“Better.” She felt foolish, honestly. Naïve to have imagined his care with her tonight was inspired by anything other than gratitude. Lifting off his lap, she pushed his jacket toward him. “Thanks for the help. We’d better get back to Ocho’s. Cruz will be wondering what happened to us by now.”
He gave her a dark look and cleared his throat. “Before we do that, we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“You can start by telling me what you’re doing with men like them in the first place. You have no loyalty to Cruz. If you were truly one of his gang, you wouldn’t be deceiving them about the fact that you’re Breed.”
“I have my reasons.”
“What are they?”
“Personal.”
He shook his head. “Maybe before, but not now. Not when I have to decide whether to keep your secret from Cruz and protect your interests, or tell him and look out for my own.”
So, there it was. He’d just played his best card. The one she had personally handed to him earlier tonight.
“I knew it wouldn’t take long before you threatened to expose me to them,” she said, feeling stung and cornered. “To think, just a few minutes ago you were thanking me for saving your ass. I guess it’s good to know what your gratitude is worth.”
She rose from the bench, but Rafe stood with her. Face to face, with only inches between them, there was no way to avoid his probing stare.
“You’re in over your head, Devony. What happened here tonight has only increased the odds that you’re going to get hurt. Or worse. You need to know you’re dealing with some very dangerous individuals.”
“Does that include you?”
He didn’t have to confirm it. The sheer starkness of his expression took her aback. There was a bleak truth in his eyes, one that chilled her.
“You say you have your reasons for being here. So do I,” he said, speaking with the calm smoothness of a diplomat rather than the lethal male he’d just reminded her he was. “I’m not here to make friends . . . or anything else. But I don’t want us to be enemies, either.”
She scoffed. “What a relief. Either way, it appears we’re at an impasse.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way.”
She eyed him warily. “Then what would you suggest?”
“A truce, for now. A mutually beneficial one. I keep your secret, so long as you have my back inside the gang. That means you keep me informed of all activity, and you alert me if Cruz has plans to cross me or test me the way he did tonight. In return, I’ll provide cover when you can’t show your true nature in front of the men.”
She wanted to balk at the proposal, but what other choice did he leave her? And while she wasn’t looking to make friends either, the thought of having someone to confide in, to lean on, was sorely tempting.
Especially when the alternative was forfeiting months of effort in trying to find a link to her true enemy, Opus Nostrum.
Rafe held out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Devony slipped her fingers into his grasp, hoping she wasn’t making the mistake of her life in allying with him, even under the confines of their wary truce.
“All right, Rafe. We have a deal.”
CHAPTER 8
The parked delivery van was still warm in the lot behind Ocho’s garage when Rafe and Devony made it back there on foot some forty-five minutes later.
Soaked from the rain, Rafe’s mood following the near-disaster in the museum and his conversation with Devony afterward hadn’t been improved by the three-mile trek in the cold drizzle. He vibrated with anger as they entered the garage and found Cruz and the rest of the crew in the midst of pouring shots and celebrating as if the whole caper hadn’t almost gone as far south as it could have.
Rafe wasn’t usually the kind to lose his shit, but thinking about how Nathan and Jordana must feel about him now ignited a volatile rage inside him. That fury only amplified when he considered that in testing his loyalty, Cruz had also risked the lives of five innocent museum guards and Jordana.
Not to mention Devony.
And her life was still at risk, because after what happened with Jordana at the museum, there would be hell to pay from Nathan. Rafe wasn’t worried about his own neck, but he didn’t want to consider what might happen to Devony now that she had made herself his accomplice in a mission that was supposed to be covert and solo. He wasn’t sure how he could reverse that very lethal problem without punching a hole in his entire operation.
