Page 77 of Brother's Keeper

“Stand there and look pretty?”

I peered over to find him smirking. “Yeah.” I snuffled a breath. “That.”

He poked an elbow into my ribs, trying and failing to ease a smile out of me. “You gotta admit, this is kinda exciting.”

Shoving the key in the ignition, I turned the engine over. Themepark rides, all-you-can-eat buffets, driving a car as fast as it would go, those things were exciting.

This wasn’t exciting at all. It was terrifying.

The second meeting place was in the heart of the warehouse district, not far from the building where Grimm had dumped the bodies of the kidnapping victims. I thought about telling Holland as much when I got the chance since I was such an open book these days but decided against it.

I pulled up outside a dilapidated building smaller than those towering nearby. Finding no other cars in sight prompted me to check Donovan’s cell for the address one last time. When everything checked out, I passed the phone to him.

“Does this mean I’m ungrounded?” He took it and stuffed it in his hip pocket before I could change my mind.

I pushed the car door open, then stood and turned toward the metal double doors that comprised the entrance of the place. Donovan followed suit and came around the hood of the Porsche in a rush, colliding with the wall of force I threw out to slow his advance.

“Ow, Fitch!” He staggered back, rubbing his nose.

“Stay behind me,” I snapped. “And keep it down.”

He groaned and dabbed his fingers to his face in a dramatic check for blood. “Don’t they know we’re coming?”

My face twisted in a grimace. They knew, all right.

Another agitated wave shooed him into line behind me. “Anybody out there?” I muttered into themicrophone taped across my chest.

“I hear you, Fitch.” Felix’s voice came through the low-profile earbud as a simultaneous irritant and relief. “Can you hear me?”

“You know, I’m wondering why they’re wasting someone with your talents on radio duty because I could use some fucking good luck about now.”

“Because Holland can shadow shape to get herself in the building, and Vesper copied that power to get herself and Tobin in. We talked about this earlier…”

My head started nodding halfway through his statement, and I wished the earbud had a mute button. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I muttered. “So, do we just walk in there, or what?”

“Whatever you feel comfortable with.”

Easy for him to say.

“Are the others here already?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“Did they find Ripley?”

Donovan pressed against my back, trying to eavesdrop as though he couldn’t hear just as well on his own earpiece.

“Holland is scouting the building now,” Felix replied. “She’ll let us know when she has him.”

That made for quite the mental image: Ripley breathing fumes on the woman trying to rescue him. She would be poisoned or dead, the rest of the team would think I set them up, and then leave Donovan and me to fight for our lives.

I cleared my throat. “No offense, but I don’t think he’s gonna be happy to see investigators breaking downthe doors. You should let me warn him, at least.” If he was even here, and that was a big if.

A pause preceded Felix’s reply. “Not sure how we would do that, but we can try.”

Ours was an imperfect plan. Not how I would have done things, but maybe that was for the best. My schemes rarely worked out the way I intended. It might do me good to give someone else the reins.

Regardless, I had the telekinetic equivalent of an itchy trigger finger, ready to snap Jax in half the moment I saw the white of his one eye.

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