What the hell? It wasn’t like any of the Order’s chiefs to lay into a warrior for simply doing his job. Rafe knew he had some ground to make up after the way he’d screwed up in Montreal, but this kind of micromanagement was ridiculous.
“All due respect, but if any of you feel you can’t trust me to undertake this mission, you should’ve said so up front.”
Chase bit off a curse. “That’s not it, Rafe.”
“You sure? Then what the fuck is it . . . sir?”
Lucan lowered his chin, a wry glimmer seeping into his stormy gray gaze. “You’ve got your father’s blood running through your veins, no doubt about that.”
But his deep voice was oddly sober.
And Rafe still didn’t know what this was about.
“We’re dealing with a . . . situation on our end,” Lucan said. “It has nothing to do with you or your mission, and, frankly, until we get our arms around it I want to keep it contained.”
Rafe wasn’t going to press. Judging from the look of gravity in the Order leader’s eyes, whatever it was had not only him concerned but the other two males as well.
Chase cleared his throat. “Now that you’re here, Rafe, tell us how things went last night. I understand Eli and Jax walked in cold on the operation at Asylum. Shitty timing. Sorry about that.”
Rafe shrugged. “Under the circumstances, I can’t say I was happy to see them. But it actually couldn’t have worked out better.”
He explained what had happened, and how he’d gained crucial credibility with the leader, Cruz, and the others by healing the wounded gang member.
“They invited me with them to this place.” He typed in the address of the building where the party was held, and an area map came up on their displays with the high-rise highlighted.
A moment later, Gideon had scoured the internet and assembled a full dossier on the owner, which displayed onscreen. “Judah LaSalle. Age thirty-two. Single. Sole heir to a French billionaire industrialist. No less than a dozen residences around the world, not counting a megayacht he purchased last year from a Saudi prince for a cool two-hundred million.”
Lucan’s brow furrowed. “This guy Cruz has interesting taste in friends.”
“Or is it the other way around?” Chase asked.
Those were questions Rafe had been asking himself all night. “Cruz and the others like expensive toys too. They’ve got a few hundred grand tied up in their vehicles and that’s only the start, based on what I was able to get out of a couple of them last night after the drinks had been flowing for a few hours. Hopefully, I’ll have the chance to squeeze them for something more substantial soon. I told Fish, the guy I healed, that money’s been tight since the Order gave me the ax and I’m looking for something to do. We’ll see if they take the bait.”
“What about LaSalle?” Lucan asked. “Any reason to think he might be part of Cruz’s band of merry men?”
“They’ve got business together, no doubt about that,” Rafe said. “Cruz disappeared into a closed-door meeting with him almost as soon as we arrived. He stayed in there for a couple of hours before LaSalle left the party with his bodyguards.”
“Any idea what was discussed?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, find out. And if we need to put dedicated eyes on Judah LaSalle, we’ll make that happen.” Lucan paused, staring at Rafe for a moment. “Healing that gangbanger in the bar was quick thinking. And now we’ve got this new lead to run down too. If this mission turns up even one additional lead in our hunt for Opus Nostrum’s inner circle, it will be more than we’ve had in months. Good work. We couldn’t do any of this without you.”
Rafe hadn’t been expecting praise. Nor was he prepared for how deeply it impacted him to hear Lucan Thorne express his gratitude, his trust.
He wasn’t worthy of it.
But he would be one day.
He would make sure he redeemed himself in everyone’s eyes, even if it cost him his last breath.
“I’m not going to rest until we’re able to unmask every one of those Opus bastards,” he vowed to the three Order elders.
And he wasn’t going to let anything—or anyone—stand in his way.
His thoughts went back to the leggy brunette with the face of an angel. The woman who had as much coiled power in her as she had attitude. And that was saying a lot.
In truth, she hadn’t been far from his mind all night.
