Page 73 of Dangerous Devotion

He looked up at me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed convulsively. “Please,” he begged, “I don’t know anything.” The man’s sweat drenched his pale skin and darkened his shirt.

I shook my head.

Hero circled behind him like a predator sizing up his prey. He selected a pair of needle-nose pliers and worked the jaws open and closed with deliberate menace.

The man’s eyes bulged, darting between us—two angels of death come to reap his secrets…or his life.

I could practically hear his hammering pulse, smell the acrid stench of his terror.

I almost pitied him. Almost.

If he hadn’t tried to poison Jemma, if Fee wasn’t in the hospital, holding on for dear life.

“I’ll ask again.” I caressed the handle of a serrated knife. “Who sent you to poison my family?”

“It w-wasn’t me! I’m just the?—”

A resounding crack echoed through the room as Hero backhanded him. The man’s head snapped to the side, blood trickling from his split lip. “Lying ain’t too smart, friend,” Hero’s voice dripped with false amity. “Last chance before things get real unfriendly-like.”

“Okay!” he gasped out, tears streaming down his face. “I put the powder in the juice, but I swear I didn’t know it was poison. And I don’t know who’s behind it!” Tears and snot streamed down his face.

I exchanged a glance with Hero. Could be the truth, could be he was still clinging to some misplaced sense of hope or loyalty.

Lucky for me, I didn’t need him to spell it out.

I already knew who was behind it.

And nothing he could say would change the vicious urge to make him suffer for his betrayal.

He was dead, no matter what.

Hero’s phone buzzed, and I looked up at him.

He checked the screen, and his lips tightened. “Peaches,” he answered immediately.

I strained to hear Peaches’ voice on the other end but could only make out the low, rapid cadence of his speech. Hero listened, his eyes shot to me, and his complexion turned ashen.

I took the phone from his white-knuckled grip and put it on speaker. “What’s going on?”

Goofy’s voice came through, urgent and strained. “The convoy stopped and hasn’t moved in the last five minutes.”

At the uncharacteristic grimness in his tone, a cold needle of dread pierced my chest. “What? Where?”

“Peaches is putting up a drone right now; we should have visuals in… Oh shit.”

My heart skipped a beat, my blood running cold. “Explain,” I demanded, my grip tightening on the blade in my hand.

“There’s nothing. The SUVs are parked in the middle of the road. The doors are open; it looks like they’re all gone.”

“Gone?”

There was silence on the other side. “Fuck. It’s foggy down there. But it looks like they’re still in the cars—either dead or unconscious.”

The words hit like a physical blow, driving the air from my lungs. The world tilted, blackness fuzzing the edges of my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the nightmare away. But when I opened them again, Hero was still staring at me, his expression a mirror of the icy dread solidifying in my veins.

Dead or unconscious.

Jemma, Bella and Mira, Dante, Dom. All of them?

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