Page 48 of Elven Prince

She couldn’t deny that. If he wanted to get back to her for rejecting him, she had to admit he might actually take it this far. He was certainly capable of it.

But she couldn’t say that out loud. Not here on a mission with this small four-man team, and definitely not in front of Maxwell. Not before she had a chance to thoroughly think it over on her own first.

She was ready to call it a night and suggest they head back to Headquarters, since they clearly wouldn’t get their answers here.

But the next horrifying realization hit her with so much force, she felt like she’d been hit in the gut with a bowling ball.

“Hannigan,” she whispered.

He shot her a casual glance, but the second their gazes met, his eyes widened. He stepped closer, dipping his head toward her as if that would make it any easier for her to voice the horror of it.

“Whoever did this hit the warehouse because we were in business with Kash,” she murmured. “But he wasn’t the only person we dealt with. We have connections all over the city. We do business with half a dozen other vendors, just off the top of my head…”

Maxwell’s eyes flashed once with a blinding intensity she hadn’t seen before. A terrifying growl rumbled through him with so much force, she felt it in her own chest.

“Shit.” He whirled away from her and charged toward the stairs. “Move out!”

“Why?” Tig asked. “What’s going—”

“Right the fuck now!”

With a shrill screech of tires and the scent of burnt rubber filling the air, the vehicle rocked violently to the left, throwing all three of its passengers sideways in their seats.

The dangerously sharp turn at homicidal speeds lifted both the front and back right wheels off the asphalt for three heart-pounding seconds.

Somehow, Rebecca’s fingers found a painfully tight grip on the “oh-shit” handle above the front passenger window, which was unfortunately all she had to hold on to. “Hannigan!”

Then the right-hand tires bounced back down, jostling everyone in their seats again but no longer fighting gravity and the laws of physics.

“Make the call!” Maxwell roared, yanking the steering wheel hand over hand as the vehicle fishtailed into something resembling a straight line. Then he floored the gas.

“That, right there,” Lerrick blurted from the back seat, “is why Ialwayswear a seatbelt.”

“Dude, shut up,” Tig hissed before yanking on his own seatbelt and shoving it violently into the buckle.

By then, Rebecca already had her phone to her ear, waiting for the line to pick up. It was answered almost immediately.

“Hey, Knox. Everything—”

“Rick! Don’t ask questions. Just do exactly as I tell you. I need a list of everyone Shade interacts with on a regular basis. Names and addresses. Suppliers and contractors. Anyone we use for orders and shipments. I don’t care if we only do business with them for one thing, even if it’s a fucking paperclip. Got it? If we have regular contact with them, they go on the list.”

“Yeah, I can get that to you in, like, five minutes—”

“Don’t bother sending it to me,” she said. “Get that list to Whit and tell him to assemble a team for each location. Every team needs to be on site ten minutes ago! Everywhere except the laundromat. We’re headed there now.”

“Everywhere but Bubble-U. Got it. What do I tell Whit this is for? He’s gonna wanna know what’s going on, because that’s, like…I don’t know. Over a dozen different teams in the field all at once.”

“Because someone just took out the entire crew at Kash’s warehouse before they sent Archie home in the back of his own truck, Rick!” Rebecca shouted. “And now they’re going after everyone else with any business connection to Shade, if they haven’t already. Get it done!”

Only after she ended the call and clenched her phone so tightly in her lap she heard it start to crack over the roar of the vehicle engine barreling down the freeway did she feel a little guilty for snapping at Rick the way she had.

That was more Maxwell’s kind of thing.

If they hadn’t been in such a hurry racing against more business-wide massacres—if they hadn’t been powerless to do anything but hope they got there in time—she would have cracked a joke about accidentally encroaching on the shifter’s territory.

Nothing was funny now.

Including the tense, pulse-pounding race to the closest target location they could think of, all four members of the team speechless while the vehicle hurtled down the road.

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