I slid the encrypted comm unit toward Bones without saying a word. He met my gaze over Grace’s shoulder; he’d already gone clinical again. Focused. Cold. He’d need to stay that way for what came next.
“We need intel,” he said, voice low enough not to rattle her but sharp enough to cut steel. “Alphabet’s cataloging the downed men. We still need to question the housekeeper before we deal with the other.”
No one had to clarify whothe otherwas.
Grace’s fingers tightened around the mug. Just a flicker. But I saw it.
“We don’t have to do anything right this second,” Voodoo added. “You can just sit. Drink. Breathe.”
She didn’tjustsit, she shifted her attention to the table in front of her, scanning the spread-out evidence. “Are those theirs?”
“Yep,” I said. “Three IDs so fake they might as well have been printed at a high school computer lab. One that might be real but tied to a guy who doesn’t technically exist. And this—” I tapped the encrypted unit with a fingertip. “This is government-grade. Or stolen from someone government-grade. That’s the fun mystery.”
Grace’s throat bobbed. She was absorbing information, not flinching from it. That was something.
“What about the housekeeper?” she asked quietly.
Bones answered before I could. “We’ll handle her.”
Grace looked up sharply. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Voodoo said smoothly, “we’re not going to traumatize a civilian who might’ve been coerced. We’ll be careful.”
Which was the diplomatic way of saying,Bones will interrogate her without terrifying her or letting her lie.
And Grace understood exactly what we weren’t saying. Her gaze went distant, vanishing somewhere we couldn’t follow. A flicker of nausea crossed her expression—quick, but real.
My chest tightened. I hated that look on her. Hated it more than the swelling around my knee protesting that I’d been on the go too long.
Bones stepped closer, but not too close. “We’ll take care of everything else. You don’t need to worry about him.”
Grace met his eyes and this time she didn’t drop her gaze like she had earlier, wrapped in fear and humiliation and shock.
“What are you going to do with him?”
Bones didn’t answer immediately. Which was answer enough.
“We’re going to get information,” he said simply.
Her jaw flexed. Her fingers tightened again on the mug. Goblin nudged her hip like he felt the spike of tension.
“And after that?” she pressed.
“That’s not your burden,” Bones said. Calm. Steady. Absolute.
Voodoo shot me a look that translated to,We need to redirect before she digs into the part she won’t like.
“If I want it to be?” The question stopped me cold. The shadows had retreated and she was still sipping her coffee, but some color was returning to her cheeks.
“Do you want it to be?” Bones countered her question with one of his own without moderating his tone. Gracie had never backed down from him, even when he was at his most irritated. Now that she wasn’t throwing things at him, it was still fun to watch.
“Yes,” she said slowly and I straightened. “He was one of my captors at the warehouse…where I first woke up.”
That had been my guess based on the fingerprint scan I’d run, but Ignacio Santo Juarez was a mid-level businessman who headed several import/export operations. It wasn’t a stretch to realize he was a player in the trafficking operation that had scooped her up.
“Did he hurt you, Dollface?”
Voodoo’s expression went grim. We all knew the answer. Her reaction had been the answer, but Bones wasn’t making assumptions. More importantly, he was handing her back the power they’d taken from her.
