Page 175 of Deacon

“Careful,” he said. “I’m in no mood to be insulted in my own house.”

Priest didn’t look at me. He didn’t need to. He caught the opening and pressed. “You killed the man dumb enough to trust you.”

Jude’s jaw flexed. There it was, the first little fracture in the smug control he had been wearing since we walked in.

Priest’s voice went colder. “That’s all you are, isn’t it? A coward with a badge and a gun.”

Lila’s breath hitched. Jude’s bloody hand jerked around the cuff chain. Anger was starting to eat through his control, and angry men watched the insult instead of the room around them.

I shifted another step sideways, slow enough that he had to choose whether to follow me or keep watching Priest.

His gun tracked with me. “Don’t,” he snapped.

I let my voice drop. “Or what?” I asked softly. “You gonna shoot her too?”

Uncertainty flickered across his face, there and gone before he could hide it. I kept pressure on it. “You don’t want her dead,” I said. “You want her watching you long enough to mistake fear for love.”

His nostrils flared. Lila’s gaze snapped back to mine, glassy but sharp enough that I knew she understood what Priest and I were doing.

“That’s it,” I murmured to her. “I got you.”

Jude’s gun hand shifted, barely enough to count, but Priest saw it too. “How’d all that work out for your partner there?”

Jude’s eyes cut toward him. “He was weak,” Jude said.

“No,” Priest said. “He saw what you were.”

Silence dropped hard enough that I could hear Lila breathing. Then something whispered behind Jude. His eyes flicked toward the sound, but Castor was faster.

The suppressed shot coughed through the room. A dark bloom opened through the front of Jude’s throat, and disbelief held him upright for one impossible second. His fingers loosened around the gun, then he dropped.

Lila went with him halfway before his hold released. I was moving before his body hit the floor.

The gun skidded beneath a side table. I ignored it, dropped to my knees, and got both arms around Lila. I pulled her away from Jude’s body and into my chest, careful too late when her broken sound told me how much pain even that movement caused. “Baby.”

She was crying now, not neatly, not quietly. Her whole body shook with it.

“It’s okay. I got you.” I pressed my mouth against her hair and temple, desperate to put reassurance anywhere she could feel it. “I got you. I got you. I love you so much, baby. I’m here.”

Her good hand fisted in my shirt. “Jade.” The name broke in the middle. “Jackson, Jade’s still missing.”

I caught her face as gently as I could and made sure she saw me. “No. Listen to me. Jade is safe.”

Every tremor in her stopped. She pulled back just enough to search my face, looking for the lie people told when truth was too cruel to survive. I let her look.

“She’s safe,” I said again. “We’ve got her. She’s on the way home.”

Relief hit her so hard it looked painful. Her body sagged against mine, and another sob tore free.

“I’ll explain later,” I murmured into her hair. “Right now we gotta take care of you.”

Priest crouched beside us, phone already in his hand. “I’ve called Blue.”

Only then did I look beyond Lila. Castor stood in the kitchen entry with his gun lowered, his expression blank. Mason lay dead near the front of the room. Jude was crumpled only feet away. Blood marked the hardwood in two different places, and Lila had some of it on her clothes, her face, my hands. Castor’s gaze moved once over the room. “Archangel’s coming.”

Cleanup.

I brushed damp hair away from her face. “Stay with me, baby.” Her lashes fluttered. Her lips parted like she meant to answer, but her weight suddenly changed. “Lila?” Nothing. Panic punched straight through the cold that had carried me into the house.