Page 64 of The Devil's Pair

Wolf sighed. “This one is way fuckin’ beyond us, guys. Too many movin’ parts, too much ground to cover, not enough time. We need to call in some help.”

“Who?” Scars said, though he already had a pretty damn good idea. “Who do we call?”

“We all know who.”

There was a short silence, then Ice said:

“King. Again.”

“Damn straight, King again,” Wolf said. “Ice?”

“I’ll call him right after I call my – after I take care of Rebel.”

At his name, the men looked down at him again; they all knew that the next time they saw Rebel, he’d bemoregone to them than he was right this second, he’d be farther away somehow. Maybe because he’d be closer to being buried and out of sight forever, or maybe because they’d be referring to him only in the past tense.

“Make sure your friend treats him right,” Wolf said. “He deserves that, at the very least.”

“I know,” Ice said. “Trust me, Wolf, I’ve got this.”

“OK. Take him.”

Hating to do it, knowing that he had no choice but to move his ass because Rebel might be dead, but Briley was still (hopefully) alive, and she needed their help, Wolf turned away. He forced his mind from Rebel, and trained it on the woman who was depending on him to make smart, strong decisions, ones that would bring her back whole and sane.

“Wolf.”

Something in Dux and Drake’s unified voice immediately caught everyone’s attention: Ice took the phone away from his ear and cut off the call he was making, and Scars fixed that unnerving sky-blue gaze on the twins. Wolf cocked his dark head, already knowing that this wasnotnews that was going to make him feel any easier about any of this.

“OK,” Wolf said, bracing himself. “Hit us with it. What?”

“Briley,” said Dux. “She’s pregnant.”

There was a stunned silence, then Wolf said:

“She’s fuckin’what?”

“Pregnant,” Drake said heavily. “With twins.”

“Holy fuck,” Ice said, in an utterly uncharacteristic show of emotion. “Yours?”

They shrugged.

“I mean,oneof ours,” Dux said. “But we’ve already decided that they’rebothof ours. No real sense trying to playthat game, what with us having almost identical DNA. We could go for some really specific tests to know for sure, but we talked about it with Briley, and none of us want that. We’reboththe father.”

“Uh,” Scars said, staring at them, trying to get his mind aroundthislatest bombshell. “Congratulations?”

“Yeah, man,” Drake said. “We’re happy about it.”

“Well,” Dux interjected. “Not this very second we’re not, seeing as Briley and our babies are being hand-delivered to Crusher Fucking Alcott.”

Wolf blinked as the urgency and tempo of the ticking clock in front of them tripled-down, then he fixed that ferocious wolf-grey stare at Ice. “Turns out that we havethreelives at stake, Johansson, so you call King.Now.”

Chapter Eighteen

Briley sat in the back of what was surely a van, bound and blindfolded, fighting to stay calm. Her head was fuzzy, and she knew that she’d been drugged to knock her out; what shedidn’tknow was how long she’d been unconscious. It could have been thirty minutes, it could have been twelve hours.

Then again, how much time had passed between being knocked out and now didn’t matter, really, since that was the past.Allthat mattered was what was coming – what the next five minutes, sixty minutes, four hours would bring. Besides, thinking about what had happened before meant that she’d think about…

Oh, God. Oh, no.

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