Page 45 of Elven Crown

Frowning, Rebecca folded her arms and wondered if she could pull more information out of the shifter by staring at him intensely enough. “I haven’t heard anything else about Eduardo since that last mission went belly up.”

“I know.”

“So why is that suddenly an issue now?”

Sighing heavily through his nose, Maxwell scanned the secondary armory again, which had fallen silent at his arrival.

At the pause, Diego forced a fake cough at his table, then got back to work on his weapon.

“Hey.” Nyx pointed at Leonard sitting across from her. “Hand me that gun brush.”

“Yep. Here.”

Then the room filled with the clink and clack of weapon components being disassembled and cleaned and reassembled while the operatives pretended not to have noticed a thing.

Still frowning, Maxwell settled a hand on the small of Rebecca’s back to guide her toward the door. “Let’s talk outside.”

Under any other circumstances, she would have pulled away and glared at him for touching her. His hand on her felt charged with high-voltage electricity, sending a beckoning warmth flooding through her core and right up into her face.

But she let him guide her toward the open door anyway before they stopped in the hall. Now wasnotthe time to freak out about energetic sensations.

Or maybe it was.

Something about the tingling jolt had changed, and something told her it was imperative to figure out what it meant.

15

As soon as they stopped in the hallway, Maxwell snatched his hand away from her, gripped it briefly with his other hand as if he were trying to rub away the discomfort, then clasped both hands behind his back and regained control of himself before dipping his head toward her.

He had definitely felt that too. Apparently, they were just going to keep ignoring it.

The absence of his hand on Rebecca’s lower back almost made her cry out as if it were some great loss—like it had physically hurt her.

She didn’t, but recognizing the sensation was all the more reason to force her focus onto this urgent update from her Head of Security. Suddenly, that felt like an impossible task.

“Before that last mission at Eduardo’s hideout,” Maxwell began gruffly, “Aldous had constant security on the guy, watching his every move twenty-four-seven. He wanted to keep tabs on the weapon at all times. You know, the one you—”

“The one I destroyed so our entire team could live to see another day?” she quipped. “Yeah, I’m familiar with that one.”

Maxwell pressed his lips together and shuffled his feet, his entire demeanor of confidence and control twisted, unsteady, and twitchy.

Why did he look so embarrassed to have brought this up? He normally reveled in bringing attention to Rebecca’s faults.

He cleared his throat again and looked physically pained to continue this higher priority update. “The surveillance continued, even with the change of leadership. I take full responsibility for not having stayed on top of which operations were left running without further assessment by you. And I apologize for the oversight—”

“Hannigan,” she interrupted, then waited for him to meet her gaze again. “I don’t care about surveillance ops running in the background before or after Aldous, okay? Just tell me why this is an emergency.”

The softening in his eyes and a slow exhale hinted at Maxwell’s relief before his entire demeanor changed. “We just picked up new activity on that surveillance line.”

“Are you telling me Eduardo has another one of those energy cannons?”

“I can’t say for sure. It’s possible, though highly unlikely. That kind of weapon doesn’t seem to flood the illegal magical weapons market at the moment.”

Rebecca snorted. “That’s a relief.”

“But we did confirm that one of Eduardo’s griybreki teams is on the move with a heavy cargo of illegal weapons. Three-vehicle convoy. We don’t know yet exactly what they’re transporting, but knowing Eduardo…”

“It’s something we definitely don’t want to see in the wrong hands.”

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