His temples throbbed as his frustration and blood pressure rose. “But you’re sure Burton’s involved?”
“He’s a connection.” She started to pace, taking her glasses off to rub at her face. “Maybe? I don’t know.”
His hold on his temper crumbled more with each nonanswer. “What do you know, Cass?”
She spun around and glared at him. “That he’s my only path to saving my mother.”
“How?” he asked. When she put her glasses back on and continued to glare at him, he closed the distance between them in two angry steps. “Explain it to me so I can understand.”
He watched her emotions chase across her face, and the fear that he would lose another woman he loved to useless self-sacrifice seared away the last of his self-control. He grabbed her arms and pulled her close as he got in her face.
“Tell me you aren’t planning on sacrificing yourself for her,” he snarled. “That you won’t just hand yourself over to whoever these fucks are.”
Cass’s defiance dissolved. “She’s my mother!” Fury, terror, guilt—it was all there in her voice and in the tears that pooled and then spilled from her eyes. She sagged against his hold. “She’s my mom, Grayson. I can’t leave her. Don’t ask me to.”
Her broken plea was a knife cutting through his resentment and fear. He gathered her close and dropped his head over hers. His rage eased back, replaced by a terrible understanding. His heart ached because he knew the forces tearing her apart.
“I won’t, Cass, I won’t.” He rocked her, comforting them both. “But you can’t keep me in the dark, no matter how bad it is, okay?”
“Okay,” she choked out.
On the counter, his phone vibrated with an incoming text. Cass pulled back, and he let her go. She wiped the tears from her reddened eyes and shoved her glasses up.
He waited until she had regathered her composure before saying, “Tell me what you can so we can figure out how we’re going to handle Burton.”
She took a breath to steady herself. “It’s not much, and some of it doesn’t make sense, but I think whoever is behind all of this targeted Pythia specifically because of its connection to Burton. Something about him, or something he can do, is driving all of this.” Her voice strengthened as she talked.
“And your family is Pythia.”
She rubbed her arms as if chilled. “Right, so if you want to stop Pythia, you have to stop my family, specifically my mother as she’s the lynchpin.”
“And Sofia…?”
“Was the easiest way to gain access to my mother and, by extension, Pythia.” Cass used the tail end of her shirt to clean her lenses.
These bits and pieces of information were linked by supposition, not the actionable evidence they needed to cover their asses, but it was a start. “Which made Russ a tool. And Burton? Is he another tool or the mastermind?”
Cass came up beside him and put her glasses back on. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
He grabbed his phone. The incoming text was from Candace, confirming Burton’s location. He held it up so Cass could see it. “Then I guess we should go ask the one person who can answer it for us, then, huh?”
Chapter 23
Cass
Cole Burton lived in the exclusive Mountain Ridge neighborhood that crawled up Spring Mountain and offered three-hundred-sixty-degree views of the Vegas Strip. Grayson and Cass were able to follow a low-slung two-seater, which looked like it carried a six-figure price tag, through the first set of gates. Had they not caught that bit of luck at the tall gates, they’d never have gotten inside.
Cass eyed the empty guardhouse as they drove past. “No night security?”
“Don’t need it. You see those?” Grayson pointed to the statue of a sitting griffin to her right. Its twin crouched to his left.
“Yeah.”
There was no way to miss them. At least fifteen feet tall, the pair towered over the road, their stone gazes fixed on those foolish enough to enter. Strategically placed accent lights cast eerie shadows across the fierce stone profiles.
“They’re spelled.” Grayson didn’t appear too worried about it as he drove between the pair. “My guess, if you pass through with bad intentions, they don’t let you get too far.”
Cass shivered under the weight of the inhuman gazes and hoped he was right. “That’s a hell of a security option.”
