“There are others in United Washington who should be investigated,” he pressed.
“Consider it done.”
“Good.” Sloane swallowed years of training and his own natural reticence with considerable difficulty. “And Dahlia…”
She let out an impatient sound that reminded him so much of Cecilia, it startled him. “Yes?”
Quickly extracting a memory card from the computer, he bit out, “My name is Sloane.”
“Sloane, huh?” She huffed. “Well, Sloane, I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
He stood up from the desk. “Heard. I’ll keep you up to date with any developments that concern you.”
“You’re a military man, aren’t you, killer?” Felix asked.
“No,” he answered, tucking the memory card into his pocket. “I’m Cecilia’s mate. That’s all you need to know.”
Mission accomplished, he ended the call. He’d barely taken a few steps into the hallway outside the office when the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Sloane’s head turned slowly.There was no sound in the house besides the normal city noise that filtered in through the walls, but he knew he wasn’t alone. His steps were silent as he retraced his path back toward the main living space. The only illumination came from cars passing on the street, their headlights flashing across the shiny black floor.
He stood in the middle of the living room for a beat, his head turned toward the windows. Instinct bristled half a second before the glass shattered.
Two black-clad bodies burst through the windows in the same instant that another slammed him from behind.
The breath exploded out of him, but he didn’t hit the ground. Tucking low and bending his knees, Sloane used his attacker’s momentum to throw them over his shoulders and into the glass coffee table, which exploded into millions of pieces across the floor.
A fist just missed his helmet as he swept out one leg, aiming for another attacker’s knees. Trying to get distance more than anything, Sloane threw himself backward. Movement was a blur around him as three powerful bodies came at him at once. He didn’t have a moment to think, but he didn’t need to.
His body moved on autopilot, matching every blow for blow, because he’d fought these people hundreds of times.
If they’d wanted to, they could’ve shot him. They all carried bolt guns and rifles. They all had their own special weapons of choice, as well as stun guns and more hidden on their bodies. But they didn’t use them.
Because even Fracture had a code of honor for their teammates.
The moment he got his hands on the front of a dark uniform and lifted, he knew exactly who he was dealing with. Vesta sailed through the air with a grunt. Plaster and wood erupted from the hole she put in the wall, while a tacky framed print fell from its hook to crash onto the floor.
Mere moments after he let her fly, a lucky hit to his ribs nearly buckled him, giving one of his teammates an opportunity to wrench his right arm behind his back.
Pain radiated through his shoulder. Using the grip on his arm, Sloane was forced to kneel on the floor. Breathing hard, he let them hold him there for a moment as he got his bearings.
The living room was destroyed. A leather couch had been demolished, a television ripped off the wall, and glass scattered across nearly every surface. A pair of boots crunched the debris as they came to stand in front of him.
That raw nerve in his chest throbbed. There was no panic. There was no urgency.
Not returning to Cecilia wasn’t an option. It was the only thing that mattered, and if he had to kill his teammates to do it…
Pain rippled through him, not from his various bruises and the very-nearly-dislocated shoulder currently being twisted out of its socket. It was a deeper, stranger feeling. It felt an awful lot likereluctance.
I… can’t kill them.The thought worked its way through him in a great, internal earthquake.I don’t want to. Even now.
But if he couldn’t get back to Cecilia, what choice would he have? If he was forced to decide between destroying himself or living without her, he’d choose the former every time.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” a modulated voice informed him.
