“Covered how?”
“Rafe,” Fish said, looking at her over the tops of his dark sunglasses. “Turns out, he’s looking for work. Lucky for us.”
“Lucky?” She gaped at Fish, then swung her disbelief in Cruz’s direction. “Tell me you’re joking.”
But he wasn’t. His face was pure resolve. “You said it yourself, we’ll never get inside unless we can take care of the guards and the security systems. We need the vampire to get it done.”
No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening.
Her stomach sank, cold and leaden. All her hopes of keeping Rafe at a safe distance—not only for her personal goals, but for her state of mind—were evaporating by the second.
“He’s a Breed warrior, Cruz. Are you forgetting that until recently he was part of the Order?”
“I haven’t forgotten that for a minute.”
She pushed the brochure back at him. “I don’t like any of this. Have any of you even stopped to ask yourself why he’s hanging around? He just shows up in the right place at the right time, and now you open the door and invite him in?”
“Ain’t that what we did with you, Brinks?” Ocho asked, a note of challenge in his voice.
She sank her teeth into her tongue to keep from letting him goad her. That’s all she needed right now, to lose a grip on her emotions and show them her fangs or the heat of her Breed irises.
Cruz got up from his chair to face her. “You don’t make the rules around here. I do. And before you go thinking I’m stupid, think again. I’m not about to trust a goddamn vampire without testing him first.”
There was a threat in his airless voice, in the way he practically spat the word ‘vampire.’ Devony knew Cruz was dangerous. Right now, the menace rolling off him was lethal.
“What do you mean, you’re going to test him?”
He merely smiled. “Go get your toolbox, Brinks. You’re gonna need it. I’m putting you to work tonight too.”
It was a dismissal without so many words. A reminder that she was not yet part of them, only an asset they intended to use just as long as it suited them. When she was no longer needed, she would be out. She knew that before, but tonight the message was loud and clear. Which meant she needed to ramp up her efforts to find out what, if any, their connection was to Opus.
She wouldn’t be able to do that once Rafe was in the picture.
A selfish part of her hoped that he would fail whatever test Cruz had in mind for him. It was the only way she could continue her work on the inside without discovery.
Devony left Cruz and the others behind in Ocho’s office and went out to the parking lot to get her safecracking tools from the lockbox on her bike.
Being Breed, she didn’t need drills or magnets or other implements in order to break into a safe. All she needed was the power of her mind. But they could never know that, so she’d faked her way through her first job with the gang several weeks ago and never looked back.
Overhead in the moonlit parking lot, storm clouds bunched sooty against the black night sky. In the distance, she heard the low rumble of thunder. Except it wasn’t the weather vibrating all the way into her boots now.
It was him.
Rafe, roaring up on his BMW like a shadow in the darkness.
He was the last thing she needed to deal with right now.
She tried to hurry collecting her kit from her bike but there was no avoiding him. As he entered the gravel lot, she felt his intense eyes on her like warm hands moving over her body. A shiver that had nothing to do with the autumn nip in the air shuddered through her as she glanced his way and their gazes collided.
Heat arrowed through her, uninvited.
Ocho and the guys thought she had no use for men. She only wished that were true as she watched Rafe roll toward her now.
It didn’t help that he was as handsome as Adonis. His dark blond hair was a wild tangle from the ride, the lack of helmet only making his thick mane look even more untamed and luxurious as it danced around his impossibly broad shoulders. Irrationally, her fingers itched with the urge to find out if the tousled waves were as soft as they looked.
His hair wasn’t even his best feature. Every inch of him was powerful and immense, pure male perfection that was barely contained beneath his black shirt and leather jacket. Dark denim clung to his muscular legs, which were spread wide to accommodate the bulky body of his motorcycle. Desire coiled inside her and a sudden vision of him, naked and magnificent, invaded her senses before she could stop it.
Bloody hell. What had gotten into her?
