“Who?” Aric demanded, squeezing his throat nearly to the point of crushing it.
The human attempted a chuckle. “I love seeing you bloodsuckers chase your tails. Almost as much as I like seeing you smoked in a pile of ash under my boots.”
Aric roared his fury. “Tell us, goddamn you.”
“Thereisa mole,” Kaya confirmed, her voice wooden. “They’ve got someone embedded. Someone who’s feeding them high-value intel on a regular basis now. Data files too.”
“What the fuck?” Aric scowled, beyond enraged. “Who is it? Say the name or say goodbye to your larynx.”
“Some Irish bitch,” Mackie finally relented. “Iona something.”
Aric reeled back. He caught Kaya’s confused gaze too. “If you’re talking about Reginald Crowe’s mistress, Iona Lynch, she’s dead. I saw her savaged body with my own eyes last week.”
“Yeah?” Mackie taunted despite the strangling hold on him. “Then she must be sending messages from hell because she’s the one who got a warning passed on to me that the Order was after my ass a few nights ago.”
“What?” Kaya swiveled a questioning look at her sister. “I thought you warned him after I came to see you.”
Leah shook her head. “This son of a bitch has been holding me against my will for six months, threatening to kill me and my baby if I try to leave. I would never tell him anything.”
Aric’s blood ran ice cold. When he glanced at Kaya, her face showed the same astonished dread that was currently coiled around him.
“Oh, my God,” Kaya murmured. “Rafe.”
CHAPTER 27
At the insistence of their mates the Order’s meeting in the war room had broken up half an hour ago, sending the Breed elders up to the mansion to join the women. Mira’s comrades had invited Rafe to the weapons room for some sparring and the usual bullshitting and ball-busting that was a staple of warrior life in any of the Order’s command centers, but he had declined the offer.
He had other diversions in mind.
Namely, Siobhan.
He’d been surprised to discover she wasn’t in her guest room in the main residence. Curious to find she hadn’t even stopped by to see Renata or fawn over the baby, which she’d seemed to be so excited for whenever he spoke about the pending arrival of the Order’s newest family member.
As Rafe strode back down to the command center, the only place she could possibly have gone, he felt a niggling pang that he was tempted to call suspicion. He might have, if his faith in Siobhan wasn’t so complete. Had she gotten lost down in the maze of corridors that threaded through the labyrinthine nerve center of the warriors’ domain? She knew the area was restricted to Order members, but she was an inquisitive woman and maybe she had simply woken from her long nap and gone looking to find him.
The idea comforted him, sweeping away the colder sense he had that he was missing something. That he was blind to something right in front of his face.
That his obsession with Siobhan was making him weak in ways he didn’t quite comprehend.
“Ridiculous,” he muttered as he trekked through yet another twisting passageway and found no sign of her.
He pivoted to go back, then he noticed that the elevator that connected the mansion’s living quarters and command center was stuck on the lower level of the compound. There was nothing in the subterranean bowels of this place but basement storage.
The elevator never sat down there for this long.
Rafe pressed the call button, but nothing happened.
On a frown, he glanced to the stairwell. He took the steps in stealth silence, uncertain why he felt the need to approach whatever waited for him down there with the caution of a soldier. He froze in place as his gaze lit on the propped open elevator door and the crates of ultraviolet munitions that packed the car.
Siobhan was inside. She had something in her hand, wiring it to the crates.
Rafe’s warrior instincts scraped him with confusion. Suspicion. A dread so deep it staggered him.
He saw the scene for what it was: Siobhan with a detonation device in hand, a remote lying next to her.
Fury flared in him, burning past the weaker feelings of disbelief and apprehension.
“Siobhan. What the fuck are you doing?”
