Emily’s voice was quiet but steady. “What happens if I’m taken?”
Alec turned to her, eyes blazing. “You won’t be.”
Dev provided a more practical answer. “We follow your signal and extract you.”
He made it sound simple. “What if they take my clothes with the panic button. My shoes with the tracker?”
“We thought of that,” Callan said, producing a small box. Inside, a pair of earrings gleamed. “There’s a transmitter embedded in one of the stones.”
It seemed surreal, something out of James Bond. “You’ve got contingencies covered, it seems.”
“We can’t predict everything,” Alec said, voice low and dangerous. “I’m counting on you to keep her safe,” he added, locking eyes with Jace. “Are you up to this?”
Jace nodded, quiet but steady. “I’ll protect her with my life.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Emily squeezed Alec’s arm, feeling the iron tension in his muscles. Her gaze swept the room, eyes meeting every man’s one at a time. “If you’re ready to end this, I am too.”
Chapter 19
The week crawled by. Emily worked her morning shifts as usual and—keeping up appearances—served at Devil’s Pointe for Regina on Wednesday. She gave Benny an extremely wide berth.
She went to class and somehow aced all her skills tests, probably because her mind was on Friday night instead of whether her soufflé would crater or if her mushroom risotto needed another minute to cook.
In between her normal routine, she attended briefings at Devlin HQ. Callan funneled the team a steady flow of information from inside Coral Gables. Emily wasn’t sure how much of it he obtained legally, but she left that for Dev and his licensed investigators to decide. If they shut the traffickers down, she didn’t care about his sources.
In preparation for her role, she studied faces, memorized names, learned which guards smoked, and which ones lingered too long near the girls.
To feel normal, she cooked for the team twice. Alec stayed close, not crowding or interfering, but near enough to know he was there. Every night, she went home with him, and he held her as if she might vanish. Guilt gnawed at her, but it didn’t lessen her determination.
Rhys taught her how to spot hidden cameras. Mateo walked her through panic protocols. Callan adjusted the earrings twice, tweaking the signal range and battery life. He also had her practice disabling an alarm panel identical to the one in Coral Gables tucked behind a prep shelf, easy to miss unless you knew where to look.
“Three taps then hold,” he said, guiding her fingers. “Don’t rush it. If you panic, you’ll trigger the failsafe.”
“I won’t panic,” she assured him with more confidence than she felt.
He gave her a look that said he saw right through her. “Just remember the sequence.”
She did. She remembered everything.
Midweek—after another update full of important but mind-numbing minutiae—Alec caught her hand.
“Come with me,” he said quietly.
She followed him through the network of corridors that made up Devlin headquarters, past the break area with its deep leather couches, massive wall-mounted TV, and no-nonsense commercial coffee station. They moved on past the humming control center, where banks of monitors glowed with heat maps and silent camera feeds, until the hallway narrowed and quieted.
He pushed open a door, revealing a gym with padded floors, punching bags, and racks of free weights. Mirrors lined the walls, and the faint scent of rubber and sweat hung in the air.
Emily raised a brow. “Planning to work off some stress?”
“Definitely,” he said. “I want you to know a few moves. Just in case.”
“You think I’ll need them?”
“I hope you won’t. But if you do, I want you to have a fighting chance.” He faced her, crouching a little. “Come at me.”
“What? No gloves?” she teased.
“This isn’t sparring, Em. This is survival training.”
