Page 147 of Lamb

My pace was brisk, but I shied from running. These halls carried noise, and I doubted Maximus Rothwell would have onlybrought one bodyguard. The less attention we attracted, the better.

I glanced at Jax. “How’d you get in?”

“I smiled at the receptionist, and then she told me where the staff elevator was.”

“That’s it?” I frowned. I was surprised, but thinking back to all the work I’d gone through to make this moment happen made me feel bitter.

Jax shrugged. “You have a habit of overcomplicating things.”

I ignored the unhelpful insight. “So, what’s with the rest of you?”

“If you think we’d let you do this on your own, you need a good old lesson in brotherhood.” Jax laughed, his paw catching my shoulder and giving it a bruising squeeze. “Because if our brothers have our back—”

“Then we have our brothers’ backs,” I cut him off, knowing the club mantra better than any other. They might have been Wolf’s words, but I had been the inspiration, after all.

“So, genius,” Hunter piped up, his deep baritone reverberating down the empty shafts, “what’s the plan?”

“Get Ash. Get out,” I grunted, retracing my steps through the corridor.

“And how are you going to do that?”

I didn’t stop, but my feet felt leaden, and for a moment, that burning speared through my chest, and that taste crawled up the back of my throat, sharp and painful in my nose.

I hadn’t slowed because of Hunter’s words per se but from the resonance within. Hunter brought to air the words I’d dare not speak; the thoughts I’d dared not have.

“I don’t know yet,” I whispered, my muscles burning under the weight of my chest. “There were too many variables, too many gaps in our knowledge. There was no way to make a single infallible plan. We have several backup plans, but—”“Wait,you’re telling me you’re justwinging it?” Incredulity filled Hunter’s low whisper over my shoulder. “You never do anything without thinking things through.Ever. It’s the most annoying thing about you.”

Two men dressed head to toe in black and armed with weapons not suited to the bodyguard industry walked past the hallway, a corner from my destination. Maximus’ goons, I assumed. All of us pressed into a vacant hallway, against the wall, disappearing.

“I wouldn’t say themost—” Jax chipped in, his tone low and hushed as he waited for our que to move, but not before Mint hopped on the whispering bandwagon.

“Ash has this habit of making him an idiot,” he grumbled, folding his arms over his chest. Though not as tall or as wide as Hunter, Mint was still a bulky man, and his shoulders stuck out like mountains as he folded his hands into his chest. “Whenever she’s around, his brain stops working.”

I ignored their chittering remarks, not because I didn’t care to argue, but for the first time, Mint was right.

Ash made me blind when I needed to see the most. Drove me mad when I needed to stay calm. And made my mind blank when my brain was most required. She undid the seams that had held me so tightly together my entire life, and now she was alone against a man who had brought her to the edge of death with no remorse once before.

It made me uneasy.

The guards vanished from sight.

“Good, let’s go—”

“Wait. Hold up.” Jax grabbed me by the lapel of my jacket, tugging me back out of view. “You came here tonight to do what? Show up, dance a little, and hope you put a bullet through the biggest crime lord in Europe?”

“The plans aren’t for Ash to kill him.”

“Does Ash know that?” Mint interrupted.

I turned to look at him, his piercing mint green eyes having seen more of Ash’s true self than any others. He had seen into her just as much as I had and knew what I knew.

“She’s unarmed,” I answered, as if that was enough.

Mint’s eyes hardened; he knew I was dodging the answer.

“She’s unarmed with him?” Jax repeated like a parrot in helium, his pitch high enough to rattle the glassware on the coffee table. “He’ll kill her. For real, this time.”

There was little I knew about our enemy. With enough information, it was often easy to predict people’s actions. People were driven by self-interest, and with the right leverage, it was possible to guide them however you pleased.

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