Jes glanced over her shoulder to see Jake following them, an unreadable expression on his face.
Darby must have picked up on her hesitation because he stopped and gestured at the man guarding the staircase to the third floor. “Damien can walk with us if you have concerns about your safety. Your bodyguard can take a break, or whatever it is he does when he’s not guarding your body.”
Jake clenched his jaw and he looked like he wanted to argue, but Jes motioned with her eyes at the set of stairs Damien had just vacated. She wasn’t sure how long Jake and Misty had to get up there before the man was replaced by someone else, and this opportunity was too good to miss.
Giving Jake a nod—and hoping he’d picked up on her signal—Jes turned and allowed Darby to guide her down the hall toward the gallery, trying to ignore how creepy his hand felt.
* * *
Jake had no idea what it was, but there was something seriously wrong with Darby. Simply put, the man didn’t smell right, and his inner wolf didn’t like it. His inner wolf also didn’t like the predatory look in Darby’s eyes when he leaned in to kiss Jes. In fact, Jake had to fight the urge to rip the guy’s face off.
What was it about the man that made his claws and fangs want to come out?
Darby wasn’t physically intimidating. Six feet tall, he was maybe 190 pounds at most. But at the same time, there was something about the man that said he was dangerous.
That he was a killer.
In the end though, it was the man’s smell that most made Jake’s inner wolf wary. He’d never been around anyone who smelled like Darby. It was nearly impossible to define exactly what the man smelled like because he didn’t smell like anything. Actually, that wasn’t true. The guy had a scent, but it was muddy. Like someone had taken the scents from five or six people, mixed it all up in a bottle, and then dumped it all over themselves.
He was still considering if Darby had done something to mask his scent when he realized the man was still staying way too close to Jes—and that she didn’t seem thrilled about it.
That makes two of us.
Jake stepped closer and cleared his throat, ignoring the glare Darby threw his way. The moment he felt the man’s crushing grip as they shook hands, he realized Darby was a hell of a lot stronger than he looked. Definitely much stronger than anyone his size should be.
He was so wrapped up in wondering how that was possible that Jake barely heard the conversation going on between Jes and Darby. It wasn’t until the big security guard over by the staircase joined them—his scent as strange and vacant as Darby’s—that he realized Jes was on the move. Then he caught the discreet gesture she made toward the steps and realized she’d orchestrated things so he and Misty could search the third floor.
He was impressed by her quick thinking.
Jes disappeared down the hallway and around the corner with Darby and Damien, the sounds of her fake Chicago accent continuing to filter softly through his earbud. If Jes got into trouble, he’d hear it and get there before anything happened. Still, something about leaving her alone with Darby bothered him. So much so that his fingertips and gums tingled. Damn, he could already feel his fangs starting to extend.
The reaction surprised him, especially considering Jes didn’t even like him. If he had time, Jake would have dug deeper into why his inner wolf was losing his shit, but he didn’t. Jes had taken a risk to give him and Misty a chance to get upstairs. He’d be damned if he’d waste it.
Turning, Jake casually headed for the stairs like he had every right in the world to go up to the third floor. He half expected someone to stop him, but even though there were at least a half dozen people in sight, none of them said a word.
“Misty, I’m on my way up to the third floor,” he said softly into his mic. “Meet me up there—and move fast. I don’t know when another of Darby’s men is going to show up to guard the steps.”
* * *
There weren’t any security cameras on the third floor and Jake’s nose told him nobody was up there, either. That meant he didn’t have to worry about being careful as he started to search the seemingly endless number of rooms.
The first three he came to were bedrooms. They were all large and lavishly decorated, each with a small office or reading area off the main space. He was tempted to snoop around, but he knew it would be a waste of time. He could tell within seconds of walking into them that the rooms hadn’t been used by anyone in a while. That weird, muddy scent he associated with Darby was everywhere along the third floor, but faint enough in those rooms to make him think the man hadn’t been in any of them for weeks.
Jake slipped into the main hallway to head for the next room when Misty hurried toward him, glancing over her shoulder every few steps. Like Caleb, she was dressed like the other waitstaff, her vivid purple hair pulled back in a bun.
“Caleb is keeping an eye on the stairs,” she said. “He’ll let us know if anyone heads up here.”
He nodded, gesturing to the rooms on his left. “You take that side.”
Misty disappeared into the first room on her side of the hallway while he did the same on his side, finding a few more bedrooms and a study that stunk of old cigar smoke. The stench made his nose burn, and he moved out of there as fast as he could, onto the next room.
The whole time he searched, he heard Jes’s voice in his earbud as she talked to Darby about art and his charity efforts. Jake tried to stay focused on what he was supposed to be doing but found himself standing in the middle of yet another bedroom, listening to her soft tones as if mesmerized.
It wasn’t until Misty practically shouted his name that he snapped out of his daze.Shit. He shook his head, striding out of the room and across the hallway. He needed to get it together before he let something stupid happen.
Misty was in Darby’s home office. Although calling it that was a disservice. The room was almost twice as big as the conference room at STAT. In addition to the immense antique desk near the back wall, there was a conference table with a dozen chairs on one end of the room, and four monster leather chairs around a coffee table on the other. Bookshelves lined the wall on the left, while several gigantic TVs filled the one on his right. The space reeked of Darby’s scent, meaning he clearly spent a lot of time in there.
Misty pulled out the rolling chair behind the desk and sat down, her eyes almost glowing as she appraised the big-screen monitor and sleek keyboard in front of her. She seemed even more petite in the fancy leather chair. Younger, too. Jake absently wondered how someone like her had ended up in a covert organization like STAT. Outside of her unique talent, it didn’t seem like a good fit.
