Page 265 of Entangled

I gesture everyone over to huddle in the dip of an alley. Julian starts to move in close and everyone edges away from him.

Jasper gives me another exasperated look, and my lips twitch.

“Okay team, pair up and watch each other’s backs. We’re going to sweep the building. I want every room checked for civilians, Sinners, and cute baby animals. When we’re sure it’s clear, I’ll set up the explosives and we move straight onto the second building. You see a target, try not to kill them. We want to make sure who we’re firing on first, okay? Any questions?”

We went over the plan a few times before we left, but funny things can happen to the brain in combat. The adrenaline can drown out those details fast if you’re not used to it.

Julian raises a shaking hand, and I nod encouragingly.

“W-where are you getting the explosives from?” he asks trepidatiously, like he already knows the answer. He seems afraid to move, and he’s holding the straps of the danger pack in a death grip.

I rub the side of my nose and say vaguely, “Oh, you know...” I click my fingers. “Can you stay where I can see you, though? For reasons.”

Jennifer snorts with laughter next to me. Julian’s eyes sink miserably closed, and reluctant smiles start cropping up over Team Decoy’s faces, finally easing some of that twitchy tension in them. In most of them.

Julian is definitely still twitching.

We all move into the warehouse as Beau watches from above. It’s dusty as hell, but that reassures me more than anything. This building hasn’t been disturbed for years. It only takes fifteen minutes for the team to clear the building and gather downstairs, and a quick check in with Beau confirms the streets outside are quiet.

As Julian walks down the stairs toward us, taking ginger steps, I loosen one of the flares from my belt. He clears the stairs just as Jasper catches sight of me, narrowing his eyes on the flare in my hand.

I see the moment understanding hits. “Lucien,don’t.”

I light the end of the flare and throw it at Julian’s pack, shouting wildly, “Julian, look out!”

The flare lights the room in a fiendish red, and it makes a loud bang as it hits the smiley face keychain square in the eye.

Shocked shouts lift up from the team, and I grin, dropping my own pack on the floor.

I’m about to reveal the joke when Julianscreams.

He throws the pack off his shoulders behind him, then spins around, seeing the bright red flame atop the danger pack. In a startling display of heroism, he throws himself on the burning bag and tosses the lit flare in my direction.

I skid to the side to avoid it... and can’t hold back my laughter as he frantically beats out the tiny flames.

Jennifer freezes at my laughter, halfway to the door in a panicked flight already, then turns to look at me with shocked, incredulous eyes. The rest of the team filters into the room, staring between me and the pack with varying expressions of horror and confusion.

“The... the danger pack. The explosives. It was on f-fire,” Julian stammers, whipping his head around in every direction. “Youset it on fire. Why would you...? Why are youlaughing?”

His sweet, studious face is white, and it sets me off again until I’m bent over and gasping for air.

“I’m sorry. You didn’t have it. I’m sorry, but your face—” I wipe a tear from my eye, snorting again. “I switched the chain onto my bag. You never had the danger pack—there’s not one explosive in there. I wouldn’t do that toyou, recruit. That would be mean! The most dangerous thing in there is my sweaty old socks.”

Jennifer presses a hand against her chest and flips me off with the other. “You motherfucker. You scared theshitout of me.”

One of the Red Zone men snorts, then starts laughing, and the rest of them look somewhere between amused and scandalized. One of them hugs their friend when they can’t stop shaking.

See? Bonding.

Jasper gives me a lethally unimpressed look. In the flickering, flaring light, he looks like hell’s prince again.

Julian stands up on shaking, uncertain legs, picking up my old pack. “I-If I didn’t have the danger pack, then w-who does?”

“Uh, Lucky?” one of the older men asks faintly, staring at something behind me. “Youdidn’t have the danger pack... did you?”

I shrug. “Of course. I wouldn’t ask anyone in my team to take a risk I wouldn’t take.” The man steps back slowly, his eyes widening. “Um. But why do you ask?”

“Fuck,” Jasper swears, and it’s so unlike him that I blink as he stalks up to me, then spins me around.

---