risk benching the squad. I think it’s more likely to be someone else.”

“Well, the police will be able to tell us more about that, maybe,” Alex said. “And Mal’s team is combing through all the security data. So that brings us to the more immediate problem.”

Raina watched Mal’s jaw tighten at the mention of his team. She wouldn’t want to be whoever had fucked this up. If someone had fucked up.

“Which is?” Maggie asked.

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