Page 34 of The Devil's Ice

“Yeah, maybe.” Vixen giggled. “I bet the money’s pretty good in the badass-for-hire line, huh?”

“I bet you even get dental.”

They shared a smile, then they heard Ice’s voice in the hallway outside, clearly talking to the doctor. Scars got up to greet them, and squeezed Vixen’s hand again. When she lifted her eyes to meet his, she was stunned to see that he looked a bit teary himself now.Thatwas a look that she’dalsonever expect to see on this man’s hard, warrior face, but there it was.

And then she got the strangest feeling that there was something else going on… something about…

Briley and the twins?

Then that flash of intuition was gone, and all she saw was Scars, looking down at her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him, a bit afraid of the answer. “Is – has something happened besides all of this?”

“I’m speaking for me, and for Zoe here, and we won’teverbe able to say to enough,” Scars said quietly, avoiding her second question, just as Ice and a doctor stepped back into the room. “Thank you for our daughter, Vixen. Just – thank you.”

And for the first time, Vixen totally, truly understood what had happened in that parking lot: she had saved an innocent, beautiful, little life. It was at a pretty high cost to her own, but the damage was temporary and whatwaspermanent was possible to live with.

And it wasalltotally, truly worth it.

Broken bones and scars and all.

Chapter Thirteen

Wolf jerked awake, and sat up to peer at the babies on the bed. They were still and silent –at the same time for once, thank fuck– so he carefully lay back down on the floor, though he knew that sleep wouldn’t be back anytime soon, and not just because of his concrete mattress. He was beside himself with worry, and about many,manythings.

Although his primary concern was (obviously) caring for two tiny humans who couldn’t communicate their needs with him in any clear language, he couldn’t imagine what was happening with Briley and the twins. They must be out of their minds with worry and fear, and he had no way of letting them know that their babies were (relatively speaking) safe. They were with someone who wasn’t going to hurt them, at least not intentionally, and if they could just know that, Wolf imagined that some of the nightmares in their heads would settle down a bit.

But the horrors playing out in hisownhead were pretty significant: he hadn’t forgotten Preacher’s Biblical threats, and Wolf was just waiting for the time that the cell door swung open to reveal Keira standing there, in God-only-knows what shape or condition. His heart stopped in his chest as he imagined Zee thinking that her daughter was gone, taken away. Just disappeared.

Carrying on with the worry train, it pulled up to its next stop: just what the actual hell was happening with his MC brothers and that fucking traitorous son of a bitch Bale? What was he telling them, in the guise of reporting back from his mythical CI? Wolf knew that Scars, Ice and King were smart men, lethal men, with ridiculous radars for deception and bullshit – but eventheywould need some time before they’d start to think that something was wrong. Well, wrong enough to go looking for answers.

And it might all be too late by then.

Admittedly, Wolf didn’t know what ‘too late’ meant in this situation, but if there was one thing that he’d figured out, it was the Viper was a nightmare of an adversary… meticulous, well-prepared, calculating. And fucking ruthless. He was willing to bring total innocents into his personal vendetta, and that meant that nothing was off the table for him.

Nothing.

Wolf was under no illusions about his own history of violence: there was a reason that he’d been tapped for President, after all. But even at his worst, at his absoluteworst, children had been off-limits; he’d worked under some pretty vicious Presidents himself, and none of them had ever served up kids as an option. Not once. It had never even been up for discussion.

But Viper was a whole different animal, and Wolf saw now that he and his brothers had been wrong to think of Crusher Alcott’s replacement as a soft, weak option.

Deadwrong.

There was movement above him now, and Wolf quickly sat up again, saw that the baby girl was stirring. He’d put the kids on the bed, of course, since sticking them back in the cardboard box on the floor was all kinds of wrong, and had built a little fort around them with pillows and some blankets. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but Wolf didn’t think they were up to rolling yet.

Then again, how the fuck wouldheknow?

“Hey,” he murmured as her eyes opened and she started to squeak. “You hungry again?”

Her response was a cry, so Wolf got to his feet and went to the supplies that that asshole Preacher had brought to him. He’d been initially befuddled by the bottles, powdered formula, diapers, blankets, and clothes, but he could read and follow instructions on packaging, so he’d figured out how to get the bottles ready, how to change a diaper, how to put on a onesie. He wasn’t going to win a Stand-in Dad Of The Year Award anytime soon… but hecouldkeep these kids warm and fed and dry.

Quickly, knowing that she was seconds away from bursting into full-on crying, thereby waking her brother up, Wolf mixed two bottles with the water that he’d boiled earlier in the electric kettle, came back to the bed. He sat down on the mattress, and stuck the nipple in her little mouth. She sucked greedily, her tiny hands opening and closing, and making those cooing noises that Wolf had come to recognize as happiness.

“OK, then, baby girl,” he whispered to her. “We got this, right?”

She blinked up at him, her eyes a pure, perfect blue. Not for the first time, he wondered what she saw when she looked at him: an unshaven, wild-haired man with cold gray eyes, who sounded like he gargled with gravel. Wolf had no clue if she sensed her mother and fathers were missing, but he thought that on some level, shehadto know that things weren’t right. After all, she’d gone from being fed against a warm breast accompanied by a soft voice, to this: a plastic bottle, a chilly cell, a man with a hard face and harder voice.

Bang on cue, her brother started moving around, and for about the twentieth time, Wolf marvelled at how they seemed to be connected on some weird mental level: if one woke up, the other was less than a minute behind, no matter how quiet Wolf managed to keep things.

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