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I huffed a breath and glanced over my shoulder. “What?”

He crossed the room and I turned around, my back to the door.

He captured my chin in his hand. His gaze snagged mine, and I flashed back to that morning at Charles de Gaulle. The intense green of his irises and how they’d reminded me of a jaguar’s.

A beautiful cat, yes, but one you’d be wise not to underestimate.

I licked my lips and his gaze dropped to my mouth. His eyes darkened and he leaned in like he couldn’t help himself, like he was drawn to me as much as I was drawn to him, and nipped my lip. He soothed the small bite with his tongue, and then he was kissing me, a slow, thorough kiss that scrambled my brain and turned my knees into mush.

He lifted his head and released my chin. “I’m nice, not weak. Don’t confuse the two.”

My fingers were digging into his shoulders. I inhaled, made myself let go. “Got it.”

I fumbled behind my back for the doorknob and slipped into the hall.

Outside, I turned south toward the Bronx’s less populated, industrial section.

Twilight called right on time. “It’s me. What’s up?”

I touched my lips. I was still back in the room with Zaq, my body humming from his kiss.

I took a centering breath and concentrated on my reasons for contacting her. “You alone? It’s safe to talk?”

Our smartphones were encrypted in three different ways, and we changed them out every few weeks so that even if someone managed to infect them with spyware, they didn’t get much info. However, we still used a verbal code because no matter how good your tech, someone’s always raising the bar.

“Um…yeah.” Her caution came through loud and clear.

I understood. Twilight was my closest friend—we’d looked out for each other, back when we were teenagers at the same SI training facility—but even she didn’t know me that well. No one did.

I chewed my lower lip. How could I put this without giving too much away?

“Something’s off.” I stopped short of saying something was wrong at SI. I wanted to feel her out first. “The brothers—do you know why they’re involved?”

Why are Zaq, Gabriel and Rafe targets?

“You’re asking me? You’ve been on this op longer than me.”

“Yeah, but everything’s on a need-to-know basis. I thought if we pooled information…”

She expelled a breath. “What’s this about? Really?”

I glanced around. I was in a concrete wasteland of warehouses and auto repair shops that smelled of motor oil and the garbage cooking in a nearby dumpster. The only living things within sight were the spindly locust trees poking through grates in the sidewalk and the man spray-painting a car across the street at Juan’s Body Shop.

And I had to trust someone or I was never going to get to the bottom of this.

“Okay. Here’s the way it went down.” I dropped the code except to refer to the Krals by their numbers. “We took P2 as planned, but after that, it turned into a shitshow. P2 was chained to a wall with silver handcuffs day and night. The blood-suckers drank from him—twice—while he was restrained. The man couldn’t even defend himself. Much longer in there, and they’d have drained him dry.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. And the Bird approved it.” Twilight would know the Bird was Crow.

Twilight drew a shocked breath. “All of it?”

“I don’t think she knew they’d drink his blood. But the silver cuffs burned into his wrists. And he wasn’t allowed to sit or lie down, so he couldn’t sleep. It was torture, and she didn’t care. The only reason they released him was because I worked out a deal for him. If he stakes his father, they’ll let him and his brothers live.”

“Jesus,” she said again. “And they have P3 now.”

“Yeah. The bastards are using him to up the pressure on P2. He was told that if he doesn’t stake his father by Tuesday, they’ll sell P3 into blood slavery.”

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