“Holy fuck, Siren,” he gasped, burying his face in her silken hair. “I thought you’d gone.”
Her feet were well off the ground with the way he held her, and she adjusted her position to wrap her legs around his waist. It made me want to stab him in the kidney. It’d be so easy, with his back to me like that. Just whoops, my knife slipped and it was done. No take backs. Problem solved.
But then I wouldn’t get the satisfaction of killing him slowly… of making him understand the consequences of his actions. He murdered Layla, and now he was seducing my DeLuna. I’d be damned if I let history repeat itself, so I would do whatever it took to eliminate him before he could hurt my love.
“…get my note?” I caught her saying as I tuned back in—leaving my daydream behind—and she gave me a hard glare when the big dumb fuck asked what note?
I just met her eyes and shrugged. Surely she knew better than to expect me to encourage this fling? Not commenting, I plugged the first thumb drive into my computer and clicked my tongue in un-surprised irritation.
“Encoded,” I muttered, ejecting it and trying another. Same thing. On the upside, though, it was a code I already knew I could break with a little time. After all, it was one I’d invented. “DeLuna, my love, tell us what happened when you found these.”
Kai, poor thing, was a bit slow to catch up. “Are those… is that the data cache? Where did you find it? Why am I so out of the loop here?”
Danny soothed him with a tender kiss, and I nearly destroyed the thumb drive in my fist. “I was following up on a lead from Sabby.” She patted his shoulder and wriggled free of his smothering hold. “Which worked out, clearly. But then as I was leaving, I got shot at by a team of mercs.”
Kai’s eyes widened, and my own gaze sharpened on her.
“A team?” Kai repeated, maybe the information was taking a hot second to compute. “Guild mercs? How many?”
Danny shrugged, running a hand through her hair. “Like… maybe nine? Unclear on whether they were Guild or not. I had some backup sharpshooters from KJ-Fit lay down cover while Hades gave me a ride home. She looked less than impressed about the mess, though.”
I snorted a laugh. “Tough shit. They had to have been tailing you, though. And why today? Why put such a large team on you today of all days.”
“My guess is that they already knew the data cache was here somewhere and were just waiting for us to find it. Stupid of me to announce I’d found it over the phone where anyone could overhear.” Danny grimaced with guilt. “Regardless, we have it and they’re dead. How long will it take to decode?”
I cast my eyes back to the scrambled mess of code on my screen. “If I was home with access to my office, only a day. But from here? Hard to say. Maybe a week. Per drive.” Then a thought occurred to me, and I speared dickhead with a glare. “Your man put the insulting hit out on DeLuna. Was this team his handiwork too?”
Danny must not have considered that option, because her eyes widened as she peered up at Kai. “I thought you handled Sam?”
Kai glowered, his fists tight at his sides and his jaw twitching. “I did handle him. This wasn’t my team.”
I snapped my fingers. “Yeah, I’m not so sure, Goliath. How would you know? You’ve been here, salivating all over my woman. They could have—”
“I know,” he barked, “because Sam’s dead. I shot him. This was a Guild attack.”
Well, shit, I didn’t expect that. Maybe he isn’t as useless as he looks.
Danny looked genuinely shocked, her lips parted as she stared up at him. Goddamn it, don’t tell me he was getting her pity over killing his disloyal team member? That was just sensible leadership, not something to get his dick sympathy-sucked for.
“Kai, I had no idea…” she murmured, running a hand over her face. She was tired but doing a good job of hiding it. Except in those little moments when her hand passed over her face, or her fingers through her hair, and her eyes turned tired. I wanted nothing more than to take her home to my snow fortress and put her back in the hot tub.
The big asshole’s shoulders sagged, then all of a sudden his posture stiffened, going rigid. “Danny,” he whispered, horror filling his voice, “where did you get that?”
He was pointing at the necklace around DeLuna’s neck, lying against her black top like a shining beacon of disaster. I’d seen it when she came in but assumed she’d found it with the data cache.
The way she paled, her eyes darting to me with regret, told me otherwise. “Kai… where’d you get this? Did you know it was a Guild symbol?” She picked up the key pendant and rubbed her thumb over the twisted metal symbol in such a familiar way.
Kai blinked like he’d just been electrocuted. “What? No. It’s not a—” He shook his head in denial. “That necklace belonged to Charlotte. The girl I told you about.”
Danny winced, her gaze on me not him. “That’s what I was scared you’d say, Kai.”
His furious, perplexed glare swung back and forth between Danny and me as he tried to catch up. “I don’t understand. Why do you have Charlotte’s necklace? What does this have to do with this?” He waved a hand at the pile of thumb drives in front of me.
Danny was still watching me, assessing how much I already knew. Calculating how much I’d been withholding from her.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I gave a short sigh as I dug it out. Better to rip the Band-Aid off. Maybe now she’d let me kill him.
“Because, idiot, that’s not Charlotte’s necklace. It’s Layla’s. Shit, hold that thought, this is important.” I quickly answered the call and brought the phone to my ear. The caller was one of my personal employees… one with orders to only contact me in an emergency.
Kai started to blow his top, but I held up a finger to silence him.
“Sir,” my employee grunted, “bad news, I’m afraid.”
Dread pooled in my stomach as I locked eyes with Danny. “How bad, Boris?”
“Arson, by the looks of things. Elevators disabled, fires lit in every escape stairwell. No one stood a chance.” He gave a hacking cough, like he’d suffered some level of smoke inhalation himself.
I swallowed, knowing this development would make my girl feel like she was breaking. She wouldn’t truly break, she was too strong for that, but it’d hurt. “Any survivors?”
Boris coughed again. “None, I’m sorry, sir. No one made it out, my assignment included.”
I hissed a curse, then ended the call.
“What was that?” Danny asked immediately, ignoring Kai’s bewildered glares.
Steeling myself against her inevitable reaction, I put my phone down. “That was Boris, one of my personal mercenaries. I’ve had him watching Jude. Observing.”
Danny went rigid. She’d heard my side of the conversation, so she already knew what was coming. She was smart enough to put it together.
“I’m sorry, mon cœur, Judith is dead.”
45
Static rushed in my ears, and my vision went spotty for a second, then I shook it off violently. Because surely I’d just heard him wrong. Or he’d heard Boris wrong. Either way, this wasn’t fucking happening. No way.
“You’re wrong,” I whispered, unable to tear my eyes from Leon’s face. The depth of regret and apology in his green eyes almost made me choke, though. Leon wasn’t faking shit; he wasn’t hiding behind a mask. He was being truthful… but that didn’t mean he was right.
“Siren…” Kai reached out to touch my arm, and I jerked away. I didn’t want or need comforting because Leon’s intel was faulty.
“Danny, my love,” Leon said softly, “I’m not wrong. I trained Boris, he’s good. He wouldn’t report termination unless he was sure. It was arson. Sounds like her whole building went up, and there were no survivors. All exits blocked off.”
I shook my head, refusing to accept that answer. “Bullshit, no one is infallible, Marx. Show me proof. Bring up satellite imagery.”
Kai gave a soft sound, reaching for me again. This time, I let him take my hand, but I still didn’t need comfort. Because Jude wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be.
“Siren, you can’t just bring up satellite images without—” His sensible protest cut short as Leon’s fingers flew across his laptop keyboard, hacking into the UK government satellites to provide the evidence I wanted to see. Needed to see.
I tugged my hand free of Kai’s grip and sank onto the couch beside Leon, taking the laptop from him with shaking hands. The aerial image showed a massive plume of smoke engulfing the area where Jude’s flat was located, but it obscured any details.
“CCTV,” I demanded, handing it back to him. “There’s a camera on the storefront opposite. Um, a handbag store, I can’t remember the name.”