“I had it covered.”
Reyna rolled her eyes. “Well, when Roland had you against the brick wall by the throat, I wasn’t so sure.”
“Roland was here?” Katarina gasped. “And you were alone.”
“I can handle Roland.”
“Right. What did he want?”
“We’ll discuss it later.”
Katarina fell into step beside them and Philippé took the rear. “So is he still smoking hot?”
Reyna’s head whipped to the side. “He’s disgusting.”
“Well, yeah. I was kind of into that for a while.”
“Katarina has interesting sexual tastes,” Beckham said with a smirk.
“What can I say? I like the kink.”
Reyna laughed. “I’m going to assume that you don’t know this from personal experience.”
“Beckham’s walked in on me tied up a time or two,” Katarina said with a wink.
“Can we get back to business?” Beckham said.
“Right. The spy’s place was secure. We’d never even tracked it.”
“So, like, is that what you do for Beckham?” Reyna asked. “Have you always been working behind the scenes?”
“Pretty much,” Kat said. “Gerard and Philippé worked for Beckham in public, and Zoya and I did the things other people couldn’t see.”
“Like a spy.”
Kat shrugged. “You could say that. We’re a tight-knit group.” She turned back to Beckham. “Anyway, I thought it might be that zealot group we’d had on our radar for a while, but it wasn’t. This is an all-new thing. They use the tunnel systems to get around. Clever.”
“Your assessment of the premises?”
“Secure,” Philippé said from behind them.
Katarina agreed.
“Are they dangerous?” Beckham asked.
“Not in the least. Besides the stink-eye we got, they seem to want to be left alone. They’re kind of doomsdayers. Stockpiles of enough shit to sustain a nuclear attack or, you know, vampiric control of the country. Whichever came first. Right now, feels like a coin toss.”
“It keeps getting better.”
“But can they house us?” Reyna asked.
“Oh yeah. They can probably house two hundred in a pinch. They agreed to let our people stay there as long as there were no vampires.” Kat rolled her eyes to show what she thought of that.
They all stopped in front of the SUV. Reyna wrapped her pinky around Beckham’s. He squeezed gently.
“This sounds like our best bet,” Reyna said.
“Kat? Philippé?” Beckham looked at them with full trust in his eyes. She could feel the bond between them that had been shaped, molded, fired, and glazed over the years. Made from soft clay into a beautiful work of art that fire only solidified. She wondered what they had done to earn that sort of trust.
