Page 264 of Entangled

“You shouldn’t tease them like this,” he tells me in an undertone, walking a step behind me... watching my back.

We don’t often go out together like this. Dom and Beau handle most of the raids, Jayk is Jayk, and I usually hunt alone. Jasper’s more of an indoor cat.

So this is nice. I mean, if you can ignore the terrifying bone-dead city, it’s nice.

“None of it’s real. It’s just a harmless prank. A bonding exercise,” I soothe, shooting him a wink, and Jasper sighs.

“Watch where you’re going,” he mutters, eyeing the shadowed, stained streets around us with healthy suspicion.

I turn around, and when I do, I’m smiling again. It might be my favorite part about how things have changed between us.

My smiles feel real again.

“That sounded like an order, soldier,” I muse as I step around a haphazardly parked car. “Try to keep in mind thatIam in charge here.”

I feel the sudden silence behind me like the edge of a knife, and the small hairs lift on the back of my neck. My smile becomes a grin.

“Have your fun, Lucien. Perhaps you can even watch and learn how to obey an order,” Jasper says silkily. He steps up beside me and gives me a dark-eyed look under his lashes, lowering his voice. “But don’t be mistaken, you wretched brat. I don’t need to be your superior to own you.”

My mouth goes dry, and he holds my gaze for a moment more before he turns and taps the bricked building next to us. It takes me too long to recognize the chalk marking that tells us to turn left.

Cheeks burning, I lift my hand and gesture at the team to change direction.

Bentley and his men scouted the routes to the Den several days ago, marking the directions in chalk so we wouldn’t get lost in Cyanide.

Night blankets us in darkness, but we follow the markings for two hours, using a few flashlights to shine our way. Dom, Beau, and I check in every fifteen minutes to make sure it’s all quiet, and apart from flocks of pigeons roosting in burst-open buildings and the distant scurrying of random animals, it is.

I keep one eye on Julian, and every time he catches me looking at him, he sweats even more.

And yes, his nervousness makes me want to snort, but it also reminds me that he wasn’t here for our briefing. He doesn’t know the plan, and so I really do need to keep an eye on him.

Team Decoy isn’t an attack force—we don’t have the manpower to take out that many men. Our goal is to distract the Sinners and lead them away from the Den so that Dom’s team can get in, collect the women, children, and whatever contraband they can steal, and get out.

We donotwant Dom and Eden popping up like a Whack-A-Mole into an army full of Sinners.

So to draw them out, Team Decoy will set up explosives through the buildings along a nearby industrial street. We’re going to set them off one by one, simulating the rippled drop of a drone strike. It should push the Sinners out of their Den—and hopefully make them scatter.

The drones targeted grouped heat signatures, after all.

It’s a good plan—about as good as anyone could muster with this many vulnerable hostages, few resources, and even fewer men. But there are still a lot of ways this could go wrong. The midnight explosions should catch them off-guard, but they’ll come out armed and ready for a fight. If we can avoid engaging them directly, we will. Team Rooftop can only do so much to cover our asses on the ground if we get jumped by that many men.

This one is all about the set-up and the timing.

Beau’s voice clicks on over our Ranger kit radios in a burst of low static. “Team Rooftop has reached the target location and is in position, over.”

They should be lined up opposite the buildings we plan to blow—ready to cover us while we set up and pick off any asshole Sinner if we get jumped.

“Team Underground not yet in position. Do not engage. Copy? Over,” Dom’s voice crackles back immediately.

I gesture at my team to slow as we approach a large warehouse with a bigXmarked in chalk on its side. There’ll be another building a few hundred yards up the street just like it, also marked with anX, and there should be one more after that.

Glancing up, I see Beau’s team spread along the rooftop of the building opposite us. Bentley chose this street because of how tightly the buildings are locked in beside one another, which should make it easy enough for Team Rooftop to follow us as we move.

I flick on the radio at my chest. “Roger that, Cap. Team Decoy is approaching the first target now. We’ll check the bed for bugs and lay our plastic, then move onto target two. Confirming we’ll hold fire until your signal. Over.”

“Team Rooftop has eyes on Decoy. We’re watching their six, Captain. Over and out,” Beau confirms. He’s lost the snippy tone he’s had with Dom ever since we left Bristlebrook, and I’m glad they can pack it away for this, at least.

I hate it when Mom and Dad fight.

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