My gaze lifted to his, and I sensed a thread of disquiet that hadn’t been there before, despite that his expression remained unyielding. I pulled my dog tags from underneath my shirt to show him.
REEVES
SOPHIA E.
290 98 1240
A POS
CATHOLIC
“My friends call me Soph.” A moment stuttered past. “But you can’t call me that.”
His stare lasered in on my name debossed into the metal, but the edge of his mouth lifted an infinitesimal degree. “Are you saying we aren’t friends?”
Was that…a joke?
“Come on.” He jerked his head toward the kitchen, and I followed. I sat at the table while he took the seat opposite. We faced each other, almost like a poorly lit interrogation room. The fading daylight from the large kitchen window cast a lavender pall over us. Shadows crept from the corners, stretching fingers toward us, wanting.
“So, does Harrison believe me now?” Lucas asked.
“I think he was pleasantly surprised.” As was I, not that it mattered.
“It isn’t always going to be easy. It was Bennie’s plan, so it was poorly organized. He’s better at battle than stealth.”
My ears perked. “Benjamin Cook? One of the other Blood Colonels?”
He snorted. “No one calls him Benjamin. And no one calls us Blood Colonels.”
“They do where I come from.”
He gave me a flat stare. “Well,Benjaminis not one for details. He has good ideas, but I’ve been editing his plans since I started.”
I reflected on what Theo had said when Lucas joined the NSF ranks.
“Wherever he came from, he appears to be a talented strategist.”
“He appears to be a serial killer,” I mutter into my stew, to which Theo chuckles darkly.
“There’s no pattern I can trace, no strategy I can pin down,” he says. “They’re gaining the upper hand, and they know it. It’s like fighting someone who knows the moves you’re going to make even before you do.”
“Sounds like we need a secret weapon.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m looking for it.”
Who’d have thought the secret weapon would be the man himself?
“I was conveniently unavailable to help him with this,” Lucas said, guiding me back to the conversation.
“Hmm. How sad.”
Those pretty eyes brightened, penetrating. Now that we were back to business, the cold wrath cloaked him like it had last week. Ice crystals could have sparkled on the planes of his face, and I wouldn’t have been surprised.
“I have information about General Wyatt.”
A flutter rose in my stomach. General Dean Wyatt was the chief of staff of the US Army. He commanded all their forces, including the Hunters.
“He’ll be visiting in a month,” Lucas said.
