I shrug. “Ain’t my fault if they look around and assume something that isn’t true.”
“It won’t be enough,” Chaos says. He bites his bottom lip with a grimace. “They number twice as many as we do. We’re fucked if they do decide to start shit.”
“Love your confidence,” I sass.
He lifts an eyebrow. “We both know how crazy they are. Logic doesn’t apply to them.”
He’s not wrong. “Go call the school and get them to give Selena a message to stay there until you pick her up. I’ll see who we’ve got here already and who can stay behind. Stage some people on the porch in case they do swing by. Make it look as though we aren’t worried.”
He nods, slaps me on the bicep, and then jogs through to his office, seemingly relieved to leave things up to me for now so that he can take care of his loved ones.
And people wonder why I seem okay with being single all these years.Get attached, and you catch feelings, and those fuckers always scramble your brain when the shit hits the fan. I head for the stairs, chest failing to fill with my next breath when the thought strikes me like a sucker-punch to the gut.
Kyra’s in town. She’s probably at lunch right now. And if the Breed are half as good as their reputation insists, they’ll know who she is.
Who her father is.
Fuck.I leap up the stairs two at a time and find exactly who I’d hoped for in the last room on the left.
“I need you to look for someone,” I state, nodding toward the laptop on Darko’s bent legs.
He lifts his head and pulls off an earphone. “Can you not let me concentrate on what I’m already doing?” He thumbs toward Fang, who kneels in front of the sash window with a rifle concealed against the baseboard. “It’s bad enough he crashed in here telling me he needed the room.”
“Did he say why?”
“Did he have to?” Darko spins his device, showing me four live feeds of the town’s security cameras set up around the central precinct. “Four of them broke off and hung about town, so I’m tracking them to figure out why.”
“Did you see Kyra at all?”
He hitches an eyebrow, absently scratching at his bare chest as he drags out the single syllable. “Why?”
“Just answer the question.”
Darko taps the keyboard a few times, then spins it for me to see again. Framed in the bottom right image is Kyra, walking the final yards back to the municipal building.Safe.My pulse slows; my breaths come deeper and easier, knowing she’ll be okay until I can get there.
The pressure eases in my head.
Well, damn.
Looks like I might have gone and caught myself some feelings after all.
TWENTY-TWO
KYRA
“You look real familiar,”the guy says. He wears a leather vest, but the colors are all wrong. I don’t need to see the back to know he’s not one of the Kings. “Why is that?”
I back away from his whiskey breath. “I guess you must have me confused with someone else.”
“Don’t think he does.” A second man shepherds me with quick movements, pushing me toward a side alley and blocking my escape.
Fuck it.I thought I’d be real damn clever when it seemed the bikers just passed through, and head back to the safety of the council offices. Instead, I’ve managed to walk my ass smack into a group of men who quite clearly try not to be seen if they can help it.
“I don’t know any of you, so we can’t have met before.” I turn in a slow circle in the mouth of the alley and count four of these fuckers.
One of them turns toward his bike, parked out of view of the street, and I catch sight of the three-headed dog snarling on his back.Shit, shit, double shit.As suspected, they’re Devil’s Breed.Why didn’t they carry on through with the rest of them? Why did they get left behind?
“I’ll leave you gentlemen to your day.” I take a step backward toward the street, then another, and come smack up against someone who smells of cigarettes and sweat.
